Is there a way to create a profile that disregards all input except a few words that you put into it?

I use a program called Sibelius to input music. Sibelius involves two-handed use requiring the left-hand input the note names and the right-hand to input the note durations (via the keypad). I experimented with using Dragon to do the note inputting by saying the note names, "c", "f", etc. When the program recognizes "c", it correctly places that note in the digital score. However, if DNS mis-recognizes "c" as "see" things get crazy.

That is why I would like to have a profile that will not try to recognize anything except the note names that I have trained so that saying "c" does not miss recognize as "see." Is there any way to reduce DNS to bare-bones and then train only those commands that I wish to go to Sibelius?

With many thanks,

 

Garyth

What you want to do may be more manageable as a scripting project. Generating a custom vocabulary may not work as well.

Several years ago, I attended a workshop presented by Larry Allen, the author of the definitive book on DNS scripting. He demonstrated techniques for creating custom voice commands for "Finale," another music composition/notation package.

You might want to start by buying his book: http://www.pcspeak.com/medical/products/scripting11book.shtml

Thank you, Alan. I will definitely look into that. In the meantime I created a profile named "Sibelius" and deleted all 15,000+ words using the vocabulary editor and then added the note names to ensure that that's all DNS could recognize. That seems to work perfectly fine in Sibelius and I was able to use my voice to plant the note names.

My next level in this project later this weekend will be to attempt to write commands for the naturals, sharps and flats so that when I say "csharp", DNS will send the "press keypad 8" and then press "c" so that the note that appears is correct. If I can get that to work, then the sky is the limit. All I have to do is to learn how to create commands in the proper sequence within DNS.

If that fails, I will then look into the scripting that you mentioned (I must admit that I don't know if we are talking about the same technique within DNS). New undo

Again, thanks for your reply.

Garyth

 

Garyth,

Your KnowBrainer profile is out of date according to your last post. Please update your KnowBrainer profile so that we know exactly what hardware and/or versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking you're using.

Otherwise, ignore my previous post if it isn't applicable.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

Getting technical support rule #1: When asking questions or describing problems, express yourself as if you were attempting to describe the Mona Lisa to a blind person.

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Thanks, Chucker:

 

I'm trying this project on my desktop machine, not the netbook. I'll update my profile as you suggest. If I can get commands built where I get the right sequence. This will work.As I said in my reply to Alan, I succeeded in creating a profile that has no words in it and now need to add the scripted commands (actually, learn how!).

 

Thanks, muchly.

 

G

Chuck:

 

I'll try the "spell" option and let you know how it works. Never thought of that.

 

G

Chuck – I tried the spell option but haven't had time to delve into it enough to know if I can also create commands. In order to help you understand what I'm trying to do, please read the following:

 

The way one inputs music into Sibelius is a combination of the regular keyboard for note names and the numerical keypad for note durations and alterations. Thus, if I want to enter a quarter note C sharp, I would press 4 on the numerical pad that would tell the program that I want a quarter note. I would then press 8 on the numerical pad which would indicate that the note will be sharped , and then I would press "c" on the regular keyboard to to plant that note at the proper pitch adjustment and length.

Thus, in making up the commands for this Sibelius profile, I will need to create (for the above example) a C sharp command that will consist of that sequence of keystrokes.

keypad 4
keypad 8
c

Any other method – such as saying "press" would be more involved than simply pressing the proper keys with the left-hand. However, if I can get the commands working in the DNS Sibelius profile, the whole process might be a little more efficient – especially considering that often, while entering complex music, one has to keep the left-hand pointing at one's place in the music score.

I hope this clarifies what I'm trying to do…

G

We would recommend against the vocabulary approach because of the work involved. On the other hand, if you're using Advanced Scripting listing commands, you could do all of this with a small handful of specialized macros but this would require Preferred/Premium to Pro 11.5 Upgrade with  Larry Allen’s Scripting for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 (which is amazing) or a Third-party Command utility.

PS: Before going into the speech recognition business, I was a singer-songwriter/arranger and notated all of our songs for copyright purposes so I know where you're coming from.

