Shabda

Shabda is a tool to fetch random samples from https://freesound.org/ based on given words or to generate Text-to-Speech samples for use in impro sessions on instruments such as Tidal Cycles and Estuary.

Shabda is the Sanskrit word for "speech sound". In Sanskrit grammar, the term refers to an utterance in the sense of linguistic performance.

Install

• Install Python 3: https://www.python.org/
• Install pip: https://pypi.org/project/pip/
• Install ffmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/ (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu: apt install ffmpeg)
• Install Shabda for standard usage: pip install shabda or
• Install shabda for hacking:
  • Install poetry: https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation
  • In Shabda repository, install dependencies: poetry install

Use (command line)

In order to download a sample pack, execute in the terminal shabda <definition> --licenses <license_name>.

Any word can be a pack definition. If you want more than one sample, separate words by a comma: blue,red

You can define how many variations of a sample to assemble by adding a colon and a number. e.g. blue,red:3,yellow:2 will produce one 'blue' sample, three 'red' samples and two 'yellow' sample.

The optional --licenses parameter allows to fetch only samples that have the specified license. Multiple licenses can be allowed by repeating the --licenses argument. Possible licenses are cc0 (Creative Commons Zero), by (Creative Commons Attribution), and by-nc (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial).

Full example:

shabda spaghetti:2,monster:4 --licenses cc0 --licenses by

The first time you execute this command, it will ask you for a Freesound token, that you will be redirected to. You will need a Freesound account.

By default, samples will be downloaded in a samples directory under the current working directory. You can override this by adding a config.ini file to the $HOME/.shabda/ directory, containing:

[shabda]

samples_path=/path/to/your/desired/samples/directory/

Use (web application)

Launch the web application:

In debug mode:

FLASK_APP=shabda FLASK_DEBUG=1 flask run

In production:

gunicorn --workers=4 "shabda:create_app()" -b localhost:8000

Test

poetry run pytest

Notes

With Estuary, Shabda makes use of this feature: https://github.com/dktr0/estuary/wiki#adding-sound-files-to-estuarywebdirt-on-the-fly

All command line examples must be preceded by poetry run if in hacking/development mode.

Roadmap

See: https://github.com/users/ilesinge/projects/4