[HN Gopher] Vocaloid 6
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Vocaloid 6
        
       Author : brudgers
       Score  : 124 points
       Date   : 2022-11-10 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vocaloid.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vocaloid.com)
        
       | regular wrote:
        
       | mastazi wrote:
       | Youtuber "Doctor Mix" recently used it for a rendition of
       | Bohemian Rhapsody, it was interesting watching how he put it to
       | use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkgxhK91kk
        
       | kirbyfan64sos wrote:
       | Given how many problems V5 incurred, I wonder how V6 compares,
       | but also how its reception is going to be...
        
       | khanan wrote:
       | But... but... Melodyne..
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | Melodyne is (really great) pitch correction/vocal editing
         | software, while Vocaloid is a vocal synth.
        
       | inputError wrote:
        
       | pantulis wrote:
       | Cannot help but remember the lyrics of "Video Killed the Radio
       | Star"                  They took the credit for your second
       | symphony /        Rewritten by machine and new technology
        
       | deng wrote:
       | As much as I want to dislike this, after hearing some examples, I
       | must admit that it has made quite some progress since the
       | laughable first versions. Of course it falls apart quickly if you
       | hear it solo, but I can absolutely see this used widely for
       | placeholder vocals or background/contract music. And of course in
       | Japan - can please someone explain to me why Japanese electronic
       | musicians seem to be obsessed with artificial singing, although
       | it usually sounds like Mickey Mouse through autotune?
        
         | lidavidm wrote:
         | It's kind of an acquired taste - it works better for some kinds
         | of music than others. But I admit I can't stand the English
         | voice because that sounds more obviously wrong to me.
         | 
         | I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like
         | that? It's more like, this gives indie songwriters an easily
         | accessible tool.
        
           | deng wrote:
           | > I'm not sure you can paint the Japanese music industry like
           | that?
           | 
           | I didn't mean to. I was just wondering why Vocaloid is so
           | popular specifically in Japan.
        
             | kyazawa wrote:
             | I think J-Pop in general tends to create interest through
             | composition (fast and complex chord changes, syncopated
             | melodies with lots of movement) compared to Western pop,
             | which tends to create interest through vocal performance.
             | The characteristics of J-Pop mesh really well with Vocaloid
             | where the voice itself is not that interesting to listen to
             | but you have more composition possibilities for fast tempos
             | or wide pitch ranges that wouldn't be possible with a human
             | singer.
        
             | lidavidm wrote:
             | Ah ok, sorry. No clue there, other than the software also
             | being developed there.
        
         | saynay wrote:
         | As far as I can tell, because it allows one-man production
         | teams. A single person can do everything, without needing to
         | find a vocalist. It allows them to try more stuff quicker and
         | easier, and anything that happened to get popular ends up
         | covered by vocalists anyways (and the producer gets to sell
         | those rights).
        
           | lidavidm wrote:
           | And a popular enough producer can 'go pro' (n-buna ->
           | Yorushika, or Hachi -> Kenshi Yonezu).
        
         | dotnet00 wrote:
         | There are also other versions of similar tech like Cevio
         | (https://cevio.jp) which can handle both singing and speech. It
         | can sound a lot more realistic and has the 'gimmick' of making
         | voicebanks for various popular people in Japan. Often the
         | differences in the software generated result compared to the
         | person's voice are down to their tuning preferences rather than
         | technical limitations (on a side note, Cevio uses RNNs while
         | IIRC the original Vocaloids used to concatenate voice clippings
         | and smooth out the transitions using some fourier space tricks,
         | I'm not aware of how modern Vocaloid works but it wouldn't be
         | too surprising if they too use deep learning).
         | 
         | It initially became a thing in Japan because Japanese has fewer
         | phonemes than most mainstream languages, so it was easier to
         | make. Then it gained popularity for the cute characters and the
         | freedom it gave to people who would go on to be music
         | composers. Many popular Japanese composers got their start
         | making and uploading Vocaloid songs on Youtube/NicoNico. On top
         | of that, they have had a series of well designed rhythm games
         | on several platforms for decades now which were pretty popular.
         | These days they have a fairly popular mobile gacha/gambling
         | game too.
         | 
         | Nostalgia is probably also a big driving force since many
         | people grew up with either the music or the games.
         | 
         | These days it's still pretty popular within the anime fanbase
         | outside Japan. Pre-Covid there used to be a vocaloid concert
         | series every year which would alternate between Europe and US
         | tours. The reason it hasn't gone too much more mainstream is
         | likely that English and related languages have thousands of
         | phonemes, so making a good voicebank is significantly harder.
        
         | wodenokoto wrote:
         | I believe it is the democratization of music. Hatsune Miku
         | songs are written and produced by fans. You don't need to be
         | able to sing, or record instruments. Everyone can join.
         | 
         | From Wikipedia:
         | 
         | > In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written
         | under the name Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she
         | had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name.
        
