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Hi, Derochette.

Thanks!

Hi, Marty.

Thanks! Writing software (my profession) has been described as "nailing jelly to a tree", and songwriting sometimes feels like that. Putting lyric writing at the end of the process has advantages, but that's typically how it's best done.

Jimmy Webb has a songwriting process where he starts out with the lyrics. He first writes a "letter" or a draft of what he wants the song to say. Then he writes the song, and sets it to music.

On the other hand, Billy Joel says that for him, the music always comes first, with the exception of "We Didn't Start The Fire".

So... different strokes for different folks.

But I think the lyrics first approach will generally yield a more cohesive and strong story.



I'm glad you liked it!

Boy band feel or not, sweet romantic pop lyrics with enjoyable melody, chords and vocals. Definitely has 70's sound and feel, I like how the song and the vocalist are in the spotlight and the band stays in the background, but little bit of strings would do no harm

Janne

Thanks - that seems to be my wheelhouse. It's a good thing I'm not a songwriter targeting the contemporary market!

I'd initially used an electric guitar solo on the intro, but ended up replacing it with the much simpler Rhodes piano lead.


I'll take that for the compliment it is!


It's something that I really struggle with. I realize that everything's already been said, so it's hard to write something that's been said a bazillion times, even if it fits and is the right thing to say.

I see the "some", which is a great lead-in to the next paragraph!


Not want to hear feedback on my lyrics from a professional songwriter? I've got an ego, but I'm not that stupid!

And I've got no issue changing lyrics... if I can think of something better. It's especially easy to do with synthetic voices, and I've done that for a number of songs.

So you're saying there's not enough focus, and the lyrics don't lead to as strongly to the chorus as they should. I don't doubt it... I probably should have spent more time reworking the lyrics. I'll see what I can do when I get a chance to look at this with fresh eyes and ears.


Thanks! Whenever I come up with a melody I like, I worry it's too derivative of a song I accidentally half-remembered.


They keep the process under an NDA, but I get the impression there are a couple of things going on. One thing the did from the beginning was work with a list of real words, instead of nonsense syllables. This results in a more natural connection of phonemes.

They're also using neural networks trained on a large amount of vocals, so it again has a more natural result.

But I think the "secret sauce" is that they also train the neural networks on the singer's actual singing, and you can "auto-tune" the singer using this. It's not perfect, but it adds a level of realism that gets it past the robotic effect you'd otherwise have.


Thanks again!

In the future, don't hesitate to include negative feedback - how else will I improve? I may not agree, but I'll certainly give it consideration, and I always appreciate it!

Hi, Janne.

You're the second person to mention strings, so I'll have to give that some serious consideration!

Thanks for listening, and your kind comments.

David

Kevin sounds "real" so a huge leap recently with these synth voices.

The song is well constructed and very easy on the ear.

Quite extraordinary.

Peter

This sounds great... Reading about your process is very interesting...
Amazing technology... Outstanding production.

If you hadn't mentioned it I would have thought that those were organic vocals! Great work here.

I am just blown away by this song. I may have to investigate getting Kevin and others.

Get song and mix.

Loved it.

Hi, Peter.

Yes, the Gen3 SynthV voices are pretty impressive. At times, I was able to almost forget it was a synthetic voice singing.

Thanks for the kind words about the song!

Hi. bloc-head.

Thanks for listening and the positive words.

And thanks for taking the time to read through my long narrative!

Hi, Mario.

I think it's more a testament to the advances of the software thank my skills. It also happened to be a good fit for Kevin, so that was helpful.

Good the hear the song and mix worked for you.

I haven't seen anything about a free version of Kevin, but there will be a free "Lite" version of Solaria released around the end of this month. But if you've got the money, the Pro version really is a step up from the "Lite" version.

Firstly, we are big fans of your blah blah blah blogs. Seriously.

It's interesting that you mentioned Noel as the lyric could have come from his pen. We've worked with him in the past and are indeed fans.

I (Bud) also struggle with writing lyrics of that nature. But if I could I would spend all my time writing them to Janice and get nothing else done.

That is really great work with the vocals --- far beyond our comprehension. We like the counterpoint and try to employ it in our productions. We have no idea what you and Mark are discussing Janice just sings a fifth or third above (or below) like in our old bluegrass days while pretending we know what we are doing in our new found genres.

Also during our bluegrass years of gigging and recording and listening the best harmony was always car horn tight. The tightest of all was often sibling harmony. We await the day when an AI bluegrass trio is created

The mix is ace as is the band. We love a snare that "pops" and, man, did you ever achieve that. Something we are constantly working on via RD kit snare doubles.

Kudos,

J&B

Hi, Janice & Bud.

Glad to read that!


As am I.


Well, I'm glad you can occasionally take a break from that to share something with us.


And it works. Simple works because it often is the best choice.

I'll generally have an idea of what I want a harmony or melody to do. Sometimes it'll have a melodic line in mind, but more often it'll be a general idea of how it's going to interact with the melody. I'll generally pick a chordal note, and a consonant interval (third or sixth is ideal).

The nice thing about mocking it up in SynthV is that I can keep reworking it until I find something that works, and the singer won't complain if keep trying various permutations!


