Voice Synthesizer Could Bring Your Favorite Musicians Back From the Dead
- Posted on January 1, 2012 at 1:12am by
Liz Klimas
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Hearing new songs by those from the crooners era or 1970s hard rockers who have passed away is impossible — they’re dead. Or is it?
Wired reports that Yamaha, which has been developing voice synthesizer technology since the early 2000s, created a “Vocaloid” of a musician who wasn’t around to sing every syllable for a voice library used by the synthesizer. Yamaha’s Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer that until this year emulated voices of singers who were alive. Wired has more:
[...] to build a Vocaloid “voice library,” a singer typically had to sing every possible syllable, one at a time, in the target language. A computer later would synthesize the fragments into songs.
But now the Vocaloid team has announced that it has succeeded in building a library based on the voice of someone who couldn’t participate in the painstaking process: Hitoshi Ueki, a popular Japanese vocalist who died in 2007. The initial results were revealed on a Japanese video-streaming site earlier this year.
“As far as I know, many viewers were satisfied with the result, and so am I,” said Yamaha researcher Hideki Kenmochi in an e-mail to Wired.com. “It really sounds like him, because the creator [the programmer in charge of the voice library] did a good job.”
Wired reports that while there is still a robotic quality to the sound of the synthesized voices, the technology is not meant to take the place of real singers. Wired notes that in Japan, the Vocaloid is considered a new type of instrument.
Listen to the voice comparison of Vocaloid and real singer:
Since beginning to develop the technology in 2000, Yamaha has since come out with three updated versions and is continuing to make improvements. One of these improvements is mastering the original singers delivery, which Wired notes as things like yelling, whispering, grunting.
There is an English-language version of Vocaloid and Spanish, Chinese and Korean are being developed. Wired reports that with so many more vocal combinations in English, recreating famous dead musicians of our past may take a little longer.
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ZomBrad
Posted on January 3, 2012 at 5:15amI wouldn’t doubt if they already had some kind of voice effect to make so many singers these days sound like Kurt Cobain >.>
….also…..aside from the glutton of auto-tuned wankstas…..every other female singer sounds the same…..Lady Gaga sounds like Pink sounds like that “Last friday night” whore…….and none can come up with a decent tune. Not a nice little ditty…..not even anything compared to the time and talent it took to create even the most generic of commercial jingles…
Trust.
Report Post »@leftfighter
Posted on January 3, 2012 at 2:40amYeah, they can bring Kurt Cobain’s voice back from the dead, but will we be able to understand the lyrics this time around?
I just can‘t wait to hear Elvis cover Lady Gaga’s Pa-Pa-Pa-Poker Face.
John Wayne, on the other hand, would just strike her in the face.
I’d pay to see a movie with that in it.
Just sayin’.
Serious note: Look on the bright side- maybe we could see another several Beatles albums. Lennon and McCartney wrote a lot of songs that that never got recorded.
Report Post »SoulReaver
Posted on January 3, 2012 at 5:18amJust get some stoned idiot to scream words that you cant understand. Never been a fan but I like a couple songs. Go to the show cops and recruit the next Kurt
Report Post »kung
Posted on January 3, 2012 at 12:45amWould be cool if they could apply this to CGI films. They could bring back John Wayne.
Report Post »Mr. Oshawott
Posted on January 2, 2012 at 11:47amWell, I can’t say this is news, considering that Vocaloid and later UTAU have operating for over a decade. However, there is good news that Miku Hatsune will be able to sing English by the midst of this year, with the Kagamine Twins, Rin and Len, and Kaito following suit. So it looks like I’m bound to see some exciting moments by then.
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