           | deng wrote:
           | Well yes, but from what I can tell, it's a very Japanese
           | phenomenon. This hasn't really caught on in other countries,
           | as far as I know.
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | I can walk into Walmart, FYE or Hot Topic and walk out with
             | Hatsune Miku merchandise. You can't even say that for many
             | popular anime franchises (only stuff like Naruto or
             | Dragonball that's been popular for decades). I've even been
             | to small fan run projection concerts.
             | 
             | Vocaloid music _has_ a huge following in the US. It 's just
             | a subculture thing and not part of the mainstream
             | sphere...which is a good thing.
        
             | numpad0 wrote:
             | It's Nico Nico Douga/nicovideo.jp. There is a unique
             | community and reward mechanism that values technical
             | achievements far more than it does for presentation, and
             | that I think is forcing creators to go way past in skills
             | than what YouTube and many other social media demands. That
             | culture comes as an extension to Japanese anonymous
             | BBS(2ch/futaba), and I find content from those communities
             | to bear abnormally better quality compared to those from
             | the Internet outside.
        
             | lidavidm wrote:
             | China has Luo Tianyi, Miku and co have had concerts in the
             | US, and Miku was slated to perform at Coachella:
             | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hatsune-
             | miku-c...
             | 
             | (Admittedly, those are not unlikely all offshoots of the
             | anime/manga/etc. fandom though.)
        
       | midislack wrote:
       | Is there any Vocaloid music that isn't cheesy pop music? I know
       | of some by Hosono, that's about it.
        
       | nbzso wrote:
       | La la la. What a mess. First all the music industry will collapse
       | under A.I. lords, and then maybe people will start to search
       | human made music.
       | 
       | All the stats about the rise of the old music are supporting my
       | claim:) Young people, invest in your talents, with analogue
       | processes in mind.
       | 
       | This will be a huge market.
        
         | teolandon wrote:
         | Vocaloid has been a thing for almost 20 years now. People still
         | sing. Digital art has been a thing for longer, people still
         | paint.
         | 
         | People do art because it's fun. Nothing will stop people from
         | getting together in a band and jamming, because it's fun.
        
           | numpad0 wrote:
           | And it's not just that _some people still_ engage in those
           | activities, but a lot of people are starting their carriers
           | _by direct influence from_ those tools.
           | 
           | And, this is subjective, but a lot of those tool-enabled
           | artists seems to do _better_ even in absence of such
           | automagic enablers than non-enabled. Good AIs sharpen humans
           | into unassuming Olympians, bad AIs just fall out of the
           | Internet attention span.
        
         | YurgenJurgensen wrote:
         | Yeah, if you're not rich enough to be able to hire a full choir
         | and orchestra, you don't deserve to write songs for more than
         | one person.
        
         | squarefoot wrote:
         | > First all the music industry will collapse under A.I. lords
         | 
         | The purpose seems as usual to get rid of as many human
         | musicians/singers they can so that everything can be made by a
         | single person (or AI in a few years), therefore saving money.
         | In a different context, the transition from multi elements
         | bands to one man bands with keyboard, then finally karaoke, in
         | many cases is motivated by costs as well.
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | The point is that it enables musicians who would never have
           | found a vocalist before this. Vocaloid has been around a
           | decade and hasn't eliminated any jobs, unless maybe someone
           | hurt their throat trying to sing Disappearance of Hatsune
           | Miku.
           | 
           | There's hardly any evidence automation ever destroys jobs; it
           | seems to actually create them. It's very silly people just
           | keep claiming this.
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | It takes talent to make Vocaloid tracks sound like more than
         | another riff on World is Mine.
        
         | nulld3v wrote:
         | I always thought the main appeal of Vocaloid was it's signature
         | robotic sound.
         | 
         | If you want to synthesize more realistic sounding voices there
         | are better options.
        
           | redwall_hp wrote:
           | And it's an instrument like any other. It doesn't magically
           | write lyrics and a melody for you, it doesn't mix, and it
           | certainly doesn't sound great without a good ear for the
           | different parameters and EQing. It takes a lot of skill to
           | make music with vocaloid.
        
       | mjr00 wrote:
       | Vocaloid has the name brand from being old, and Hatsune Miku, but
       | at this point Synthesizer V has completely blown it out of the
       | water. SOLARIA[0] in particular came out in January and, to my
       | ears, sounds significantly better than any of the demo tracks for
       | V6. There's also been a number of AI voicebanks for SynthV like
       | Natalie that came out in the past few months which have sounded
       | way better than the V6 demo tracks.
       | 
       | Vocaloid was the only real competitor in vocal synths for so long
       | they completely stopped innovating. Very IE6-esque.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf2a2so86uw
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | I do wonder if Vocaloid is like Xerox now. People will hear a
         | SynthV produced song and think "wow, cool Vocaloid".
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | It's refreshing that the demo in the video is done not on a Mac
       | but on a Windows machine.
        
