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

Obligatory Simpsons Quote:

[geekoid]

"Thank you NASA"

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.

pitch correction is nothing new

[enrico_suave]

The Antares Autotune has been available in rack form for quite a while... You'd be surprised how many rock acts lean a little too heavily on that device to clean up their live vocal performances...

hell Rosie O'donnel thanked the device in her christmas CD (although c'mon... in-tune/key bad music is still bad music)

*Shrug*

E.

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.

Re:pitch correction is nothing new

[pinkyMice]

One interesting quote from the article:

MIT's Vercoe, who lauded Taito for finding a way to bring the sound synthesis technology to market, said pitch correction with Csound had been demonstrated long ago. It could even convert a spoken voice into melody, in real time.

"It's in the technology. You just have to switch it on," he said.

This makes me think that Vercoe did NOT ship the pitch correction "switched on." My suspicion is that this is due to IVL's patents. IVL is a Vancouver, BC company that has been marketing formant-preserving pitch shifters for quite some time now. IVL's technology is licenced by Digitech and TC Electronics, among other companies. One of IVL's patents makes claims on the idea of pitch shifters that automatically harmonize and correct pitch.

Personally, I think that IVL's claims in this area are somewhat tenuous. They have taken a pitch-shifting algorithm that they did not come up with (the algorithm in question was originally from a Computer Music Journal article in the late 1980's), and added a few features that ARE obvious to those "skilled in the art." Still, it sounds like Vercoe didn't want to take any chances. It seems like Vercoe provided a pitch output from the pitch shifter, and let Taito do what they want with it. Nice way to sidestep any legal issues.

Antares uses the same basic algorithm as IVL. Both companies have their own proprietary pitch detection algorithms.

It is interesting to see that Extended Csound is still up and running. I thought that it was pretty much dead in the water since 1999 or so. Hmmm...

Re:pitch correction is nothing new

[clifyt]

Agree'd. It sounded cool the first time, but now it just sucks. I have a good friend that refers to this as Oscilator Vocals...I understand the Kid Rock country song, but mainstream country??? This is about the time I start explaining to clients that they need to seriously consider if they want to use this effect or not.

In moderation, it can helps vocals, but can be done far better manually - ie., non-autotune. On my site, one of our latest interviews, Steve Duda of Nine Inch Nails (or at least the latest album) discribes some of his techniques for doing this:

http://interview.sonikmatter.com/duda/

I personally would use a piece of software called Melodyne. Its not real time, BUT has some of the most natural algorythms around. It is practically a Pitch Word Processor. You can leave in as much vibrato as you want, kill it all together (like most Autotune apps above) or even add it naturally for those that don't know how to articulate it very well. You can shift notes as far as a 5th before they start to sound funny, and it still keeps all the tied notes together so that you can slide between pitches without the sudden note being triggered as is so commonly found in todays image concience talent free musics.

I personally know a lot of folks that make their bread and butter fixing vocals for the stars and I'm not against it at all...I just wish the producers would get a little more credit as they are the ones doing all the work these days. Everyone has a natural desire to express themselves, as noted by the Karaoke main heading, and this sort of thing allows people to focus more on being creative instead of blindly honing a talent that can only go so far (face it, some people are never going to be able to sing naturally no matter how much practice...I'm one of them).

Clif Marsiglio
Editor@sonikmatter.com
Sonikmatter: Mind + Music + Technology

Wow! Imagine the future!

[Kraegar]

Early versions will adjust the pitch, future versions will go beyond that! Just think, someday I can "sing" the words along with the music, and due to their nifty software it will sound exactly as if I had the CD in.... Wait, if it sounds the same, why not just put in the CD? Doesn't this whole thing take some of the point out of it? I mean, bad singing included, that's the fun of Karaoke... laughing at people who try to sing along but suck...

This technology is swell

[nucal]

but now everyone sounds like Stephen Hawking.

Two turntables and a pitch correcting microphone

[Tomy]

We're close to having technology so good that it will require no talent whatsoever in order for people to make music. Just go out in the street and find attractive people to dance around and pose as singers.

Wait, this has already happened.

you too can sound like Cher

[dickens]

and all the others now using auto-tune boxes as an effect. You can set these things to quantize to a diatonic scale and just "snap" from one pitch to another not allowing any slide at all. I'm sure you've heard it.

I'm also sure you've not heard it when the thresholds are set a little looser.

It was kinda neat the first time I heard it, but jeeze.. it's getting old.

Re:you too can sound like Cher

[bad-badtz-maru]

That's not how the Cher "Believe" effect was done. There was an article about it in Sound On Sound. It was done by alternating between the actual vocals and the vocals ran through a vocoder.

maru

What's the point?

[Vic]

Half the reason for going to Karaoke is laughing at how bad your friends and other bar patrons are at singing. If it corrects this for you, ya might as well just play the jukebox and lip-sync...

-vic

You know what this means.....

[GodSpiral]

girl bands with bigger breasts and more ass shaking!

Although this sounds good at first, unfortunately, radio play will be swamped by the promotional music ventures :(

Don't leave your earplugs yet...

[daoine]

It doesn't quite have the full effect as one might be lead to believe. Looks like they've got tempo adjustments, which is good for the speed demons; and key calibration (which is nice, letting all those altos sing Diana Ross now) but they're basically adjusting the music coming out, rather than the vocal input.

Thus, bad karaoke is still bad karaoke. Good for all of us with pitch, we'll still impress. :)

Adjusting the voice on the fly is going to be a different problem -- it would probably be easiest solved by hard coding the Hz at each given moment of a song (with some fuzzy boundaries) and then running the mic input through.

But what fun is that? How can we be impressed by the guys who can sing A-Ha's 'Take on Me' if everyone can do it?

Re:Wow! Imagine the future!

[Wiseazz]

Agreed. Karaoke is also supposed to be painful for the non-drinkers... this encourages drinking to numb the senses.

What about variations?

[CaseStudy]

Sure, this corrects people who are off-key, but what about those of us who intentionally change notes or tempo? I don't want to have my choices vetoed by vocoder.

Re:They stole my idea!

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Check out a commercial software product called Coda SmartMusic Studio - it's intended for students practicing classical music, but it does just that - follows along with you as you play your instrument or sing.

This product was based on the research of Roger Dannenberg, who had auto-accompaniment working years ago. Send him an email if you're interested in working on something similar; he has lots of code he can throw at you and he might want to collaborate.

Yoko

[sharkey]

Yes, but can it fix Yoko Ono's voice?

Re:Yoko

[Mononoke]

Yes, but can it fix Yoko Ono's voice?

No, that involves going back in time and nudging Mark David Chapman's shootin' arm to the left a bit.

Isn't that what makes Karoke fun?

[dcigary]

I mean, seeing how bad some people sing? I've only been to a Karoke bar once or twice, but that was certainly part of the fun: Seeing someone up there completely butchering "Hotel California".

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...

This was already out decades ago...

[MongooseCN]

It's called "beer". If you have enough of it everyone sounds great at a karaoke party.

IVL Technologies does this too...

[Lynchenstein]

There has been many products like this over the past several years. One of the ones that I have had the opportunity to use was the Korg iH. It is based on the technology developed by IVL (a company from my home town of Victoria, BC, Canada. WOO!)

Anyway, way back when I was working at a music store in Victoria we got a few of these in. They never really sold very well, but were pretty amazing if you knew how to use them. Found a review of the iH on Google.

IVL does some very neat stuff. Check out their Web site.

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.