System and method for determining pitch contours

Abstract From the Canadian patent

A system and method are provided for automatically computing local pitch contours from textual input to produce pitch contours that closely mimic those found in natural speech. The methodology of the invention incorporates parameterized equations whose parameters can be estimated directly from natural speech recordings. That methodology incorporates a model based on the premise that pitch contours instantiating a particular pitch contour class can be described as distortions in the temporal and frequency domains of a single underlying contour. After the nature of the pitch contour for different pitch contour classes has been established a pitch, contour can be predicted that closely models …