back to article Computers taught to sing using autotuning talent show

Japanese boffins say they have developed a process whereby computers can be taught to sing so well that they are indistinguishable from talented human performers. It was already possible to produce artificial singing, by inputting lyrics and musical scores into software packages such as Vocaloid. The results are easily …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kudos

    Kudos for using a good picture of Miku~~~~

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I thought they were already doing this

    Isn't Rebecca Black an automaton?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      No

      She isn't Turing Complete.

  3. hplasm
    Happy

    Ha!

    Synthetic Reality TV....

    coming to a screen near you.

    Now to replace Cowell with an inanimate carbon rod.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Now to replace Cowell with an inanimate carbon rod."

      or turd

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        and

        and invent the Electronic Monk to listen to the crap.

  4. Dunstan Vavasour

    One Way Pendulum

    Didn't Jonathan Miller teach speak-your-weight machines to sing the Hallelujah chorus in the film One Way Pendulum?

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Terminator

    Oh, Japan!

    Now we can have an even more impressive Portal 3 chorus.

  6. GettinSadda
    Megaphone

    But we want to hear it!

    How can we judge the claims in this article without a single example to listen to!

  7. Thomas 4
    Terminator

    Nothing new...

    "This was a triumph

    I'm making a note here: huge success

    It's hard to overstate my satisfaction

    Aperture Science

    We do what we must, because we can

    For the good of all of us

    Except the ones who are dead

    But there's no point crying over every mistake

    You just keep on trying til you run out of cake

    And the science gets done

    And you make a neat gun

    For the people who are still alive....."

    GLaDOS is a fantastic singer.

    1. thecakeis(not)alie
      Megaphone

      Because I'm a [spoiler]

      As long as singing doesn't require more than 1.6 volts.

  8. Purlieu

    Of course

    this will totally change my life forever

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As far as I can tell...

    ...the "mainstream" of music seems to entirely consist of humans trying to sound like robots. Now they want to do it the other way around? Why can't everyone just do their own job?

  10. Battsman
    IT Angle

    I think I've heard of this somewhere before.

    "The curves which produced the best results are then used as "parents" to create a new generation and the process is repeated as required in a survival-of-the-fittest process"

    That description sounds like a genetic algorythm. Not knocking the idea - just curious if they even realize the approach they are taking has been in use in other industries for a long time. Might even be that that prior experience could optimize the process. nyeh who cares.

    1. teebie

      I suspect they do

      Their use of "evolutionary" suggests to me they have tried to explain genetic algorithms to someone they think incapable of understanding the idea.

      The requirement for a sound engineer to judge each of the 8 recordings in each round of refinement still makes this process heavily human-dependant (and presumably costs a lot of the engineers time). This doesn't sound like a great breakthrough in artificial artifice.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        yeah but

        You only need to pay the engineer in crisps, pizza and cola.

      2. Tom Chiverton 1

        Yeah

        Yeah, wake me up when they've automated the fitness function.

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Unhappy

        @teebie

        You don't think a "recording artist" just turns up at a studio, sings a song and then someone shouts "That's a wrap! Cut it!" do you? Nope. Multiple "takes" are recorded then the engineer can spend days if not weeks tweaking, cut'n'pasting between "takes" etc to get that perfect recording.

        This system not only does away with the cost of the "artist" but could even significantly reduce the engineer time by automating much of the process. Then there's the studio and musicians you no longer need to pay for.

        This should be ideal for the iPod generation. Constant new pap produced, faster than ever. Likewise for the Big Labels. They can carry on charging 79p per track while massively cutting out production costs and all but eliminating royalties.

        Excuse me while I go outside and shoot myself :-(

      4. Liam Johnson

        @The requirement for a sound engineer to judge each of the 8

        I assume that once they have done this for X number of different songs, they will be able to come up with some sort of database of styles. Select style drop down box:-

        1. Maria Callas

        2. Kylie Minogue

        etc

      5. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        human-dependent

        "The requirement for a sound engineer to judge each of the 8 recordings in each round of refinement still makes this process heavily human-dependant (and presumably costs a lot of the engineers time)."

        Sure, for the moment - though as other posters point out, they're still reducing costs. But accumulate enough data from those trials and you can use supervised-learning techniques to train a hidden-variable model to duplicate the results. You'd have to do some analysis to select feature sets, but I'd think a maximum-entropy Markov Model would do the trick. This kind of stuff is done all the time in Natural Language Processing - the algorithms are well-understood.

        It wouldn't always match what a human judge (ie, the sound engineer) would choose, but then human judges aren't consistent either. As long as the probability is high enough, you could automate the whole thing with reasonable expectation of getting a product that most listeners would believe was produced by a human singer (or couldn't reliably distinguish from such).

