Synthesized Singers 383
ctwxman writes "Over the past few decades, advances in computer hardware and software have eliminated many jobs... some technical, some menial, but none artistic. As an on-camera performer in television, I've always was believed that I was 'bulletproof' as far as replacement through technology was concerned. Not so fast. Recently, The Sinclair television stations began using 'central casting' to bring news and weather anchors from a central location (near Baltimore) to the local outlets. Still, real people are needed, just not as many. But now, even real performers may be replaced. The New York Times (inhalation of airplane glue required) reports on a new technology which allows synthesized singers to sing. Imagine having a singer with a world-class voice at your disposal, any hour of any day. She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu. Scary."
Google Link (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the demo MP3 (Score:5, Informative)
LOLA Demo 1 -Little Bird (MP3) [zero-g.co.uk]
Demo 1: "Little Bird".
(NOTE - the lead vocal line on this demo is NOT by Vocaloid - it is a real singer. Please listen to the backing vocals!). This demo illustrates well how LOLA has been used to create a simple backing vocal arrangement for a personally-produced song. The song was written and performed by one of the Zero-G singing synthesis development team, Andy Power. Andy is singing the lead vocal himself, with his real voice, but he was able to add the backing vocals to his song purely by creating them all using LOLA. Although this is only a very simple example, it immediately illustrates LOLA's usefulness in an everyday situation.
More like a sampler than a synth (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Here is the demo MP3 (Score:1, Informative)
cheers.
Here are some samples (Score:3, Informative)
Player [music-eclub.com]
The samples are very good and worth the trouble if you're interested in this. While not perfect it is better that I was expecting and I could see how it could be passable for a real person in certain situations.. Here are some direct links to the samples:
Kimi no uwasa / Male lead vocal (Japanese song) [yamaha.co.jp]
Sarasara yukigeshiki / Chorus (Japanese) [yamaha.co.jp]
Amazing Grace / English example [yamaha.co.jp]
Re:Here is the demo MP3 (Score:5, Informative)
Forget backing vocals, here's a sample [online.fr] of "Amazing Grace" mentioned in the article. Not perfect, but quite impressive.
Re:Here is the demo MP3 (Score:3, Informative)
This is a science fiction novel... (Score:3, Informative)
ttyl
Farrell
Re:Macintosh speech synthesis (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.danamania.com/temp/victoria.mp3 is the old
http://www.danamania.com/temp/vicki.mp3 is the new
Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I think the best examples to download are "The Easy Way" (song 15) and "K'ai - Eyes swim" (song 16).
While no where near perfect, Flinger and the samples really show where things are heading - I have said it before, but this type stuff (perfected, of course), plus tech like machinima (once again, as it becomes better) are truely going to alter what we think of movies, acting, etc - virtual actors, virtual singers, virtual movies...
This is Good News... (Score:2, Informative)
Never mind that the Mac had singing text to speech for a long time...
Vibrato (Score:3, Informative)
Having said that though, I'm sure they'll have tweaks for that sort of thing in no time.
Samples (Score:2, Informative)
Although pretty convincing, i think it has a way to go before it would be perfect.
At last, the ultimate weapon against the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
But this works for anybody. If you can synthesize music from MIDI and vocal models, you can use that deal. The RIAA can't stop you from doing this.
A synthesized music web site could even buy blanket ASCAP and BMI licenses, which aren't too expensive, and allow music downloads. The going rate [ascap.com] seems to be about $5000 per million downloads, or about $0.005 per song.
This is a real threat to the RIAA. If the technology works.
Re:Macross Plus (Score:2, Informative)
Re:At last, the ultimate weapon against the RIAA (Score:4, Informative)
Try Fruity Loops for a simple example (Score:3, Informative)
The music studio Fruity Loops has had a singing plug-in for a little while now; you don't have a lot of (easy) control over the pitch, so it's really more of a toy most of the time. But combined with some simple audio processing, you can easily get results like these:
http://www.antics.org.uk/mp3/green/ntk_copyright.m p3 [antics.org.uk] (1mb MP3)
http://www.antics.org.uk/mp3/green/ntk_eod.mp3 [antics.org.uk] (646kb MP3)
I'm sure it's nowhere near the league of the featured developments, but it's still a very impressive feature in an affordable package...