The weekly schedule shows which module we are covering each week. Timetabled ('synchronous') classes for modules 6 to 9 are also listed here, but tutorials are not. See the calendar in Teams to find (and join) classes and tutorials.
Each module leads you through the material in a specific order: simply follow the tabs from left to right. But do also explore the entire course content on your own, look ahead to what is coming later, and browse the rest of this website including the forums.
This course operates a policy of continuous improvement. You will find some content is not yet ready. Don’t worry, it will be ready in time for you to study it This year, we are making the following improvements:
- New PHON videos.
- New SIGNALS videos.
- New TTS videos.
- (The ASR videos will remain the same as last year.)
- New Jupyter notebooks, focusing on PHON and SIGNALS.
- More quizzes.
We have also made the following changes in the way the course is delivered:
- Replace the weekly whole-class lecture and large-group computer lab with small-group tutorials.
- For each tutorial group: two 50 minute tutorials per week.
- A more focussed topic for each tutorial, with specific tasks for you to complete in advance (individual, pair or group work).
In response to mid-course feedback, we have additionally:
- Added overview video(s) for modules 6 to 9. You should watch these before the live class.
- Scheduled a live class every Tuesday 11.10 to 13.00 on Teams to go over that video in an interactive fashion.
The readings are specified in each module and are categorised as
- Essential (read all, aiming to complete within the same week as the module)
- Recommended (read as many as you can, catching up when you have spare time)
- Extra (only read if you’re interested; some readings may be challenging; most are beyond the scope of the course)
- Wednesday, 27 September 2023
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CANCELLED: Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 27 September 2023 09:00 - 11:00Week 2 labs are cancelled due to the UCU strike
Praat basics and phonetics exercises
Before this lab: read Module 1 - Phonetics and Representations of Speech - Lab
Staff: Catherine Lai, Rebekka Puderbaugh -
CANCELLED: Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 27 September 2023 16:00 - 18:00Week 2 labs are cancelled due to the UCU strike
Praat basics and phonetics exercises
Before this lab: read Module 1 - Phonetics and Representations of Speech - Lab
Staff: Catherine Lai, Rebekka Puderbaugh
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- Thursday, 28 September 2023
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CANCELLED: Lecture 2: Acoustic phoneticsThursday, 28 September 2023 09:00 - 11:00Week 2 lecture has been cancelled due to the UCU strike
Before this class: complete Module 2
Lecturer: Rebekka Puderbaugh
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- Wednesday, 4 October 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 4 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Acoustic phonetics and speech segmentation
Before this lab: read Module 2 - Acoustics of Consonants and Vowels - Lab
Staff: Rebekka Puderbaugh -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 4 October 2023 16:00 - 18:00Acoustic phonetics and speech segmentation
Before this lab: read Module 2 - Acoustics of Consonants and Vowels - Lab
Staff: Rebekka Puderbaugh
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- Thursday, 5 October 2023
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Lecture 3: Digital Speech SignalsThursday, 5 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00What are spectrograms really? An introduction to Digital Signal Processing and the Discrete Fourier Transform
Before this class: complete Module 3
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Wednesday, 11 October 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 11 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Interpreting the DFT and issues with digital signals (Jupyter Notebooks)
Before this lab: read Module 3 - Digital Speech Signals - Lab
Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Catherine Lai -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 11 October 2023 16:00 - 18:00Interpreting the DFT and issues with digital signals (Jupyter Notebooks)
Before this lab: read Module 3 - Digital Speech Signals - Lab
Staff: Zihang Peng, Catherine Lai
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- Thursday, 12 October 2023
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Lecture 4: The Source-Filter ModelThursday, 12 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Building on our understanding of the digital signal processing, we look at source-filter model from more of an engineering perspective
Before this class: complete Module 4
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Wednesday, 18 October 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 18 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Exploring the source-filter model (Jupyter notebooks).
Before this lab: read Module 4 - the Source-Filter Model - Lab
Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Catherine Lai
(If there is time left over, you can start playing with Festival.) -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 18 October 2023 16:00 - 18:00Exploring the source-filter model (Jupyter notebooks).
