how do you u se english voicebanks

[m-miyu]

like do you use them a different way or am i just a idiot and it is something obvious that i am missing?

 

[Thehyami]

Well, as you might already now, pronunciation in English is not consistent like in Japanese. Like the "a" in "about" and in "hat" sounds different. So you need to transcript the English lyric into another form that has consistent pronunciation. Some voicebank use Arpabet, some use Cz's VCCV., and some use X-Sampa. I personally like Arpabet and X-sampa because they're what linguist scholars use, so there're a lot of resources on them and has been optimized. There is also dictionaries to convert English to Arpabet or X-Sampa. X-Sampa is based on IPA, so you need to transform the IPA to X-Sampa first, but once you remember the X-Sampa alphabet, this is really easy.

X-Sampa (IPA): https://tophonetics.com
Arpabet: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cmusphinx/cmudict/master/cmudict.dict
(The arpabet contains stressing on the vowels, you can just ignore them)

Here are some examples of transcription:

I like to sing and dance in my free time
X-Sampa:
aI laIk tu sIN {nd d{ns In maI fri taIm
Arpabet:
ay layk tuw sihng aend daens ihn may friy taym

I think there are seven different shapes
X-Sampa:
aI TINk DEr Ar sEv@n dIfr@nt SeIps
Arpabet:
ay thihngk dhehr aar sehvaxn dihfraxnt sheyps

I can't give you the VCCV examples because I don't quite understand it. The vowels can be different depending on the next consonants. While Arpabet and X-Sampa always have consistent vowels independent of the next consonants.

Then you can use the transcription depending on the type of the reclist (CV, CVVC, or VCVVC). Please note that the details on usage may be different across voicebank. Not all voicebank has a complete reclist. There might be small differences here and there.

I made my own English reclist which based on X-Sampa, I also made a video on how to use them.
In case you want to see it, here's the link: https://utaforum.net/resources/easy-english-cvvc-reclist-96-lines-64-lines-4-moras.511/