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Posted By: boehm Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 02:18 AM
Stimulated by DCuny's post about voice synthesis I started experimenting
with Sinsy and wrote a little song. (Thank you once again for the motivation).
Suitable for the subject I used Trance style and produced in FL Studio.

RealTracks are:
RT1771_Guitar, Electric, Rhythm JazzFunkMovinMuted Ev16 130
RT1444_Sax, Alto, Soloist JazzFunkGroovin Ev16 110
RT1273_Guitar, Electric, Soloist PopUplift Ev16 120

As I happened to get a trial version of Vocaloid's Megpoid (Gumi) I made a second
version with that voice.
I personally prefer Sinsy because it sounds really artificial. Gumi is a little
too 'human'.

http://soundcloud.com/boehmusic/artificial-voices-sinsy
http://soundcloud.com/boehmusic/artificial-voices-gumi-version

I suggest good speakers or better headphones to get the
subsonics and panning effects.

Guenter
Posted By: Noel96 Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 02:52 AM
Hi Guenter,

Very impressive! I didn't catch all the words on either version but the aural texture of a human voice is clearly recognizable on both. Personally, I preferred the Gumi version.

Once more I'm amazed by what you do!

All the best,
Noel
Posted By: floyd jane Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 02:53 AM
Guenter,

As exceptional and interesting as everything else you have done. The music is beautiful and thoroughly enjoyable. The instrumentation - great - as always - the sax and guitar are quite tasteful and... tasty.

I actually preferred the gumi version, because... I could understand some words (quite well). Some I could not. That made it like some secret message that I might figure out if I listen enough.... intriguing. (the sinsy, I could not understand much...)

Cool stuff. I am a fan. Uhg... Guenter... good...

floyd
Posted By: PeterGannon Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 10:56 AM
Thanks for posting. One question, with these voice synths, how do you control the pronunciation, for example, if you want them to say amen, how do you control whether it is ahh-men or ayy-men ?
Posted By: dani48 Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 11:11 AM
Hi, Guenter !


I was mighty impressed with your artificial
voices indeed !:)Soon we old singers will be
completely replaced by artificial ones (LOL) !

Cheers
Dani
Posted By: Pat Marr Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 01:57 PM
Guenter,

in my opinion this is an excellent piece of work even before the artificial voices enter the equation!

You have a real knack for assembling interesting instrumental parts into one cohesive sound quilt. What's your musical background? Surely you aren't just a hobbyist. Hobbyists tend to make nice songs that sound like other nice songs they've heard before; but all of your creations have an air of originality that I don't often see/hear on hobbyist sites.

Very nice work! It would be an understatement to say that I enjoy your songs.
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 03:27 PM
Thank you all for your nice comments.
@Noel and Floyd: I think it's not important to understand all the words. But here are the "lyrics":
"Looking up, looking down
illusions all around.
Artificial voices
Supernatural sound
I'm flying to the sky
I'm soaring way up high"
@Peter: In Vocaloid there is an English Dictionary with a phonetic transcription which you can customize.
For example: I wanted "natural" to be pronounced as 2 syllables. So I made up the words
"natch" n@tS and "ral" r{l.
So amen could start with eI or Q@.
In Sinsy you must experiment with the writing of words. I could try it with "armen".
@Dani: Don't bother. We won't experience that.
@Pat: Yes, I'm a hobbyist. I started learning the piano at the age of ten, with sixteen the bass and later drums and saxophone.
For twenty years I played in a band (mostly in American officers' clubs), and for another twenty years I ran a sound studio.
But that was all hobby beside my actual job of being a teacher.
(Although one of my subjects was Music for about twenty years).
Now I am retired and only want to be creative. That's why I experiment a lot. I just love the process of creating.
And it's great fun to find out that some people like my stuff.

Guenter
Posted By: GDaddy Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 04:00 PM
Carl...

Swingin' Electronic Music...

Stationed in Ansbach, 1957-58, I played gigs around the 7th Army and for Fasching.

I've played synth guitar (Roland GR-303) and have enjoyed my toys...some listed below,

for many years.....but it must swing, right???
Posted By: Danny C. Re: Artificial Voices - 03/17/13 04:04 PM
Quote:

Guenter,

in my opinion this is an excellent piece of work even before the artificial voices enter the equation!