       | yoro46 wrote:
       | 6?! Last time I checked anything Vocaloid it was barely on 3 and
       | most people were still using v2 vocaloids. I'm getting old :(
        
       | moth-fuzz wrote:
       | The new V6 vocaloids even with the AI expressiveness still sound
       | very much like vocaloids. There's a specific timbre to the way
       | they pronounce certain vowels or do odd formant shifts that
       | always comes through that I'm unsure of if it's intentional or
       | not - on one hand it's very signature, on the other hand it
       | doesn't sound quite as 'realistic'.
       | 
       | As far as the iconic characters go, they're moving to an entirely
       | different engine (Piapro NT) anyways, so I wonder how future
       | works created using them will sound.
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | Huh, even really good tuning has that quality. [1]
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxIuAWX7Ws
        
         | mjr00 wrote:
         | Agreed. I wonder how much of it is intentional; one of the
         | common complaints I see from Synth V users is that none of the
         | voice banks, except maybe Eleanor Forte, have that synthetic,
         | "vocaloid-y" sound. Maybe they know they can't compete on
         | realism, so they're leaning into the signature sound?
        
           | hooverd wrote:
           | Solaria sounds like a well tuned Vocaloid.
        
             | joe-collins wrote:
             | Solaria can be very good. There's a song, Dawn by Circus-P,
             | that I've used on a few occasions to startle people with
             | its apparent authenticity. It exhibits an unnatural range,
             | but there are only a couple of moments (unfortunately, near
             | the start) where the pronunciation sounds clearly
             | artificial if you know what you're listening for.
        
         | redwall_hp wrote:
         | Gumi is definitely an iconic character, and the new Gumi
         | release is probably as big as the Vocaloid 6 news itself. (Not
         | only are there a lot of "vocaloid classics" that were made with
         | Gumi, but some of the biggest hits in the past few years, such
         | as KING by Kanaria or Getcha by Giga and Kira, have used Gumi.)
         | 
         | I kind of suspect Piapro NT is going to end up being a bust,
         | with a pivot back to Yamaha's platform. We're a few years in
         | and they've still only released Miku, none of the other Crypton
         | Future Media characters, and a lot of people are sticking to
         | the Vocaloid 4 release because they're not fans of how NT
         | sounds. Now V6 is out and the technological gulf is widening.
        
         | megiddo wrote:
         | Check out Synthesizer V with Eleanor Forte.
         | 
         | Synth V is extremely fast and the output is shockingly good
         | with some tweaking - good enough to be indistinguishable for
         | many people.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | The Vocaloid sound is basically part of the brand now. I can't
         | imagine them ever changing it, and if they did, the existing
         | producers would most likely shun it in favour of the sound that
         | they've gotten used to.
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | Agreed. I think a proper solution for them to this would just
           | be to create a separate spin-off product that is focused on
           | realistic voice synthesis, while continuing the development
           | of the typical-vocaloid-sounding product line as they
           | currently are.
           | 
           | The audience wanting more vocaloid-like sound and the one
           | wanting more realistic sound aren't really the same, and the
           | overlap between them, I suspect, is not large. So it makes
           | way more sense to capture the latter group by creating that
           | more-realistic-voice spin-off product line, as opposed to
           | being forced to choose between the realistic and vocaloid-
           | like target demographics.
           | 
           | We already know the size of vocaloid-sound target audience,
           | but I bet the audience for realistic-sound synthesis is going
           | to be magnitudes larger (mostly because of versatility of
           | where that tech could be useful, while with vocaloid it is
           | mostly constrained to music production and vocaloid-related
           | visual arts accompanied by a typical vocaloid voice).
        
             | a_t48 wrote:
             | There's nothing stopping them from making new "characters"
             | that sound more realistic.
        
       | ArtWomb wrote:
       | Hacking on GPU Wavelets at the moment for time series.
       | Multiresolution autocorrelation seems like it should be near
       | instantaneous. And then, that opens up not just pitch correction,
       | but "shifting peaks" ;)
       | 
       | Efficient Pitch Detection Techniques for Interactive Music
       | 
       | https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pdelac/PitchDetection/icmc01-pit...
       | 
       | New Phase-Vocoder Techniques For Pitch-Shifting, Harmonizing and
       | other Exotic Effects
       | 
       | https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/LaroD99-pvoc.pdf
        
       | bobsmith432 wrote:
       | The unintentional marketing effect of the Vocaloid characters
       | (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len) is phenomenal. I want to buy and
       | use Vocaloid itself just because those characters are cute
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | It's very intentional.
        
           | bobsmith432 wrote:
           | 50/50, I'm sure they would've liked the characters to catch
           | on with people, but they grew way more than I'm sure Yamaha
           | ever thought they would internationally even. Weebs
           | everywhere love Miku and don't even know she's from audio
           | software by Yamaha
        
             | slongfield wrote:
             | Her sleeves are literally a Yamaha DX7, which makes it
             | obvious to synth nerds everywhere, but... not sure how much
             | of the weeb population are also synth nerds.
        
