I ran across Sinsy the other day, and thought it might be a good fit for some forum members who are unable to sing. It's a synthetic singer capable of doing a fairly good job with English.

There are a couple features of Sinsy that make it stand out from other programs. Unlike Vocaloid, it's free. Unlike Utau, it's usable without having to deal with Japanese. It takes MusicXML files as input, and pays attention to various musical markings. It has a fair bit of musical intelligence, and does a good job with putting phrases together in a very musical way.

On the downside, it's got a pretty distinct Japanese accent. It would be nice if they modeled it using a native English speaker, but can you expect for free?

I put together a demo using BiaB: Words Like Smoke

And because I can't stop leave well enough alone, here's a remix: Words Like Smoke (Mix 2)

The music (including the melody) was generated by BiaB using the MIDI PNOMOOD1 style with a couple of added RealTrack guitars, although I tweaked the register of the melody in a couple places. I exported the MIDI file from BiaB and edited the lyrics in Finale NotePad. Sinsy wasn't happy with getting multiple staffs, and I couldn't figure how to remove staffs in NotePad, so I edited it in Notion and did a bit more tweaking of the lyrics.

If BiaB exported MusicXML, it would have been a lot simpler!

The remix was done in Reaper - I started out fixing the guitar strums (they needed to be moved forward) and ended up messing around with the vocal track and Reaper's pitch correction tool. Fun stuff.

Anyway, breaths are automatically added after long phrases - a nice touch. Vibrato is added automatically on long notes, and I'm impressed how well it handled tied notes on the final cadence.

It also works with MuseScore - here's Ave Maria done in MuseScore.

Actually, with the "ze" instead of "the", Sinsy sounds a bit like Natasha Fatale.

Last edited by dcuny; 03/06/13 03:26 AM.