You have a real knack for assembling interesting instrumental parts into one cohesive sound quilt. What's your musical background? Surely you aren't just a hobbyist. Hobbyists tend to make nice songs that sound like other nice songs they've heard before; but all of your creations have an air of originality that I don't often see/hear on hobbyist sites.

Very nice work! It would be an understatement to say that I enjoy your songs.




+1 Pat said it all for me, you are indeed an original.

Also the Gumi version was my favorite.

Later,
Posted By: Ryszard Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 11:16 AM
Okay, we know the Real Tracks--but how did you do that bass line? This track is comparable to the best of Stevie Wonder without being derivative in the least. I can think of no higher praise. I bow before Meister Boehm.

Srsly, this thing rocks! I love the electronic setting, and the voice just fills out the palette. Mehr, bitte.

R.
Posted By: Pat Marr Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 01:29 PM
Quote:

Yes, I'm a hobbyist. I started learning the piano at the age of ten, with sixteen the bass and later drums and saxophone.
For twenty years I played in a band (mostly in American officers' clubs), and for another twenty years I ran a sound studio.
But that was all hobby beside my actual job of being a teacher.
(Although one of my subjects was Music for about twenty years).
Now I am retired and only want to be creative. That's why I experiment a lot. I just love the process of creating.
And it's great fun to find out that some people like my stuff.




your musical resume exceeds what I would call a hobbyist. It may not have been your primary career, but the time span during which you were continuously engaged in performing or recording (presumably for pay) puts you (in my opinion) in the pro or semipro category. And it shows in your musical sensibilities... you have the kind of feel for song construction that can only be learned through extended refinement of your ideas and experiments.

You are one of several people posting here whose music really impresses me, and the common denominator among all those masters is the time spent on the craft. A newby with great software can make a really good sounding song using the built-in automation.. .but to create the songs you (and some others here) create requires a LOT of musical sensibility. By that I mean the ability to differentiate between what sounds good and what sounds PERFECT

And you do an AWESOME job of assembling those perfect parts into a song
Posted By: sixchannel Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 04:20 PM
Hi Guenter
what an amazing piece of work!
I'm not into electronic music but this is AMAZING and may have changed my mind!
I dont think the voices HAVE to make sense - a bit like Carl Jenkins with his "Adiemus" suite.
You manage to blend in so much into a cohesive whole.
cheers
ian
BTW - did I say it was Amazing?
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 05:47 PM
Thanks GDaddy, Danny, Ryszard, Pat and Ian
for the nice words.
@GDaddy: It's nice you call me Carl. But there has never been anybody named Carl in my family. You're right, it must swing (or rock).
@Ryszard: That's too much. You make me blush. Stevie Wonder wouldn't like that.
@Pat: Ok. Call me a semipro. Thanks a lot for your compliments.

Guenter
Posted By: dcuny Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 06:08 PM
Like Noel said, the Gummi version is a bit nicer, because it draws less attention to itself. When I hear something spoken, I automatically want to try understanding it. With the Gummi version, I can just zone out with the music.

And as Pat said, the bass like really makes the song.

Are there still any demo versions of Vocaloid available? It would be useful for my not-so-secret coding project.
Posted By: JoanneCooper Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 06:35 PM
Guenter
A very impressive piece.
Posted By: aleck rand Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 08:22 PM
Ryszard -

Thanks for the tip on boosting the bass line in Estate. I did it, and, sure enough, it sounds better. My guess is you're a bass player, because you asked exactly the question of Guenter that I wanted to. Namely, where the ,,, did he get that superkickin' bass line? Is the answer somewhere in this list of responses?

Aleck Rand
Posted By: aleck rand Re: Artificial Voices - 03/18/13 08:32 PM
WOW!

Guenter, I've been looking in this list for the source of the bass lines. Who - WHAT- did that?
Du bist ein Monster mein Freund! Und damit meine ich nicht einen Mann in einem Gummianzug, die du siehst in den Filmen! Du bist WIRKLICH beängstigend.

Aleck Rand
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/19/13 01:06 AM
Thanks David, Joanne and Aleck for your nice comments.

