After being reminded that I hadn't posted one of my own songs in some time, I figured I'd take a leave of absence from the User Showcase until I finished up a new one.

It's been slow going.

I'd intended to do my own singing, but the results were pretty awful. One of my sons "helpfully" said that he could do a better job, but I'd have to pay him for the work. In some alternate universe, perhaps.

So after struggling with pitch correction and editing, I decided to give the main vocals on this went to the Vocaloid YOHIOloid. I might have another go at the vocals some other time.

Rather than polish this up before posting, I figured I'd post it a bit early, to get some feedback.

Here are some of the many things I think need fixing - feel free to add to the list:

• Pronunciation needs some correcting. The AVANNA Vocaloid has a close timbre in that range, so I'll probably splice in some bits from her to clean things up.
• There are some points where the volume of individual words needs some detail work.
• The vocals are too bright, and need rolloff on the high frequencies.
• The vocals are too quiet.
• The mix isn't well balanced at this point. Some of the instruments are still fighting against each other, and probably need to be pruned at points.
• The introduction is blah.

Most of the instruments come from BiaB, and I'll try to provide the list later. The strings (excluding the solo cello) are Session Strings, and the remaining instruments come from GPO4 or Miroslav Philharmonik.

Comments welcome! (Bonus points for correctly guessing the inspiration of the song)

Falling
Afternoon in late July / I'm falling
Hidden in tall green river grass
Underneath the endless lazy sky
Plovers circle boats as they drift by

And I, with all my heavy cares / logic and my evening prayers
Abandoned all my plans / they wash away like sand

I am left suspended / with my castles in the air
Come tumbling down / down to the ground / there nothing there

Just a kingdom made of cards / broken promises and hearts
London Bridge is falling down / we all fall down

Summer's gone and snow is softly falling
Somehow I'm still living in the past
Gone those happy sunlit golden days
Like the autumn leaves / all blown away

Our time has past / the hour's late
Old Tom rings closed Oxford's gate
The closing of a door / that's barred forevermore

(repeat chorus)

At some point the vocaloids will catch up with what BB can do now emulating real musicians..... what a game changer that will be. Imagine a Trisha Yearwood or George Strait vocaloid so good the real singers couldn't tell it wasn't them.

nice song. I think your crits are too hard on yourself. Considering everything.

David,

This is beautiful.

Loved your lyric. Loved your melody! Your orchestration is lovely - so nicely done that you forget it's there and just listen to the song (that's a huge compliment - in case you missed it...).

The entire production is terrific. The vocals are neither too bright or too soft. They are incredibly impressive!

Your introduction is beautiful - blah? - I don't think so!!!!

I really liked everything about this.

floyd

Thanks, Herb!

Both RealTracks and Vocaloid use segments of "real" audio, but Vocaloid is much more granular - imagine trying to splice a saxophone phrase not on a beat segment, but on the sustained portion.

And then auto-tuning the heck out of it.

They're working on the problem with expression, but it's complex.

In the mean time, I've got to spend more time working on learning to sing properly.

Hi, Floyd.

Thanks - that means a lot!

I'm still going to do some fixes, but I'll try not to do anything too radical. Mainly, I want to try getting the vocals more intelligible, and tame some of the vibrato.

I'm glad the orchestration was able to stay out of the way.

Hi David,

Very pretty. Sounded to me like it could have come from a musical like Phantom of the Opera - and that is meant as a compliment.

Personally, I'd much rather hear you sing your songs than a vocaloid as I think you have a nice voice.

Hi, Josie.

Thanks for the compliments (and the encouragement)!

I'd actually spent a couple of days working on the vocals, which needed extensive pitch correction, which was pretty humbling. But I ended up accidentally changing the DAW tempo from 90 BPM to 89 BPM, which I didn't figure out until later. As are result, the manual corrections were all skewed. I made an attempt to salvage it, but got frustrated and deleted all my vocal tracks - partly because of the lost work, but partly because I just wasn't happy with them.

Anyway, I'll do some more work getting clarity out of the Vocaloid's vocals, and then probably put it aside to work on another song. I expect I'll revisit in the near future to give it some "real" vocals.

Hello, "dcuny"...

All the music I am exposed to -- and I mean all of it, in any genre, from any culture -- gets listened to with my heart, first. Above all else I want music to make an emotional connection with me. Move me, groove me, soothe me, fool me, even -- I don't care. Just make me feel it, baby!

Your song, "Falling", reached right in there and with gentle gestures moved some things around in my heart. It was wistful, reflective and nostalgic. Your orchestration of the song made the sad-sounding lyrics sound beautiful. Isn't it something that music has the power to make sad things, even tragic things, sound beautiful? It’s a real mystery.

Your involvement with the technical aspects of producing the song obviously didn't get in the way of you expressing what you heard in your own heart, so I say, well done.

bluage

P.S. Celemony's Melodyne software has an audio-to-MIDI function that may be worth looking into. I’m thinking that the tool might make it possible to take a "real" vocal performance in audio form, convert it to MIDI, and because the note information would contain all the elements of the actual performance -- accents, duration, inflection, pitch, volume changes, timbre, etc.-- you could apply it as a sort of stylistic template that would help to "humanize" the vocal lines you compose with your Vocaloid software.

Hi David.

Like Floyd, I was impressed with both the lyrics and the orchestration. Even with a synthesized voice the track has a magical quality to it.

