Pitch Perfect Karaoke

BuffJoe writes "The folks paid to make newer and improved karaoke machines have discovered a way to make even the most tone deaf singers sound great with a new technology for perfect-pitch karaoke!" Make your cracks about Karaoke if you like, but read the article- there are hooks for scoring singing, correcting pitch, and more. Should also make those Karaoke parties a little more tolerable.

Comments

Re:pitch correction is nothing new

[kin_korn_karn]

Digidesign's Pro Tools studio softwarehas had it for longer than the Antares has been around. I think the first mac versions did it. Hence the careers of most MTV staples.

For example, if you know what to listen for (hard 'edges' to notes on vocals) you can hear it all over Britney's music. It's also being used as a vocoder-type effect (synth filtered by voice) on some recordings. The song on Kid Rock's hit CD that he sang on (it was country sounding) used it extensively.

Also available: Voice Impersonator

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

There's also a team in Spain developing Voice Impersonator Karaoke technology.

Now singers can morph their own bland and off-key voices into a full rich Elvis (or anyone else for whom a digital voice template has been computed). Why be yourself, when you can be The King!

Thank'uh ver' much. Can yall' get me sum barbecue 'n diet pills...

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Quote:

[geekoid]

FYI "Thank you NASA" is from an episode of the Simpsons where bart, milhouse, ralph, and nelson form a boy band. Of course they can't sing, but there voices are fed through a box and "fixed". You know change tampo, pitch, etc.
so it is Ontopic, should be funny. Just because you don't get the reference does not make it off topic.
Now if I had said "The Simpson are going to antiartica...next year this year Brazil" that would of been an off topic simpson reference.

Vocoder can be made subtle

[yerricde]

For example, if you know what to listen for (hard 'edges' to notes on vocals) you can hear it all over Britney's music. It's also being used as a vocoder-type effect (synth filtered by voice) on some recordings. The song on Kid Rock's hit CD that he sang on (it was country sounding) used it extensively.

Popular songs that have used a vocoder effect with hard transitions between pitches:

• Cher - Believe (but boycott Cher because she supports perpetual copyright)
• Kid Rock - Only God Knows Why (country-ish rock)
• Eiffel 65 - Blue (the song rumored to be about homosexuality: "I'm in need of a guy, I'm in need of a guy")

However, use of the vocoder on some other songs is more subtle. Sometimes, the vocoder's pitch is set halfway between the pitch the slut is actually singing and the pitch that her producers want her to sing, which produces a much less synthetic perception. (Following a single voice's pitch is straightforward: square-root the signal to restore the fundamental, apply a 4th order low pass filter to remove harmonics, and count sign changes. If you want to know more, mail me.)

Oops! I did it again. I just described how to do something that probably infringes a dozen patents worldwide.