             | redwall_hp wrote:
             | Minor correction: Miku, Luka, Rin/Len, Kaito and Meiko are
             | not Yamaha products. Crypton Future Media is the company
             | behind them, as they're third party voice banks for
             | Yamaha's Vocaloid platform. (+/- the newer NT version of
             | Miku, which uses its own thing.) Yamaha only recently
             | started shipping their own voices at all, and none of them
             | have the same fan cachet.
        
             | smegsicle wrote:
             | like their targeted advertising collaboration with dominos,
             | known to be the favored pizza of audio professionals
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Being true to who you are makes all your dreams possible.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | Related (and of interest to HN) - the effort to save the
               | Hatsune Miku Dominos app[0], the quest to track down
               | Scott Oelkers, President of Dominos Pizza Japan (featured
               | in the ad)[1] and interview [2].
               | 
               | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4
               | 
               | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A
               | 
               | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | redwall_hp wrote:
         | Crypton actually licenses their characters under the
         | noncommercial Creative Commons license, since they recognize
         | that their whole business (and the desirability for companies
         | to want to license them) stems from fans creating a whole world
         | of music and visual art surrounding them.
         | 
         | It's a great example of a company seizing an opportunity and
         | not stepping on the fan communities that built them said
         | opportunity.
        
       | kyazawa wrote:
       | I went from Vocaloid hater to fan in the span of this year. There
       | are Japanese Vocaloid producers who are pushing the boundaries of
       | pop music in a way that wouldn't be possible with a real singer.
       | I've never come across anything like this music in the West.
       | Definitely an acquired taste.
       | 
       | My Vocaloid song recommendation: Ungray Days by the producer
       | Tsumiki. Tsumiki creates a sharp, aggressive sound that is
       | disagreeable at first but really addictive.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E
        
         | fullstop wrote:
         | It gives me Splatoon vibes.
        
         | Semaphor wrote:
         | > disagreeable at first but really addictive.
         | 
         | Nope, certainly stays disagreeable to me. I wonder what makes
         | people enjoy weird stuff in so many different ways. I might not
         | like this, but I enjoy white noise artist Merzbow [0] or
         | breakcore from Drumcorps [1]
         | 
         | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przphi3RjeE
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEzn43VITM
        
         | jancsika wrote:
         | It's a random-walk of blues riffs over a stock diatonic chord
         | progression with a slow (and predictable) harmonic rhythm.
         | 
         | The only conceivable surprise is a crude chromatic key change
         | to the minor version of the raised mediant.
         | 
         | You'd think the precision of those dynamic envelopes and
         | timbral games would push the artist to venture out and explore
         | that mediant relationship to create quicker and more jarring
         | harmonic progressions and modulations. But no-- it turns out to
         | be less inventive than the mediant chains emanating from, say,
         | Joni Mitchell and her acoustic guitar over fifty years ago:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2jiRUVLgI
         | 
         | (I find some of the lyrics apt, too.)
         | 
         | Compared to the cookie-cutter harmony and melody of the music
         | you linked, even Mitchell's augmented triad in the melody at
         | the end of the chorus sounds like the musical equivalent of
         | solving fast homomorphic encryption.
         | 
         | It's the the audio tech that is on display in the music you
         | linked, so every other musical consideration shifts to the
         | background to illuminate that tech. I get that. But holy shit
         | _why_ does that baseline have to be stuck in the fucking 1650s?
         | While I love the  "electrified Vivaldi" hack that is heavy
         | metal from the late 70s/early 80s (Master of Puppets et al), I
         | question whether we really need more than one musical genre
         | based on that parlor trick.
         | 
         | It would be like every stand up comedian ending their set with
         | increasingly theatrical pyrotechnic pull-my-finger jokes. I
         | could laugh my ass off at the absurdity for a year, maybe two.
         | But _forever_?
        
           | tuesgloomsday wrote:
           | It's possible you're stuck on the first slope of the dunning
           | kruger graph.
           | 
           | My (possibly wrong) impression of your comment is that you
           | seem to have made the mistake of associating complexity with
           | quality in music which is extremely common in those who've
           | just started looking into music theory.
           | 
           | Most music needs only the smallest dash of novelty to achieve
           | the perfect mix of the new and familiar to its target
           | audience. If you start attempting to evaluate popular music
           | on what about it is inventive or new, you're likely to find
           | yourself unable to appreciate most of what people are
           | enjoying and cut yourself off from loving a broad spectrum of
           | musical expression.
           | 
           | You might also find yourself unable to express why you enjoy
           | the music you do like in a way that doesn't come across as if
           | you're arguing an objective scientific point----an approach
           | which might undercut your argument by making you
           | unintentionally come across as someone who has just learned a
           | lot of fancy theory jargon and is eager for an excuse to
           | wield it.
        
         | knaekhoved wrote:
         | The rapper/producer Deko has been doing some very interesting
         | stuff with adding vocaloid synth characters to rap/hyperpop
         | music. He has two vocaloid "characters", Lil Yammeii and Lil
         | Hard Drive. Most vocaloid rap I listen to is terrible but this
         | stuff is super well produced. He'll even do things like add
         | breathing noises to the vocaloid tracks, which improves the
         | sound a lot. https://youtu.be/usRDtHjYKzU
         | 
         | He also has some funny parodical bits he does, like rapping
         | about having a lot of money/jewels/etc and then the vocaloid
         | characters rap about having a lot of RAM.
        