Before this lab: read Module 4 - the Source-Filter Model - Lab
Staff: Zihang Peng, Catherine Lai
(If there is time left over, you can start playing with Festival.)
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- Thursday, 19 October 2023
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Lecture 5: Speech Synthesis - Phonemes and the Front-EndThursday, 19 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Pronunciation, including letter-to-sound models, and predicting prosody. All these tasks can be done with Classification And Regression Trees (CARTs).
Before this class: complete Module 5
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Wednesday, 25 October 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 25 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Start TTS assignment
Before this lab: read Module 5 - speech synthesis – phonemes and the front end - Lab
Work through the practical exercises "Getting Started" and "Step-by-step" in the assignment specification https://speech.zone/exercises/the-festival-text-to-speech-system/.
Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Simon King -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 25 October 2023 16:00 - 18:00Start TTS assignment
Before this lab: read Module 5 - speech synthesis – phonemes and the front end - Lab
Work through the practical exercises "Getting Started" and "Step-by-step" in the assignment specification https://speech.zone/exercises/the-festival-text-to-speech-system/.
Staff: Zihang Peng, Simon King
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- Thursday, 26 October 2023
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Lecture 6: Speech Synthesis - Waveform GenerationThursday, 26 October 2023 09:00 - 11:00Manipulating recorded speech signals to create new utterances.
Before this class: complete Module 6
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Wednesday, 1 November 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 1 November 2023 09:00 - 11:00Continue TTS assignment
Before this lab: read Module 6 - Speech Synthesis – waveform generation and connected speech - Lab, and bring a writing sample with you to the lab
Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Simon King -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 1 November 2023 16:00 - 18:00Continue TTS assignment
Before this lab: read Module 6 - Speech Synthesis – waveform generation and connected speech - Lab, and bring a writing sample with you to the lab
Staff: Zihang Peng, Simon King
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- Wednesday, 8 November 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 8 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50Command line and shell scripting
Before this lab: Work through the material in the Intermission module then come to the lab to get help.
Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Simon King -
Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 8 November 2023 16:10 - 18:00Command line and shell scripting
Before this lab: Work through the material in the Intermission module then come to the lab to get help.
Staff: Zihang Peng, Simon King
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- Thursday, 9 November 2023
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Lecture 7: Speech Recognition - Pattern RecognitionThursday, 9 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50We now start on an introduction to Automatic Speech Recognition, starting with the concept of pattern recognition.
Before this class: complete Module 7
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Wednesday, 15 November 2023
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 1Wednesday, 15 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50Start ASR assignment Before this lab: read Module 7 - Speech Recognition – Pattern matching - Lab Staff: Atli Sigurgeirsson, Benjamin Elie, Simon King
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Speech Processing Lab - Group 2Wednesday, 15 November 2023 16:10 - 18:00Start ASR assignment Before this lab: read Module 7 - Speech Recognition – Pattern matching - Lab Staff: Zihang Peng, Simon King
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- Thursday, 16 November 2023
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Lecture 8: Speech Recognition - Feature EngineeringThursday, 16 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50To get the best out of machine learning, we can prepare features that reflect our knowledge of the problem, and suit our chosen model.
Before this class: complete Module 8
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Thursday, 23 November 2023
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Lecture 9: Speech Recognition - the Hidden Markov ModelThursday, 23 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50We now replace pattern matching with a generative model that is learned from data.
Before this class: complete Module 9
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Thursday, 30 November 2023
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Lecture 10: Speech Recognition - Connected speech & HMM trainingThursday, 30 November 2023 09:00 - 10:50HMMs extend easily to connected speech so finally we put everything together to make a complete speech recognition system. We'll also learn how to train an HMM from data.
Before this class: complete Module 10
Lecturer: Catherine Lai
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- Friday, 1 December 2023
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Milestone - assignment 2Friday, 1 December 2023If you've completed the rest of the assignment, create a language model for digit sequences. The techniques for this will have been taught in Module 10. Start building a system for digit sequences.
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