Bluegrass isn't really my bag - I enjoy it and have a passing familiarity with it, but I suspect that honors for making that will probably go to someone else than me.


Thanks! That means a lot coming from you.

My first attempt was actually to just double the existing drum track with the MIDI track. But that just brought out the contrast between the two drum beats. I'd picked up a couple new drum kits around Christmas, and figured I'd try them out. This wasn't the kit I expected I'd end up with, but worked so I wend with it. I did try out a few other snares before I found one I really liked, thought.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting! I always appreciate comments from you two!

David...first off love the song...just a simple sweet love song...how many billions have been made with that formula? I am so intrigued with the AI voices...as I enter my seventies I've just about used up any vocal abilities I possessed but I still want to write and produce songs in my home by myself (the singers I know think they have lives of their own...what gall...right?) and this looks or I should say sounds like the future for home producers...So I'm going over to the Synthesizer V website and look around...is this really hard to do? do I have to be a programmer or a geek or a super musician to pull this off?...did I say I liked the song yet? Well...I DO.

As Paul McCartney wrote, "...what's wrong with that?"




The program isn't hard to use, but it's not especially friendly to older folk. About a year ago they hired out a German UI firm to redesign the interface, and the result was the program was more spiff, but had relatively small fonts and low-contrast colors. The scrollbars can sometimes be hard to find. That's the downside.

But it's not hard to use, and if you've ever use piano roll notation, you'll be right at home.

Then again, I'm a computer programmer and geek IRL, so what do I know?

One really nice thing about the program is that you can download and use the Basic version of the editor with the Lite voices for free.

The Basic version of the editor doesn't have a limit to the song length, and will let you have up to two songs. That's plenty to get started with.

Eleanor Forte is the only native English Lite voice available, but at the end of this month a Lite version of the Solaria voice will be released. There are currently no Lite native English male voices. But you could take the Eleanor Forte voice and move the slider to the "Male" side - something I did before the "Kevin" voice was released.

It's probably easier to figure out how to download the editor and voices from the ANiCUTE website than it is to use the Dreamtonics website.

Click here for a link to some video tutorials.


Thanks!

Hello David
Absolutely brilliant melody
And the singing is really great
I wonder if it will be possible that the artificial singer one day can also convey his "feelings" in a song.
If I hear your song several times this could really happen
Very nice work, David
many greetings
Andi ;-)

David,

Nice song!
I was very surprised at the natural vocals like a real human singer and also your terrific manipulation.
Synthesizer V-Kevin's strength is amazing.
Enjoyed my listen a lot.

Best regards.

Shigeki Adachi

A neat song David, great vibrant introduction.

Vocally and harmoniously you have really excelled. What a great delivery from a vocalid. Well ahead of any possible expectations.

Well done!

Hi David.

Without any hint of exaggeration, I want to say that this is extraordinary listening.

You really have a flair for creating thoughtful and enjoyable arrangements that mesmerize me.

I loved the harmony and the counterpoint. I'm a huge fan of counterpoint. It occupied quite a bit of my time back in the 1990s as I worked my way through Palestrina and Fux in an effort to better understand Bach. Later, when I moved on to 4-part harmony in the classical style, I found the understanding that I gained from learning counterpoint was invaluable. All the rules and patterns in 4-part harmony are mostly a consequence of contrapuntal techniques.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. When I listened to your song, you made think all about this stuff that I haven't thought about for a couple of decades. That's a great thing Thank you for that!

At the moment, I'm sitting here trying to work out why the 2-part harmony on "thing" (in "anything" at 1:42) doesn't quite sit comfortably for me. It's at times like this that I wished I had perfect pitch. Alas, I do not. I can't quite work out how your two voices travel to what sounds like an E-B vocal harmony at the cadence. Questions that are appearing in my mind right now are... Do the voices cross over and what was the upper voice becomes the lower voice? Is the E-B interval approached in similar motion? If it's any use to you, I find that in 2-part movement, perfect 5ths usually sound best when approached in contrary motion.

What stood out to me most in this production was your prosody. Your ability to align musical stress with syllabic stress is fantastic. I suspect that one of the reasons that Kevin sounds so brilliant in this presentation is because of your skills in the prosody arena.

Also, I really loved reading your "Blah Blah Blah" section! It really was excellent background information and gave me huge insights into your creative process. You know, I've never once written a song that started with a chorus. I often don't have a title, either. For some reason, I always begin with a verse. Often, the first verse I write turns out to be verse 2. For me, verse 2 is usually a little bit more philosophical and usually has less imagery than verse 1. This is probably why I favor the AABA format when song writing.

Anyway, thank you for a terrific musical journey. And thank you for mentioning me a couple of times. Believe it or not, you've inspired me to get back into creating songs more often. I seem to have drifted out of songwriting over the last couple of years.

All the best,
Noel

Hi, Andi.

Thanks for the positive comments!

As a listener, I know when I hear singing that expresses emotion, and when I don't hear it.

But as a singer, I'm not exactly sure of what that means - especially when trying to get a synthesized voice to do something similar.

So the best I can hope for is that that synthesizer sounds pleasant and not too distracting. And I'm glad that happened here.