We need to get the basics right before going any further, and that’s what this part is all about. What exactly is speech? How can we inspect it? What tools and methods do we need?
This is taught at the University of Edinburgh as the introductory part of my Speech Processing course.
Many, but not all, students will also benefit from the additional “Foundation material”, which can be learned in parallel with the core content in this and the later parts of the course.
What is sound?
A tiny bit of knowledge about acoustics will provide a lot of insight into speech production.
How is speech produced?
We will focus on the production of speech and how we can relate that to the acoustic properties of the signal.
Source-filter model
This simple model of speech production will be helpful throughout the rest of the course.
