I remember from my childhood that there was a pc dos tennis game from the mid 80's which announced the scores and tennis lingo(like "fifteen love") via speech, over the pc speaker. The game wasn't much fun, but it turned out that the speech wasn't prerecorded, it was generated on-the-fly by an external program that shipped with the game. You could run the program and give it text to speak as a parameter. That was a LOT more fun than the actual game was...
Yeah, in all fairness I wanted to keep things moving along so didn't include U96, Quadrophonia, Lionrock, FSOL, Snap!, etc. There were lots of fine uses of ST Speech, to be sure!
Thank you for this clip! I never bought , all my disks came with a second hand purchased ST in the mid 90's, and yes, ST speech was probably included. I used this voice extensively in cheesy dance music.
I remember hearing a 90s techno cover of Yes Sir I Can Boogie using this around 1994, but I've never been able to find that version again. I particularly remembering its stumbling way of pronouncing Boogie-Woogie.
It's absolutely fantastic! A cool tip if you are using plugins - record ST Speech then put it through the granular engine of Omnisphere or Pigments etc. Marvelous fun!
As someone whose just getting their toes wet with electronic music and using a lot of plugins that do mostly everything for me videos like this are a great resource for helping me develop a deeper understanding of whatever it is I am doing actually. Thanks Zoe, we love you.
wow i had forgotten about that program on atari. ive still got 2 of them with that mono screen in the loft with a copy of logic and ‘ahem’ that copy of cubase everyone had. what i wanted to say is i did manage to find an original speak and spell in a charity shop. what struck me at time i found it is its hardwired power supply and home made jack plug output. it gets me thinking, i wonder if my old speak and spell was ever used in a studio or a band for something iconic? 😳😮😬😃⚛️☯️👾👽
Hello Zöe, hugs from Spain :) Thanks for the Video :) I never used synth with amiga500 but i know about that :) (I was C64 user and the synth was very limited lol) Although we had a very good SID Chip! I later worked with Pc (Soundblaster PRO, later Roland) By the way, the voiceprogram you could really manipulate, if you write Nö and pitch it down, and write it NöNöNöNöNöNöNöNöNö it later was like a motor sound lol
Totally! With its built-in MIDI ports, it was a popular choice for musicians. There are lots of MIDI sequencers for the ST, which were at the heart of making electronic music in the '80s and '90s, before DAWs replaced them. Most required a whopping megabyte of RAM, but there's a few that used just 512 KB. Tiger Cub and Sweet Sixteen should both work just fine on your 520 ST! 😊
Ah yes, a prime candidate! I can't believe I missed that one, I love that album. I'll check them side-by-side to make sure, but it definitely sounds like it. "Close your eyes and let the music flow." Brilliant, thanks!
It sounds very similar to others I remember, but I never had an ST sadly. I remember SAM on Amiga and C64, and also this sounds a lot like one I remember at EPOCT back in the day. Also that Atari monitor is bass ass!
Ha! I remember that. But never used it for some reason 🤔 Really loved the ST. It probably crashed but I have no memory of it doing so - unlike my PCs...😠
A genuinely fascinating video, thank you! - I had no idea about the history/post work of the authors (I got st speech as part of my discovery pack so just assumed it was made by Atari). And it's not entirely forgotten ; Billain used it in his 2023 neurofunk track 'F4K YOO' (which is NSFW btw) - at least I'm pretty sure it's ST Speech.
Yeah, that definitely sounds like a contender, cheers! And yes, the authors didn't exactly make it obvious who they were, which is kinda surprising. It's a really good program to just give away and not tell people you made it, you know? Calling it "ST Speech" didn't exactly dispel the notion it might be by Atari, either!
Yeah, a GW-M5610 (module 3159). It syncs to Anthorn each morning, it's solar charged, it tells me the date as well as the time, and half the day it beeps every hour to remind me to check the time and maybe go and eat. 😅 Sure, modern smart watches also sync often so they're also always less than a second out... but they have to charge once a night rather than once a year, and need pesky updates. None of that with a Casio watch and Atari ST!
@@TransistorSounds Yaas. Strong agree, that's my favourite G-Shock as well!! I want to get the newer one as it also displays the current time with a timer active.
Nice! I've got a Casio Pro Trek (module 5571, PRW-6600YB), also solar charged. And much for the same reasons. PS: Nice video, brings back good times :)
Thanks! That would be my own track "Voice", which you can download for free from www.zoeblade.com if you'd like. I used ST Speech in it, so it seemed appropriate.
Thanks! That would be my own track "Voice", which you can download for free from www.zoeblade.com if you'd like. I used ST Speech in it, so it seemed appropriate.
@@TransistorSounds i played with trackers on amiga in the time. and one tracker had a speech engine that sounded the same as the one you showed. Idk was it octomed?
@@shinysun2283 Huh, I haven't heard anything about any trackers having speech synthesis built in. The Amiga did come with Say though, although it would have been tricky back in the day to get its speech into a sample file.
@@shinysun2283 Oh, Say's a much fancier speech synthesiser compared to ST Speech. More realistic, less stylised. I used it in one of my songs a few decades ago now. Good stuff!
Yes, if you have an Atari ST or emulator to run it on (I recommend Hatari), then you can download it from my site at notebook.zoeblade.com/ST_Speech.html -- the link's near the bottom of the page.
@@TransistorSounds Thank you so much for the video and the software. I am new to Hatari/Emutos, I can't figure how to load your .tos file into Hatari. I watched tutorials on creating .ts disks but I must be missing something obvious...
