Forum: music.stackexchange.com
Tags: <transcription>
Title: Why can't we play what people speak?
Question: Why it is so hard maybe impossible to play what people speak ?   Is what people say transcribable ?If no then,What prevents us from transcribing what people speak ?  What is the difference between people singing and people speaking ?

Answers:
sents: text: Here is a link to the Steve Vai song where he plays alongside one of his sisters' conversations.
text: 2nd Question: I'm no linguist, but I would say that singing is merely speaking in a rhythm using elements of music, like harmony, rhyming, and counterpoint.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/14866/Jason P Sallinger
score: 3
sents: text: I'm a bit of a stickler for language, so I would say that it is plainly impossible to play what someone says, though it is possible to imitate how they say it.
text: Given today's fancy electronics, it should be a straightforward exercise to analyse and transcribe the various pitches, durations, and dynamics (etc) employed in speech.
text: Composers were imitating the spoken word long before today's electronics.
text: Consider the call and response style of writing.
text: When we hear such a style being played our mind immediately says : Those instruments are talking to each other.
text: Our formal theory of music and our subjective experience of listening to music both identify music as a language .
text: For example, a composer writes phrases, etc..
text: According to the contemporary philosopher of music, Jerrold Levinson : Intelligible music stands to literal thinking in precisely the same relation as does intelligible verbal discourse.
text: In other words, music is a language we interpret.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/13453/Nick
score: 2
sents: text: There have been musical compositions that transcribe the pitches in the patterns of human speech made in samples and recordings.
text: Steve Reich's "Different Trains" is a well-known classical composition that has the members of a string quartet (the Kronos Quartet) playing the pitches transcribed from brief samples of recorded speech triggered by a sequencer.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 2
sents: text: Sometimes, I do this with pupils.
text: We have a sort of conversation, where one asks a question, and the other answers.
text: we start with a simple question, which then gets played in a particular key.
text: the answer is said, then played, using the rhythm of the words.
text: Eventually, if it's going well, the conversation continues with question and answer just in musical phrases.
text: Good fun, which translates words and their rhythm into music.
text: As far as transcribing is concerned, we don't go that far.
text: Although it wouldn't be difficult.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/2808/Tim
score: 1
sents: text: Look up "vocoder" , where a Bell Labs engineer developed a special type of keyboard musical instrument (with foot pedals) that could play recognizable human speech.
text: It's less possible with typical Western musical instruments and scores because they don't play suitable timbres or notate the right set of (non-equally tempered, etc.)
text: "notes" or sound elements.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/1489/hotpaw2
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
There have been musical compositions that transcribe the pitches in the patterns of human speech made in samples and recordings. Given today's fancy electronics, it should be a straightforward exercise to analyse and transcribe the various pitches, durations, and dynamics (etc) employed in speech.
It is generally considered impossible to play what someone says but it is certainly possible to imitate it. That said, modern technology is capable of transcribing human speech and there have been attempts to use this in music compositions.