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."
the future of music (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyrighting one's voice? (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example, Harley Davidson (the motorcycle company), tried to get it's unique motorcycle engine sound copyrighted and failed. Will this change the copyright office's stance?
new "html" (Score:2, Interesting)
eg
I didn't say he did it.
I didn't say he did it.
I didn't say he did it.
I hate to shoot your ego, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your time is coming to an end, but I will say that synths and samplers don't match live studio musicians...yet. Vocalists are still safe, at least until Apple fixes their Speech voices.
Endless Listening (Score:4, Interesting)
Soundtrack for my life (Score:3, Interesting)
replication vs. recognition (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This isn't really NEW (Score:3, Interesting)
Jazz (Score:5, Interesting)
Classic singers stay as close as possible to the "absolute" quality line - it's perfect for being mathematically modeled and it's a matter of time such models will be apparead, even if their implementations will take some hardware resources.
Pop singers make sound anyway far away from being called as an art. It's perfect for being implemented in embeded solutions. It's a matter of time first cyber-singers will be cloned like cheap "made-in-China" electronic (sorry, my oriental friends, although nothing personal or racial in this comment).
Jazz is still an art, like classical music, but its improvizations are very unpredictable. Jazz singers will be last ones to go. Even more - Jazz improvizators will be eventually involved to prototype new cyber-singers. Hmm, I can even imagine special programming languages for singer-modelling: "bebop", "blues", "swing" :)
Not there yet (Score:2, Interesting)
One area that really needs quite a bit more work is the vowels. When singers sing "ee" (as in "saved a wretch like me," for example), they usually soften it so it sounds a bit more like "meh." When I used synthesized voices before on a Mac, I had to specifically spell the lyrics as "meh" so that the program would articulate those vowels properly.
Of course, maybe the sample of "Amazing Grace" I heard was recorded by a singer who really liked to pronounce such vowels as "ee" rather than soften them to "meh," but it doesn't seem likely.
Re:There are more artists than performance artists (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:the future of music (Score:3, Interesting)
You might be interested in this album, Farinelli: Original Soundtrack [amazon.co.uk] in which computers where used to simulate the sound of a castrati singer.
Re:This isn't really NEW (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that singing and speech aren't mediated by the same parts of the brain. In this book [amazon.com], there's examples of people who can sing sentences, but can't speak them.
Re:Electric Monk (Score:1, Interesting)
The day was hot, the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat down upon the gray rocks and the scrubby, parched grass. Nothing moved, not even the Monk. The horse's tail moved a little, swishing slightly to try and move a little air, but that was all. Otherwise, nothing moved.
The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course. Nor had it ever heard of a quingigillion, which was roughly the number of miles between this valley and the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
The problem with the valley was this. The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and arround it, including the Monk itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangereus. Hence the immobility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest.
How long did the Monk believe these things?
Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which moves mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In practice, the horse knew, twenty-four hours was usually about its lot.
So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An unusual horse perhaps?
No. Although it was certainly a handsome and well-built example of its species, it was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
When the early models of these Monks were built, it was felt to be important that they be instantly recognisable as artificial objects. There must be no danger of their looking at all like real people. You wouldn't want your video recorder lounging around on the sofa all day while it was watching TV. You wouldn't want it picking its nose, drinking beer and sending out for pizzas.
So the Monks were built with an eye for originality of design and also for practical horse-riding ability. This was important. People, and indeed things, looked more sincere on a horse. So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin the Monks were given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, soft and smooth instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just one mouth and nose, but were given instead an additional eye, making for a grand total of two. A strange looking creature indeed. But truly excell
Re:This isn't really NEW (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be smarter to make a virtual mouth and larynx and make it sing? So that the computer would calculate the resulting voice.
Maybe someone has already tried. Sorry about my bad English.