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Maestro,

Lots of great ideas in this thread!

As a small endorsement for the KnowBrainer/custom commands approach, consider the KnowBrainer command <num> Word <num> Letter <AtoZ>. The command was intended to highlight a specific word (or letter) in the Dragon Spelling Window, and potentially automate replacing an incorrect letter. I love this command because it enables hands-free use of the Spelling Window. Where it could prove useful to your purposes is the <AtoZ> list. The list includes a pronounceable representation of all the letters -- "see" for C, for instance. By using a list like this and Dragon's command mode, this could enable bulletproof recognition of the names of your musical notes.

 

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Eric Wright At work: DNS 12 Pro. At home: DNS 11.5 Pro,  KnowBrainer 2011, and Utter Command by RedStart Systems; Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac

 

Appetite for Dictation - My Blog

This sounds like an interesting scripting project. If you use "list commands" (See Larry's chapters in his book), you could achieve a lot with only a handful of commands, maybe SOMETHING (not exactly!) like these:

"Quarter C Sharp"
"Whole D Natural"
"Dotted Quarter E Flat"
etc.

All three examples, and all variations, could be handled by a single list command:

< Length > < Key > < SharpFlatNatural >

By cloning the command and doing some minor editing, you could create another spoken form that would allow you to say, for example, "C Sharp Whole Note" OR "Whole C Sharp":

< Key >  < SharpFlatNatural > < Length> Note

The < Length > list consists of:

4\Quarter
2\Half
1\Whole

< Key >:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

The final list would consist of only three items...

keypad 8\Flat
keyboard ??\Sharp
keypad ??\Natural

Once you have one command working, it could serve as a template for many others, e.g.

< Length > Rest

So you could insert a quarter rest by saying "Quarter Rest."

You might struggle when you start this scripting project, but once you get one command working, others will likely follow quickly.

Alan:

 

Thank you for the very detailed post – I really appreciate the time you took. If I were an everyday user of Sibelius I would certainly invest in the software and the book and go that route. I have archived all of these forum posts in my information on both DNS and Sibelius so that, if my use of Sibelius increases considerably during my retirement (December 2013), I will have a guide to looking into what is then currently available and getting ready to roll.

 

G

Okay – a couple of observations

I have the DNS 11.5 premium edition and I had not realized until now that it would only permit me to create text commands. That means that my dream of using Dragon with what would essentially be a macro system will not work without a considerable outlay of cash to upgrade to the Pro version – more on that later.

Chuck's suggestion of using the spell mode was brilliant. It does work although there is a fair lag time between when I say the letter name of the note and when it appears in Sibelius. The good news is that as long as I don't get too far ahead of the recognition, the system will plant notes up to eight note-names long – in other words I can say CDF G CA CC and after I've said it, Sibelius will put those notes in to the score in that sequence. It will take a bit more practice to see if that is really a time saver over entering the letter names on the keyboard.

Another possibility here is that I have a very good keyboard remapper for various foreign languages that I have to type. That program permits me to assign any key to whatever character I wish (including self-created macros) . The problem with note entry on the regular QWERTY keyboard is that the notes are not in sequence one would find on a piano . Using the keyboard remapper, I could actually lay out a piano keyboard on the regular QWERTY keyboard and that might be much faster than trying to use DNS.

Right now, we have to upgrade to the latest version of Sibelius for our office and that will take up our allowable cash outlay for the foreseeable future which means that we cannot, at the same time, upgrade to either the DNS Pro or the KnowBrainer software in order to accomplish the utilization of DNS for this purpose. While we must utilize Sibelius once or twice a week, most of the time, we don't use it enough day in and day out to warrant that additional expense expense.

The bottom line is that I will try playing with the spell mode a bit more to see how it feels – although I must confess that the time delay between when I say the letter and when it gets interpreted in Sibelius is perhaps longer than  may be practical

Thanks for all the suggestions – they were really a great help!

Garyth

So how is Sibelius to work with? I've only ever used Finale, but I've often wondered about Sibelius. 