         | empressplay wrote:
         | This is a geeky song I did in English using Vocaloid singers:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8EOBL75o
         | 
         | Not great, not terrible.
        
         | Philip-J-Fry wrote:
         | I don't feel much from that one. But I will drop some of my
         | favorites here in case anyone wants to discover them.
         | 
         | CHO-DARI- - Hatsune Miku
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU1HjAPvHG8
         | 
         | Mum / Xiong Zhi Zhu  feat. flower
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjAcngUNiZ8
         | 
         | Hana to Nare / Yunosuke feat. KAFU
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqKbuEDvaf8
         | 
         | IA - Conqueror https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3E5fb39xcs
        
           | ztgasdf wrote:
           | Adding to this, I highly recommend works from nulut[0] and
           | niki[1].
           | 
           | [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sEptl-psU0
           | 
           | [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgHbvHpT5ww
        
         | nineteen999 wrote:
         | I've gone from being Vocaloid indifferent to a Vocaloid hater.
         | Being the father of a 12 year girl who is obsessed with
         | imaginary Japanese Vocaloid artists, I'm totally over the sound
         | of it, although I agree the histrionics produced by these
         | things can be fairly amazing to hear from time to time.
         | 
         | What I did find more interesting was the AI "sung" version of
         | Joelene that was doing the rounds a few days ago, based on the
         | voice of Holly Herndon:
         | https://youtu.be/kPAEMUzDxuo
         | 
         | Interested to see where that goes, although I've got to admit,
         | I'm a purist, and any type of digital vocalist is going to make
         | me go "meh" sooner or later when compared to even a half decent
         | human singer.
        
         | oidar wrote:
         | Ungray Days slightly reminds me of oneohtrix point never.
        
           | fjallstrom wrote:
           | Yeah like this one
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UztCDH2xuQ
        
             | oidar wrote:
             | This is such an excellent album.
        
         | bambax wrote:
         | I'm not sure I understand what Vocaloid does? Does it generate
         | vocal parts "from scratch" / just from lyrics? Or is it more
         | like a vocoder?
         | 
         | The track you reference sounds like chipmunks sped up 2x; it's
         | not unpleasant to listen to, and fun, but I feel it could be
         | made just like that (record at 80bpm, high pass filter, maybe
         | transpose 1 octave, and speed up to 180), no "AI" involved.
        
           | recursive wrote:
           | The chipmunk effect isn't even necessarily part of it. Most
           | vocaloid music is in a more "normal" range.
           | 
           | It's a synthesizer. It's an alternative to human singers. I
           | can imagine someone seeing a digital piano for the first
           | time. "I'm not sure what it even does. I could just use an
           | acoustic piano. It sounds the same."
        
             | bambax wrote:
             | Yeah fair enough. I have no problem with Vocaloid -- but I
             | do have a problem with the over the top marketing copy
             | (sorry if that was unclear).
        
           | Arnavion wrote:
           | It generates audio from phonetic lyrics.
        
         | spywaregorilla wrote:
         | Hmm interesting. I'm not familiar with this scene. I'm not sure
         | how I feel about it. I feel like it feels kind of hollow. Like
         | there's a lot of energy in it, but the vocaloid part just feels
         | so emotionless. Maybe that's a cultural barrier though. Jpop
         | and Kpop make me feel similarly and they're actually singing.
         | 
         | On the western side in a similar vein you've got hyper pop
         | coming up from 100 gecs and laura les and what not. This kind
         | of sound, hypertuned and almost as incomrehensible, sounds
         | better to me. You do still get a vein of emotion. I love this
         | sound.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879ysA4h9r4
        
           | vallanceroad wrote:
           | > I'm not sure how I feel about it. I feel like it feels kind
           | of hollow. Like there's a lot of energy in it, but the
           | vocaloid part just feels so emotionless.
           | 
           | In Japan, the term is "denpa" (Dian Bo songu). Denpa music is
           | intentionally strange as it is catchy, and hypnotic as it is
           | awkward. There are many producers creating high-BPM
           | electronic vocaloid music that is chaotic for effect. It is a
           | bit more twee than the western sounds, as you mentioned, but
           | it can be quite enjoyable if you're in the right mood.
           | 
           | More on denpa music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denpa_song
           | 
           | Nanahira playlist, an example of a vocaloid character:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHIyvhJadXM
           | 
           | Explaining Vocaloid in 3 minutes:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GODXMGAMpVc
           | 
           | Also, I think you'd enjoy the Song Exploder podcast. If you
           | haven't heard it already, check out the episode where 100
           | gecs break down how Money Machine was created:
           | 
           | https://songexploder.net/100-gecs
        
       | boomskats wrote:
       | Ya ya ya. I am lorde. Ya ya ya. (I think they missed a trick not
       | using Randy Marsh[0] for their marketing)
       | 
       | All jokes aside, I will throw serious money at the first
       | streaming service that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me
       | filter anything tagged with it out of my stream. Like, $100 a
       | month. Maybe more.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMJ5GSC37g
        
         | mjr00 wrote:
         | > I will throw serious money at the first streaming service
         | that implements an 'autotuned' tag, and lets me filter anything
         | tagged with it out of my stream.
         | 
         | Well, I hope you don't like listening to any music made after
         | ~2010, then. Melodyne is completely standard for any modern
         | vocal processing, in all genres of music.
        
