How to make Alexa 'sing' jingle bells?

Question

question

Nathan Russell asked · Nov 05, 2017 at 09:13 PM

How to make Alexa 'sing' jingle bells?

I'm creating a seasonal Alexa skill, where there will be intents such as 'how many sleeps till Christmas', 'am I on the good list' etc; and I'd also like an intent to ask Alexa to sing Jingle Bells. The key part is making her sing it.

In my skill, for the singJingleBells intent, I output the the lyrics for Jingle Bells as the speech response, but Alexa reads the lyrics. (as expected if I'm honest).

I've discovered there is a (presumably official Amazon) skill to make her sing Jingle Bells. You can say Alexa, sing Jingle Bells

I would like my skill to do the same.

I'm guessing the Amazon skill does it with SSML phonetics, or more likely, a pre-recorded MP3 via either an SSML audio tag or SSML speechcon interjection

Is there anyway to discover/capture the output response of the Amazon skill so that I can understand (and copy!) the way it does it?

skill audio response ssml speechcons

0

10 |2000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded

Attachments: Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 524.3 kB each and 1.0 MB total.

Answer 1 · 2017-11-06T04:15:16Z

Anand@Amazon answered · Nov 06, 2017 at 04:15 AM

Hi Nathan,

You can store your audio file in Amazon S3 bucket and the same you can use in lambda function to play as output.

Below is the sample code for how to use S3 audio file in lambda code.

const handlers = {

    'singJingleBells' : function(){
        const say = "<audio src='" + pickAudioClip() + "' />";
        this.emit(':ask', say, "try again");
    }
};

function pickAudioClip(){
    const audioSource = [
        '<Your S3 bucket location>'
    ];

    return (audioSource);
}

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html

You can view Output JSON format in Service Simulator after entering valid Utterance.

Please let us know if you have any other trouble.

0 · Show 1 · Share

10 |2000 characters needed characters left characters exceeded

Attachments: Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 524.3 kB each and 1.0 MB total.

Nathan Russell · Nov 06, 2017 at 12:53 PM

Thanks for your reply, but it's not really what I was asking. I know how to include an `audio` tag in my SSML - what I need is the URL of Alexa singing Jingle Bells that the official Amazon skill is using.

If I knew the URL (or the phonetics or speechcon) that the Amazon skill is using, then I can use the same in my skill.

Re: any potential copyright concerns, I believe the Jingle Bells song itself is public domain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_Bells), and Alexa's voice itself presumably is OK to use as we are OK to use it for everything else?

0 · Share ·

How to make Alexa 'sing' jingle bells?

question details

Related Questions