Garyth,

DNS Premium only includes basic speech recognition functionality and is basically a stripped down version of DNS Pro. When you start getting into commands, you're getting into a highly specialized area but upgrading to DNS Pro isn't your only option. A less expensive option would be KnowBrainer 2011 which includes 11,000 prefab commands plus a patented ability to verbally create Advanced Scripting commands.

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Update on the Sibelius project – 2/18

Well, the keyboard remapper approach failed. Like Microsoft Office, Sibelius maps its own keyboard in order to run its macros on virtually every single key and key combination. The only keys that they let alone are those that carry the names of the notes. Unlike MS office where you can get into the program and get rid of key combinations you don't need, in Sibelius they are hardcoded. Therefore my keyboard mapper cannot override the Sibelius macro keys.

So, I will continue to play with the DNS solution.

Special note Lunis – I will certainly consider the KnowBrainer Command Set in the future, but not right now. I just don't use Sibelius enough to warrant it and I do very little commanding of my computer (speech recognition) within DNS.

Note to Richard – Sibelius is a far superior program. My department at the University adopted it so we have multipacks for faculty and students. Every two years I teach a course in orchestration in which I use the combination of Sibelius and Garritan Personal Orchestra (actual samples of a full orchestra) so that we can put Sibelius scores written by the students up on the screen and play them for the class. Then we can all brainstorm the example and say "what would happen if we put the clarinet above the oboe?" A simple changes made to the score on the screen can then instantly be played back so that students can hear what that change did to the klang of the piece. Pretty neat! You can download a full trial version of Sibelius – give it a good run and I think you'll never look back.

You all have a great weekend!

G

Updated my profile as requested.

I tried the spell mode and it would work magnificently if I could trigger keypresses on the numerical pad. 7, 8 and 9 are for natural, sharp and flat respectively. Thus, if I could, in the spell mode, say keypad 8, a I would get an A#. But, alas, it doesn't appear possible.

 

Garyth

 

maestrogn,

Unfortunately, you give up too easily. The Dragon Help is not always the best place to look for answers, but in this case you would have found your solution had you search through the Dragon Help.

The only way that you can access the keypad, whether you're using normal mode or spell mode, is by issuing the following commands, which do work in spell mode.

Say, "type or press keypad <keypad number>"

For example, to access the keypad number 9, you would say "press keypad nine", or "type keypad nine". You would do the same with any number on the keypad what you get is the keypad number typed, or should.

Here's what I get when I use the above command in spell mode:

9     7     1     4

Hopefully, this will solve your problem. However, since I don't have Sibelius, I can't test it there.

Try this and let us know if it works.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

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Alan,

Unfortunately, Garyth is using DNS 10 Preferred and if his KnowBrainer profile is current, he's only running 1 GB of RAM with no indication of what processor he's using. Therefore, your suggestion for making this a scripting project is not possible for him.

Garyth,

Theoretically, you can create a user profile with empty dictation and then add your own words. However, that would be a major project and likely wouldn't work any more effectively.

There are any number of ways of getting Dragon to correctly recognize letters of the alphabet. One of the ways is preceding the letter by saying "press" or "type" followed by the letter and using the international alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, etc.). I may be misunderstanding how you're trying to apply Dragon in this case, but if it's simply a matter of dictating letters of the alphabet, then the above is one way to compensate.

You can also switch to spell mode because spell mode only accepts alphanumeric characters. Yes, it can be a pain in the neck to switch back and forth between normal mode and spell mode and you have to remember to do it because spell mode doesn't except standard dictation and if you forget to switch back to normal mode you can get some bizarre results.

However, the bottom line is that attempting to create a specialty vocabulary (profile) for what you want to do is going to end up costing you time and effort and there is no guarantee that it would work anyway.

On the other hand, if you can give us a detailed description of exactly what you're doing step-by-step, it might make it clear to us in terms of helping you find a good, solid, reliable workaround.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

Getting technical support rule #1: When asking questions or describing problems, express yourself as if you were attempting to describe the Mona Lisa to a blind person.

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