@David: Here you are: https://www2.ssw.co.jp/download/dl_trial_en.aspx
Where do I get information about your coding project?
@Aleck: Here is the source for the bass line:
Who --> me
What --> Sytrus synth (in FL Studio)
I have been a bass player for 50 years (first bass guitars and for some years on keyboard) and that bass track wasn't that important for me. I'm glad so many people like it.

Guenter
Posted By: dcuny Re: Artificial Voices - 03/19/13 03:55 AM
Hi, Guenter.

Thanks for the link!

My goal is create a free Vocaloid-like program that can sing reasonably well in English.

I'm focusing on the rendering engine, rather than the GUI. For one thing, I think Sinsy shows that it's possible to get reasonably good output if there's some built-in intelligence about phrasing and such.

There's already a free editor for Vocaloid/Utau written in Java called Cadencii, so there's no need to reinvent that wheel.

I've done some proof-of-concept work. The pitch detection and pitch shifting code seem to work reasonably well. Here's an example. You can ignore the "buzzy" sound - that's part of the original recording. The important thing is that it (more or less) preserves the character of the sound without introducing the "chipmunk effect".

I'm creating a sort of "melodic backbone" of frequency information that includes preparation, portamento, overshoot and vibrato, and while it's pretty rough, it shows promise. Right now, it only renders the melody as a sine wave. Here's an example.

I'm currently in the process of gluing these parts together into a simple rendering engine that can take phonemes sung one one pitch, and follow that melodic curve. Once that's done, I'll can have it start singing "La, la, la".

I've also experimented with cross-fading phonemes together, both with simple time-based crossfades and more complex harmonic-based crossfades (like in Vocaloid). I can't hear much difference between the two. When I add that, I should be able to render simple melodies like "do-be-do-be-do".

If I can get it that far, I'll need to start building a sung database of phonemes. I'm not looking forward to that, because English requires a ton of phonemes. I expect to record blocks of blends in VCV format, like "ahtah ehteh ihtih ohtoh uhtuh aytay eetee ietie ohtoh ...", much like UTAU does. Each of the blends can be used for VCV blends ("...ahtah..."), VC endings ("...aht") and CV beginnings ("tah...").

It's being coded in Java mainly because I'm comfortable coding in it. I suspect it would be fairly straight forward to convert to C or C# when it's done.

I'd considered trying to do this with the UTAU engine, but there's no documentation on it that I can find. Also, it seems to require Japanese localization, and that's a bit of a pain.

If you've got any additional questions, let me know, or shoot me an email - I PM'd you my email address.
Posted By: TexasHeartRush Re: Artificial Voices - 03/19/13 01:58 PM
This is a terrific composition. Well produced.

I love the cross-pollination of soft synths and Real Tracks. BIAB is so unique and makes it so fun add real samples/phrases to electronic music as you can literally write out the progression and the real track 'musicians' will follow suit. Extract those...and you have a well played...pre-played track to add and manipulate. The RT Sax really worked well with this. Soft and yet driving. Great work!~
Posted By: Janice & Bud Re: Artificial Voices - 03/19/13 04:46 PM
Well as somebody who has never worked with anything in a musical context other than human voices, acoustic instruments and, of late, RealTracks I've got to say that from my untrained ear that is a heckuva production. The more I hear on this site the more I realize that I'm probably using < 1% of BIAB's capabilities. Thanks for the post. And, as with others, I enjoyed trying to put the lyrics together -- before you gave it away!
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/20/13 03:05 PM
Thanks TexasHeartRush and Mootsman for your kind words.

Guenter
Posted By: Fitzync Re: Artificial Voices - 03/20/13 04:51 PM
Absolutely phenomenal!
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/22/13 03:18 PM
Thanks, Fitzy.

Guenter
Posted By: PgFantastic Re: Artificial Voices - 03/22/13 05:54 PM
The gumi version sounded more life like, the sinsy version had alot more unpure artifacts to my ear. Both could pass for harmony parts I am sure in a mix and no one would probably be the wiser. Thanks for giving us a demo of the two!
Posted By: cubanpete Re: Artificial Voices - 03/22/13 08:25 PM
Guenter, cool club music, a real toe tapping tune, I almost asked for a vodka and Tonic
Posted By: boehm Re: Artificial Voices - 03/24/13 03:40 PM
Thanks PgFantastic and Cubanpete for
listening and your comments.

Guenter
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