How to analyze a sound
[New functionality as of 10/24/2020, please update!!]
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Select Sound object in Praat.
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Select the "Fast Track > Track Sound..." button. This will open up a menu and an Editor window for that sound.
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Determine what you want to track (red arrow). By default, the section selected in the editor window is analyzed (this requires you to select a part before analysis). The entire sound may also be tracked. If an entire sound will be analyzed, make sure there are trackable formants across the whole sound. Please see preparing sounds for more information.
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Determine what you want to write out (green arrow). The most useful thing to return are Formant objects, which allow you to edit formant tracks, and Table objects, which allow you to plot your analyses.
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Determine your desired analysis settings and hit 'Ok' or 'Apply' (blue arrow). Apply keeps the menu window open for repeated analyses. For more information about analysis settings see this page and this page.
The result is presented in the draw window. Notice that the spectrogram view window is reproduced, and formants are drawn (and estimated) only for the selection.
I want to make a vowel plot from the formant track below:
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Select Table object in Praat.
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Select the "Fast Track > Plot formants..." button (red arrow). This will open up a menu.
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Select whether you want to add to a plot or make a new one (green arrow).
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Determine your desired settings and hit 'Ok' or 'Apply' (blue arrow). Apply keeps the menu window open for more plotting.
The result is presented in the draw window. Contours are plotted by default, with the arrow indicating motion across time.
Below is a comparison of four ways to plot the above track (left to right): 1) Just the mean 2) All individual points 3) 2 points in time 4) 5 points in time.
Tracks can also be added to existing plots. Below, 5 vowels have been plotted:
To analyze a single sound file:
- Adjust setting or leave defaults, and select 'Ok' (or 'Apply' to not lose the form).
Optionally, Fast Track can return (anything saved will go into your working folder):
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A formant object containing the formant tracks.
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A table containing formant measurements, predicted formant measurements, formant bandwidths, f0, and intensity measured at each time point.
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A CSV file containing the same information as the table.
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A figure will automatically be generated showing either the final analysis or comparing all potential analyses.
After the initial analysis, if desired:
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Select the output formant object and its corresponding sound file. Select the "Fast Track > Edit tracks (sound)..." button.
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Edit the formant object manually, and save updated formant objects, images or CSV files.