Speak Web

Blog | Resource Updates | ACTOR Partner Projects | Patrick Susini | April 12, 2022

Speak Web

We are pleased to announce the release of the SpeaK Web version, a collaborative platform for organizing, presenting and sharing online sound lexicons created by Patrick Susini and colleagues. SpeaK is a free application; for access, create an account with a login on the Ircam Forum https://forum.ircam.fr/.

The first lexicon available for SpeaK is the words4sounds lexicon developed within the Sound Perception and Design team (STMS Ircam-CNRS-Sorbonne Université), which corresponds to a list of words frequently used by sound professionals to describe the perceived characteristics of a sound.

Each word in the words4sounds lexicon is linked to a sound characteristic explained by a definition and illustrated by a corpus of sound examples created by the composer Roque Rivas and the sound designer François Hamon. The corpus covers different categories of sounds. This sound lexicon can be used in music creation phases, sound design processes or in educational sessions. Everything is available in French and English.

We invite researchers, sound engineers, and sound specialists to use the web version of SpeaK to create and share sound lexicons associated with a specific corpus of sounds. The goal is to improve our knowledge about sounds and our ability to talk about them, and then to refine our auditory expertise.

For example, the SpeaK Web platform can be used to present the specific vocabulary used by musicians to describe saxophone sounds in relation to sound examples and descriptions that can be organized into different typologies. The lexicon can then be shared on the platform with other researchers/teachers interested in the timbre semantics of saxophone sounds.

SpeaK for Max

For access to create a lexicon, please contact Patrick Susini.