           | boomskats wrote:
           | > in all genres of music
           | 
           | I get where you're coming from. I remember Celemony
           | announcing their polyphonic tuning engine a little over a
           | decade ago, and remember buying it as soon as it came out and
           | re-tuning a load of Imogen Heap tunes and loving it, in
           | something like Reaper v2. I know how prevalent Melodyne is, I
           | know the commercial and production related justifications for
           | its use. But I also know for a fact that this is not the case
           | 'in all genres of music'.
           | 
           | Sometimes, I want to listen exclusively to music with real
           | vocals. I love the first CHVRCHES album, it's one of my
           | favourite albums of the last decade. As it happens, it took
           | me ages, a couple of years, to figure out that the reason I
           | liked it as much as I did was the lack of autotune. I
           | (ironically) figured this out when they released their second
           | album which _did_ utilise autotune. I never made it all the
           | way through listening to that second album.
        
             | mjr00 wrote:
             | I guarantee that the music you're listening to that has
             | "real vocals" has used Melodyne, you just don't notice it.
             | Even if the artist themselves thinks they didn't use it, if
             | they worked with a professional mixing/mastering engineer,
             | they likely did vocal correction without the singer's
             | knowledge.
             | 
             | You may as well say "I don't listen to music that uses EQ"
             | or "I don't listen to music that uses compressors."
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | > You may as well say "I don't listen to music that uses
               | EQ" or "I don't listen to music that uses compressors."
               | 
               | Not the same as either of those things. You might as well
               | be arguing that I'm claiming that volume knobs shouldn't
               | exist.
               | 
               | Pick an equivalent like photography. In the photography
               | world, EQ is like a fill light. A compressor you could
               | compare to a polarising filter. Autotune (or drum quant)
               | though, is like photoshopping. Removing all of the skin
               | blemishes and imperfections at best, and at worst and
               | more often than not, it's fake disproportionate waist and
               | ass booty enhancement.
        
         | bobsmith432 wrote:
         | Autotune also in my opinion sets unrealistic goals for people
         | getting into singing
        
           | adzm wrote:
           | On the other hand, auto tune is great for people to get into
           | making songs without having the greatest voice.
        
         | klodolph wrote:
         | Fact is, people _say_ this, but when artists actually release
         | music that uses no autotuning, it tends to be less popular.
         | Hardcore fans will say "release your next album without
         | autotuning" but when the album actually comes out, those
         | hardcore fans aren't supporting it.
         | 
         | It's very difficult to tell if autotuning is used, if it is
         | used well.
        
           | boomskats wrote:
           | That's an interesting defence of autotune, but I don't think
           | it's relevant to my comment, which clearly talks about my own
           | personal preference.
           | 
           | I don't want to listen to artists who use autotune. I _do_
           | want to listen to artists who don't. I know that there
           | definitely is a set of artists who explicitly don't use it,
           | who are more concerned with accurately expressing their
           | creative intent and musical virtuosity than they are with
           | gaining popularity and mass appeal. What I am saying is that
           | I would like to be able to consciously choose to only listen
           | to and support those musicians, and I will gladly pay a
           | disproportionate amount for it. Anecdotally, I know for a
           | fact that I am not the only one who feels this way.
           | 
           | Also btw -
           | 
           | > when artists actually release music that uses no
           | autotuning, it tends to be less popular
           | 
           | Normally when you make a statement like this on HN I'd expect
           | to see a citation or reference to where that statement came
           | from.
        
             | tshaddox wrote:
             | > I know that there definitely is a set of artists who
             | explicitly don't use it, who are more concerned with
             | accurately expressing their creative intent and musical
             | virtuosity than they are with gaining popularity and mass
             | appeal.
             | 
             | Any examples? Are they all fairly small artists, or are
             | there some big names who explicitly don't use it?
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | Is Bob Dylan a big name? Tom Waits? Coldplay? And if
               | those are "old", one can still find tons of modern
               | (20-something) musicians which don't use it, but still
               | have a sizable following.
               | 
               | Not sure what you have in mind, but people don't need to
               | listen to the top-20 or BS R&B.
               | 
               | Even if you want to listen to electronic music, there's a
               | big universe of artists who have nothing to do with the
               | "autotune" sound and modern commercial productions.
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | > Is Bob Dylan a big name? Tom Waits? Coldplay?
               | 
               | Tom Waits and Coldplay (or specifically, their mixing
               | engineers) have gone on the record saying they use
               | Melodyne in their marketing brochures.
               | 
               | Again, it is literally impossible for a human to know if
               | pitch correction was used on a song. But if it's a song
               | that was released after 2010 and mixed by an engineer,
               | they used pitch correction, guaranteed.
               | 
               | [0] https://musicmarketing.ca/DNET/rack/brochure_melodyne
               | _3.pdf
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | > _Tom Waits and Coldplay (or specifically, their mixing
               | engineers) have gone on the record saying they use
               | Melodyne in their marketing brochures._
               | 
               | Not exactly. A guy who worked with them said it. They
               | also have worked with dozens of others which would be
               | where they used it. Also Waits recorded for 25+ years
               | before Autotune (much less Melodyne) was even a thing.
        
