IBM  TASS-II, TERMINAL ANALOG SPEECH SYNTHESIZER-II (1965)

Formant synthesizer control pattern for song "Merry Christmas", by N. Rex Dixon. First part of pattern is shown; full pattern measured 6 x 54 inches (15 x 137 cm). Vertical marks every 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) corresponded to 100 milliseconds at the nominal reading speed of 5 inches/sec (12.7 cm/sec). The three-part harmony was synthesized as separate voices, then combined with sound on sound recording.

The patterns were manually constructed on pre-printed transparent film with 1/16-inch (0.16 cm) black masking tape (developed for photoetching circuit boards), that could easily be changed with scalpel and tweezers. The control patterns were taped to a transparent belt to be carried past a flying-spot scanner. A nominal scanning rate of 100 scans/second provided control-function values for the synthesizer every 10 milliseconds.

The control functions were the first three formant frequencies (F1, F2, F3), voice fundamental (F0), voice amplitude (A0), noise or "hiss" amplitude (Ah), and a shared channel for nasal amplitude (An) or fricative frequency (Fh), switched by a binary control (B2).