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CLEESE ("Ministry of Silly Talks") is a Python toolbox to help the generation of randomized sound and image stimuli for neuroscience research. It was originally created to generate arbitrary many random variations around an original speech recording (hence, "silly talks"). It has now been extended to provide a variety of sound and image transformation algorithms (so-called Engines) also able e.g. to create random expressive variations on a human face.

You can download and install the latest version of CLEESE with the following command:

pip install cleese-stim

CLEESE is currently composed of two transformation engines: PhaseVocoder and FaceWarp.

• PhaseVocoder allows one to create random fluctuations around an audio file’s original contour of pitch, loudness, timbre and speed (i.e. roughly defined, its prosody). One of its foreseen applications is the generation of very many random voice stimuli for reverse correlation experiments.
• FaceWarp uses mediapipe's Face Mesh API to introduce random or precomputed deformation in the expression of a visage on an image. This engine was designed to produce batches of deformed faces for reverse correlation experiments.

CLEESE runs in completely in Python. Python 3.8.10 was used for the most recent testing.

import cleese_stim as cleese
from cleese_stim.engines import PhaseVocoder

inputFile  = 'path_to_input_sound.wav'
configFile = 'path_to_config_file.toml'

cleese.generate_stimuli(PhaseVocoder, inputFile, configFile)

The config_file controls the parameters of the manipulation. For more information and further functionality see the documentation.

CLEESE was originally designed in 2018 by Juan José Burred, Emmanuel Ponsot and Jean-Julien Aucouturier at STMS Lab (IRCAM/CNRS/Sorbonne Université, Paris - France), and released on the IRCAM Forum platform. As of 2021, CLEESE is now developed and maintained by the Neuro Team FEMTO-ST Institute (CNRS/Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté) in Besançon - France.

CLEESE's development was originally funded by the European Research Council (CREAM 335536, 2014-2019, PI: JJ Aucouturier), and has since then received support from Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR SEPIA, AND Sounds4Coma), Fondation pour l'Audition (DASHES) and Région Bourgogne-Franche Comté (ASPECT).

If you use CLEESE in academic work, please cite it as :

Burred, JJ., Ponsot, E., Goupil, L., Liuni, M. & Aucouturier, JJ. (2019).
CLEESE: An open-source audio-transformation toolbox for data-driven experiments in speech and music cognition.
PLoS one, 14(4), e0205943.

CLEESE is a free, standalone Python module, distributed under an open-source MIT Licence on the FEMTO Neuro team github page.