               | com2kid wrote:
               | > They also have worked with dozens of others which would
               | be where they used it. Also Waits recorded for 25+ years
               | before Autotune (much less Melodyne) was even a thing.
               | 
               | And instead recorded the same piece several dozen times
               | and for the final recording spliced together what sounded
               | best.
               | 
               | This is like complaining that you don't want authors
               | using spell check, they should have to retype the entire
               | paragraph every time they make a mistake!
               | 
               | The end result is the same, the only difference is the
               | path to get there.
               | 
               | There may be some fair complaints about usage at live
               | shows, but for recordings, the end result is going to be
               | the same if melodyne is used or if the artist is recorded
               | again and again until everything is "perfect".
        
             | alexb_ wrote:
             | >I know that there definitely is a set of artists who
             | explicitly don't use it, who are more concerned with
             | accurately expressing their creative intent and musical
             | virtuosity than they are with gaining popularity and mass
             | appeal
             | 
             | I think you are forgetting that the autotune _IS_ their
             | creative intent. T-Pain is probably the most famous heavy
             | autotune user of all time, despite having an amazing voice
             | without it. It 's an intentional effect - like how electric
             | guitars aren't "worse" because you aren't hearing the raw
             | sound of the string.
        
             | Orcastrap wrote:
             | imagine thinking you can actually notice light autotune
             | (let alone melodyne!) use in a recording
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | Who thinks that? I certainly don't and never said I did.
               | Nevertheless there is no 'light autotune' filter on any
               | of the major streaming services either.
               | 
               | There's a pretty interesting test[0] on themusiclab.org,
               | that will test how good your microtonal perception is.
               | See how you score - it might align with how well you're
               | able to perceive autotune. Here's my score [1]. This was
               | from my first attempt a few months ago, but I've done it
               | a couple more times since and my score is pretty
               | consistent - whether I like it or not.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td [1]
               | https://imgur.com/a/5R3K43Z
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | You also just _completely_ missed my point.
               | 
               | I want to be able to choose to consciously support
               | artists who don't use autotune. I want to be recommended
               | and discover new artists, who consciously don't use
               | autotune. I want to be able to choose to listen to real
               | vocals as a genre. I want that choice.
        
               | moth-fuzz wrote:
               | "I want to be able to choose to consciously support
               | artists who don't use EQ. I want to be recommended and
               | discover new artists, who consciously don't use EQ. I
               | want to be able to choose to listen to real vocals as a
               | genre. I want that choice."
               | 
               | Note that many recording artists do not actually _make_
               | that choice; it happens further up the chain. Regardless,
               | whether or not a singer or producer uses a particular
               | effect on their voice does not distinguish between the
               | vocals being  'real' or not. If you simply don't _like_
               | the way it sounds, on the level of artistic taste, well,
               | you can make that judgement for yourself, but, to claim
               | it 's more profound than that is just pure pretense.
               | 
               | Also, why are we talking about autotuned vocals on a
               | thread about a speech synthesizer? Claims of 'real
               | vocals' are already out the window at that point.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | > _Note that many recording artists do not actually make
               | that choice; it happens further up the chain._
               | 
               | If they don't make such choices for themselves, they're
               | not much of an artist, more like mass-produced
               | manufactured candy pop/r&b/etc...
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | I'm very curious how autotuned/melodyned vocals are not
               | "real vocals", but vocals that have had EQ applied to
               | them, or have been compressed or flanged or post-process
               | reverberated or delayed, are "real vocals".
               | 
               | Perhaps there is also a standard mic for Vocal Realness.
               | I assume it must be a SM58; it is, after all, well-known
               | that having a low-pass switch on the microphone lowers
               | the industry-calibrated Realness Score by at least 250
               | mSpr(ingsteen). More if it's on.
               | 
               | edit: A friend also pointed out to me the inherent
               | Springsteen ceiling of computer-reproduced audio. And you
               | know, he's right, I'm going to go find a chamber and hire
               | some monks for the true realness that only an authentic
               | Gregorian chant can provide. Denon sells them in twelve-
               | packs, you know.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | > _I 'm very curious how autotuned/melodyned vocals are
               | not "real vocals", but vocals that have had EQ applied to
               | them, or have been compressed or flanged or post-process
               | reverberated or delayed, are "real vocals"._
               | 
               | It's not based on some technical argument or law of
               | physics. People either get why, or they don't.
               | 
               | If you want some kind of technical justification, those
               | effects you mentioned just add some sparkle (flanger) or
               | fixes the balance (often just to make a recording, which
               | begins deader in a sound-treated studio, sound closer to
               | real life environment (reverb) and dynamics
               | (compression).
               | 
               | Autotune, on the other hand, changes the pitch and
               | vibrato, you know two of the main things a singer is
               | supposed to produce. And if overdone as "effect", it also
               | fucks the timbre.
               | 
               | And let's be real, nobody says this about some singer
               | using autotune to fix a flat note or two. It's the
               | autotune-as-effect (whether T-pain levels or more subtle)
               | that people complain about.
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | I think you may have missed what I'm getting at here. I
               | very much "get" why people don't like it, and most of the
               | music I listen to regularly goes light on
               | autotune/melodyne. And I am not saying that one has to
               | like those vocals at all. But the idea that they're not
               | "real vocals" is an attempt at shitty gatekeeping that
               | has no place in music. This wannabe arbiter does not get
               | to decide what "real" is or what "art" is.
               | 
               | It's gatekeeping bullshit.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | I like gatekeeping. It means people see value and lack of
               | value, as opposed to considering everything the same.
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | There is value in art done honestly, "bad" or not. And
               | neither autotune nor melodyne have intrinsic
               | characteristics that affect either honesty (unless you
               | extend that to all forms of audio engineering that
               | changes the voice) nor quality.
               | 
               | Put frankly: your take is a small one. It's one that
               | weakens the idea of art, and, no less importantly, is
               | _cruel and sabotaging to people_. You should change your
               | mind, but you 're kind of glorifying in that cruelty and
               | that smallness throughout this thread (which is gross!)
               | so I will not be holding my breath for it.
        
