On the use of the 'pure data' programming language for teaching and public outreach in speech processing

Many educational institutions include a course on speech processing as part of their regular curriculum. Such courses usually cover basic principles in acoustics, phonetics and speech signal processing, and they often incorporate practical lab classes using specialised speech processing toolboxes such as ‘Praat’. Such toolkits are valuable resources for teaching and learning, but they often involve scripting solutions based on prescribed templates and non-real-time processing, and they do not lend themselves to be used by non-specialists, such as members of the general public or schoolchildren. This paper introduces the Pure Data open-source real-time visual programming language, and presents examples of its use for teaching and public outreach in speech processing. The ‘Show & Tell’ session will present ‘live’ examples as well as handson interactive demonstrations to illustrate its value.