Praat is a free interactive sound editor, synthesizer, and analyzer, including sound spectrogram capabilities, sound editing capabilities, and many other powerful tools. It’s a pretty serious tool used by computational and phonetics researchers doing publishable work, but it is also has a transparent interface suitable for beginners. Praat has extensive documentation; the purpose of this small introduction is just to give you a gentle nudge in the right direction, and a little help on where to start.
Getting Praat is simple. Point your web browser at the Praat website, a webpage maintained by Paul Boersma and David Weenink and download a copy. There are Mac, Windows, Linux, and even source code versions.
Before you ask for help, run through the quick Questions, Problems, Solutions list at the bottom of this page. Many problems can be solved quite easily by following the advice there.
Installation varies from platform to platform, but in the common cases (Windows and Mac), it is just a matter of clicking on the file you get from the download from the Praat website. Praat is well maintained and up-to-date with current versions of Mac and Windows systems. You need to pay a little attention to the directions if you have an older Mac or an older version of Windows.
Click on the Praat application file you get after installing. Praat’s windows will appear,
The two windows which usually appear by default are labeled Praat Objects and Praat Picture.
When you select an object in the Objects list in the object window, it becomes possible to select from a menu of options on the right. What options appear depend on what kind of object you have selected.
The Objects window also has a very important feature in the upper right hand corner. This is the Help menu. Click on this menu and select Praat Intro.
Selecting Praat Intro in the Help menu brings up a window with a selection of introductory topics. Click on:
Intro 1: How to get a sound: record, read, formula
This brings up a window with subheadings. Clock on:
Intro 1.1: Recording a sound
Follow the directions there and make a recording of yourself saying the English word face /fejs/. You will note that this involves dealing with a new window, entitled Sound Recorder. Using this window, you should give your recording a helpful name in the space provided in the lower right hand corner labeled Name, something like “face”.
Making a recording creates a new object in the Objects window. You can now select that object and do things with it, such as playing it back by clicking on Play in the menu on the right, or making a spectrogram, by selecting Spectrum. You can also save the sound in a sound file. You should do this, choosing the wav format (which consumes a lot of space, but is appropriate for phonetic analysis).
You can’t follow the directions below until after you have made a sound by recording yourself saying something. That creates a sound object visible in the Objects window.
Directions: Selecting Praat Intro in the Help menu brings up a window with a selection of introductory topics. Click on:
Intro 3: Spectral Analysis
This brings up a window with subheadings. Click on:
Intro 3.1: Viewing a spectrogram
When you understand the material here to some extent, go back to the previous window and click on:
Intro 3.4: Printing the spectrogram
Follow the directions here and save your file to an eps file in Windows and to a pdf file on a Mac or in Linux (the only reason this makes a difference is that this gives the highest quality results on the respective platforms).