🚀 go-pugleaf

"WillStG" <willstg@aol.com> wrote in message 
news:309374b0-98d8-424d-b11d-63facf7be119@l37g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
>   Perhaps Zero-G's stuff (LEON, LOLA, Miriam, etc...) would be of
> interest to you.  The sampled all the phenomes of a few great singers
> and built virtual singer plugins based on the actual person.
>
> http://www.zero-g.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=804

Note that LEON, LOLA, and MIRIAM (you can find my review of MIRIAM at 
http://www.cakewalknet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=2) 
are the first generation of products from Yamaha's Vocaloid technology. 
There is now also a second generation (Vocaloid 2), the best of which, in my 
opinion based purely on demos I've heard (including one that was using one 
of my songs), is Sweet Ann:

http://www.powerfx.com/ProducerDetails.aspx?id=49&tx_category_id=438&tx_category_id=438

If you listen to the entire demo there (press the button just below the red 
price in the CDs section), you'll hear "her" being used in a variety of 
contexts, some a bit more successful than others.  I still don't think 
you'll mistake "her" for a human singer, but "she" does represent a big step 
up from even MIRIAM, which was the best of the first generation of 
Vocaloids.

Other second generation Vocaloids I'm aware of include Big Al (I don't think 
this one was ever released, as I can't seem to find a product page anywhere) 
and Prima (http://www.zero-g.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1004).  I found Big 
Al to be especially hilarious, with a very terse delivery that I could 
almost imagine being Reb Tevyi(sp?) from "Fiddler on the Roof" trying to 
imitate James Brown. ;-)

If you want to hear Sweet Ann and Big Al dueting on one of my songs (I wrote 
the English lyrics, Alexei Ustinov wrote the music and original Russian 
lyrics), go to:

http://www.jasminemusic.com/vocaloid/05-28-2007.htm

and check out the clips of "Make Me Feel".  (Note that they are using an 
early draft of the lyrics, not the final ones.  The "official" recording of 
the song was done over a year later as a duet between Beverly Bremers and 
me.  Best place to hear that straight through is 
http://www.lala.com/#album/2306124484406511236.  To hear more than a 
30-second clip, you have to register, but that's free, and then you can 
listen to any song in their entire collection, which is vast, once straight 
through.  They also give you something like 50 "web song"  credits, which 
allow you to play songs you get that way permanently, when you register --  
or at least they did when I registered.)  I had no involvement in the 
Vocaloid demos of the song, other than authorizing the use of the song (and, 
in fact, writing a lyric that I felt might have a bit of humor if sung by a 
robot while still working in a more traditional context with human singers), 
nor have I tried any of the second generation Vocaloids myself.  The Sweet 
Ann/Big Al demos at the URL above were done in Russia by Alexei Ustinov and 
some of his associates at either Jasmine Music Technologies.

Rick
-- 
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Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
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