Alternatives to changing pitch

Question

I am using the neural mode in Polly. The neural mode does not allow for change in pitch. The only alternative I see is to increase the rate. However, I have tried this, and it sounds very unnatural. In order to emphasize words, I decrease the rate slightly, and increase the volume slightly. A slightly higher change in pitch would certainly help.

Answer

Thanks! I've actually been doing this, and I'm getting pretty good at it. But it does take a lot of work.

Answer

Hi, as far as I know, there is no alternative to changing the pitch for voices in neural mode. I've relayed this as a feature request to our team.  
  
As a hack-y workaround, and assuming that the voices in question are English, playing with the stress pattern of a multi-syllabic word via the phoneme tag may achieve the results you want, however this may not work for monosyllabic words.

Alternatives to changing pitch

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