During Golan’s lecture, he showed us this video depicting a “talking piano”. I’m sure a lot of technical effort went in to both constructing the mechanical piano playing robot and converting speech to be played in such a way that it would be recognized. However, it reminded me of a certain horrifying video.
They both rely on the same concept of layering sound waves, including the overtones and undertones, to produce something that sounds like speech. I think it is pretty comedic that one could be praised for being a technological advancement and the other has become a meme.
I also think that it’s interesting that a midi converter, in what is probably the most simple form, is able to get the notes in order to recreate these vowel sounds. I think that another part of recognizing the speech in this song is just from how well the song is known by the listeners. Considering that this has now become the most popular Christmas song, it is no surprise that our brain is able to make out the original lyrics despite a strange presentation.