  11. Graham Bartlett

    Gotta be Japan

    Only the Japanese could use a kawaii hooker as their promo image. Anyone else slightly worried about a country which says "We need cartoons of women! And they've got to have legs up to here, and short skirts, and bondage boots! And they've got to look like they're about 8 years old!"...? And this is just regular ads, never mind what they think is *really* strange.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      oh just

      Oh just ---- off you racist small minded ---- and play Dragon Age with your manly men and manlier women.

  12. mittfh
    Terminator

    The Cowell Test

    Forget The Turing Test, we now present the musical equivalent - The Cowell Test.

    Stage 1: Can a famous music producer tell the difference between a genuine human rendition of a song, and a computer-generated rendition?

    Stage 2: Can a trained (pop) vocal coach do likewise?

    Stage 3: Can a trained (opera?) singer do likewise?

    Stage 4: Can a trained (opera?) vocal coach do likewise?

    Next step: since there's already a computer program that can analyse music scores from different composers and compose an original piece in the style of a certain composer, develop software that analyses pop lyrics and writes pop songs.

    Then: develop holographic software to the extent of being able to project an 3D CGI character onto stage.

    Eventually: why bother with human performers when you can have computers write and perform pop songs from scratch? Who knows - they might be able to produce songs of higher calibre than the likes of Ark Music Factory, Jedward or (even worse) Jemini. Who knows - they might be able to produce virtual Eurovision candidates that perform better than our real-life entrants...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Then the AI gets really bored and wants to do something different

      Like be the AI controlling a vast starship capable of obliterating small moons.

      I wonder if this research was actually inspired by Schlock Mercenary?

      1. mittfh
        Joke

        Next step...

        Why should the AI settle for controlling a vast starship capable of obliterating small moons...

        ...when it could control a starship the size of a moon capable of obliterating small planets? :)

        No doubt while humming all the orchestral parts to a certain John Williams march in perfect pitch...

      2. hplasm
        Heart

        That would be-

        The BuranaBots!

    2. Jolyon

      Tragedy

      You'd also need something that generated tales of woe and triumph for these soft stars to get the grannies emotionally involved enough come present buying time that they could remember what they'd been told to buy.

      Some kind of virtual rehab for them to head to when they can't generate publicity any other way would probably also help.

  13. C-N
    Welcome

    letters and/or digits.

    I, for one, welcome our new perfect-pitched overlords.

  14. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Rei Toei

    Good to see that we're still on target for the world fulfilling all of William Gibson's predictions.

  15. Phlogiston
    Welcome

    Almost there.

    Since they have been putting images of dead actors in commercials for some time I submit is has ALWAYS been the goal to have a complete construct.

    Now that they can get a more human voice it is simply a matter of time before Sharon Apple is reality.

    As has been stated before an artificial construct will be no more or less "real" than most entertainment creations of the last decade at least.

    Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

    1. mittfh

      Cheapo actors

      Why hire real actors (particularly on radio dramas) when you can get computers to provide the characters' voices for a fraction of the cost? :)

      Perhaps in about three decades, technology will have improved to the extent whereby off-the-shelf or freeware text-to-speech engines sound human.... even when dealing with tricky words such as Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwryndrobwlllantysiliogogogoch... without the need to provide them in IPA form :)

  16. dssf
    Joke

    DEFINITELY will improve the suss stainability

    of automated, animated adultly anime. Adding some "tremble" and "ohhhooohho" will take it leaps and bounds...

    But, whose going to rate animated/machine-generated voices singing human-displacing songs?

  17. Relgoshan
    Heart

    Nightmares of Macross Plus

    So, we'll have self-affected emo songstress robots BEFORE the giant killer robots? That's a pitiful revelation which will echo through history...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      lol

      Sheryl Apple, she'll be somewhat less terrifying piloting an army of car manufacturing robots.

  18. Pet Peeve
    WTF?

    wait...

    ... somebody actually found a use for genetic algorithms? Next someone will try to tell us they found something more useful than toasting bread to do with fuzzy logic.

  19. FozzyBear
    Dead Vulture

    How does this

    Differ from the heavily synthesized crap that is polluting the airwaves now

    1. Liam Johnson

      Read the article

      The only difference is that it comes "without the baggage of bad teeth, terrible hair extensions and fictionalized family tragedies".

      Not sure if that is a win or an even bigger dose of lose.

  20. CD001

    Can't...

    Can't see this working with EBM, Aggrotech or some forms on synth pop where the aim seems to be to make the human vocalist sound as synthesised as possible... what are they going to emulate when the machines all sound like Kylie?

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