I’ve released a new version of Handywriter today, now featuring recent Text-to-Speech (TTS) capabilities. The results are quite impressive. Here is the famous “Bluebird” poem by Charles Bukowski. (Maybe next time, it will sing “Famous Blue Raincoat” by L.Cohen?)
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
Wants to get out but I’m too tough for him
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
To let anybody see you
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
Wants to get out
But I pour whiskey on him and inhale
Cigarette smoke
And the whores and the bartenders
And the grocery clerks never know that
He’s in there
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
Wants to get out but I’m too tough for him
I say, Stay down, do you want to mess
Me up? You want to screw up the
Works? You want to blow my book sales in
Europe? There’s a bluebird in my heart that
Wants to get out
But I’m too clever, I only let him out
At night sometimes when everybody’s asleep
I say, I know that you’re there
So don’t be sad
Then I put him back
But he’s singing a little
In there, I haven’t quite let him die
And we sleep together like that
With our secret pact
And it’s nice enough to make a man
Weep, but I don’t weep, do
You?
Comparison with AWS Polly
I’ve tried various voices by using Polly’s neural TTS system, and apparently, it’s not as good as OpenAI’s TTS.