I think you've worked wonders to get the voice this good and strangely, it's slightly eerie quality adds something to the magic.

It's been well worth the wait!

ROG.

Hi David,

It's all been said. You've done an amazing job putting this together. It's incredible. The arrangement is spectacular and the concept is outstanding. Your creativity has hit a home run with this one.

All the best,
Noel

Hi, bluage.

I'm glad you were able to feel the music.

As for taking parameters from Melodyne, I've seen project that have done what you've suggested, but it wouldn't really work for Vocaloid.

In a sense, Vocaloid is like RealTracks - the audio is the result of concatenation, not of pure synthesis. As a result, there's only a limited about of manipulation that can be cone to the audio. For example, making the voice louder will raise the volume, but it won't adjust the timbre, and so on.

David,

I like this - good sound. Agree with Josie, would be great to hear you sing on this...

Bob

Hi, ROG and Noel.

Thanks for having a listen and the kind words. I'm always surprised by the lovely sounds that I've got in these orchestral libraries. And the BiaB cello is especially nice.

The song is a bit of an homage to Lewis Carroll. I'd started the bare bones of the song from A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky. My wife happened to be reading "The Mystery of Lewis Carroll", but it's not strictly biographical.

Although I had the most of the lyric in place, I was stuck because I couldn't set the darned thing to music. Part of the problem was meter. It was a bit asymmetrical with some nice inner rhymes (my tribute to Noel, of course), but it was obvious that something was wrong... It just wasn't obvious what that thing was.

After struggling for a week or so, I finally hit on adding "I'm falling", which shifted the word emphasis and everything fell into place. (It seemed blazingly obvious in retrospect).

I was also confounded by the chord progression as well. I'd considered letting BiaB take a crack at it, but I've started to notice common themes in the melodies it composes, and through it would be safer to do it myself. The descending chromatic line in the second half the verse seemed appropriate for the idea of "falling" (pilfered from Costello's "Almost Blue", which in turn was borrowed from elsewhere), and I couldn't resist putting a suspended chord under the word "suspended".

The song went through a lot of style iterations as well. I settled on _CPPBSAJ.STY (CountryEv8Slow SoloAcPiano) for the basic feel and piano. Then I ended up writing the string part, and throwing most of the style away - including the piano, which had been the reason for choosing the style in the first place.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Now to get working on the next couple...

+1
Very enjoyable. Especially because I 've got an affinity to
Vocaloids.

Guenter

Crikey this was different! Very beautiful and almost hypnotic. I really enjoyed the almost 'Snowman' atmosphere you created.

I didn't perceive the 'issues' you listed. The only thing that struck me was I couldn't hear the Vocaloid words properly. Without lyrics to follow I would have struggled. I'm not familiar with Vocaloid so I don't know why that would be.

John

David, Beautiful song. Well written and the arrangement and production are top shelf. I can see this in a movie soundtrack just as it is. Great job, tom

Hi, David !


I am full of admiration for you as a composer
of beautiful songs and YOHI for being such a
good singer !:))

I am sure the day will come when the humanoids
will become better than any human ! If I
remember right the machine won over the
best chessmaster in the end !:))

Cheers
Dani

Sounds a bit like Jon Anderson of Yes when he was a small boy starting out!

Nice I enjoyed it very much.

how can I listen

Sorry this wasn't more clear - click the title of the song. It's a hyperlink to the song page.

Hi, John.

I tweaked the mix a bit, so hopefully a number of problems were resolved. At the same time, I altered the vowels a bit to make them a bit more... "American English." I thought it helped with the clarity, but obviously problems remain.

But intelligibility is one of the problems with Vocaloids, and I'm not sure how to get around it. My own vocal synthesis program had this issue as well.

Then again, I've had my share of "real" songs that left me baffled as to what words the singer was singing.

Thanks for the feedback!

First I can't envision the work that it must have taken to produce this. If it doesn't happen pretty quickly with me then I'm of to something else. This must take the patience of Job. But you have it and the results show -- immensely. Haunting, melancholy and yet peaceful. Wonderful production. I'll let you pick the nits -- we have none.

very whimsical, a work well done! is the inspiration leaving Hogwarts for winter brake? or my second guess Alice In Wonderland?

David,
This a beautiful song. The arrangement is particularly well done. This is the first time I've heard a vocaloid sing. Must be pretty interesting to work with.
SD

Exactly my thoughts, very beautiful in every way.

Later,

I should note that Vocaloids aren't really that hard to work with. Basically, you put the notes in using piano roll notation, and then type in words. The software automatically converts English into phonemes. You can fiddle with the phonemes if there are issues, but it mostly gets it right.

For someone like that that likes to fiddle with stuff, it's rather nice to be able to change the timing and pitch of a performance when working parts out. The only problem is that the Vocaloid editor I have is the cut-down version that only allows 18 bars of music and a single voice. That's plenty to build a verse or chorus with, but if I had support for more tracks, it would be easier to create harmonies and counterpoint on the fly.

The tedious bit was splicing together two different Vocaloids to get a clearer pronunciation - something I don't think was altogether successful, especially when listening through headphones. Rumor has it that an "American" Vocaloid is in the works. It'll be interesting to hear how it turns out.

Thanks for the nice words!

Yes, "Alice In Wonderland" is in fact the inspiration - I think I mentioned a few details in a prior post.

The Vocaloid has a very ethereal quality which matches the lyric well. I'll see how well "real" vocals fit it later.