               | FeepingCreature wrote:
               | Let people like what they like. Let people want what they
               | want.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | Doesn't have to have 'instrictic characteristics'. Just
               | tendency and majority of real-life application being
               | shitty is enough.
               | 
               | Except if you thought that when complaining about
               | autotune being bad, we were talking about some rare band
               | that uses it as a creative tool, and not about the
               | millions that use it as a clutch or for the 1000000th
               | recreation of the same BS sound...
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | This comment section is about as well-informed as sound
               | engineers on gearspace talking about why VSTs written in
               | Javascript have more analogue warmth than ones written in
               | C++. Some people commenting clearly have no idea how
               | music is made.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | I've produced with DAWs for 30 years, and even put
               | together a few effects of my own with Max and Reactor, so
               | probably not me...
               | 
               | Do you have anything in mind that sounds misinformed? Or
               | just can't fathom that anybody who can tell what a
               | granular delay or an LFO or an automation envelope is
               | can't possibly dislike Autotune?
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Even in the analog world, I've heard of things like
               | adding reverb to a track by playing it in a bathroom and
               | recording it again.
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | This is a legit technique, has been for a loong time.
               | You'd be surprised what they used to call it! [0]
               | 
               | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | It isn't gatekeeping bullshit. It's a matter of personal
               | preference. Personally, I can't sing for shit. I also
               | listen to a lot of artists that use autotune. I bought
               | melodyne on the day of release when they brought their
               | polyphonic editor back in 2009, and used it for years
               | before that. It doesn't change the fact that autotuned
               | vocals are the vocal equivalent of quantised drums.
               | They're fine, but sometimes I want the option to filter
               | it out from my recommended stream. Sometimes I like
               | hearing microtonal mistakes. I like hearing a missed
               | beat. I want that option. I don't want sterile
               | perfection.
               | 
               | > But the idea that they're not "real vocals" is an
               | attempt at shitty gatekeeping that has no place in music.
               | 
               | I'm not sure whether you see the irony in this statement.
               | You're saying my opinion has no place 'in music'?
               | 
               | > This wannabe arbiter does not get to decide what "real"
               | is or what "art" is.
               | 
               | I never claimed to be the arbiter of what art is. Art is
               | subjective. It's a matter of personal preference. Like
               | not wanting to listen to autotune.
               | 
               | Lastly, you seem really angry. I'm really sorry if
               | anything I've said has upset you.
        
               | eropple wrote:
               | _> You 're saying my opinion has no place 'in music'?_
               | 
               | Man, this is basic Popper stuff. If you'd said "I don't
               | like autotune", I'd have probably agreed with you. If
               | you're saying that what others are doing aren't "real"
               | _because_ you don 't like it, that's a whole different
               | kettle of fish.
               | 
               |  _> I never claimed to be the arbiter of what art is._
               | 
               | You picked the word "real". Words mean things, and "real"
               | does not mean "to my preference". It is a an assertion of
               | legitimacy, it is that assertion to which all of my
               | comments in this thread are directed, and it's something
               | that neither you nor I get to take away from somebody.
               | 
               |  _> Lastly, you seem really angry. I 'm really sorry if
               | anything I've said has upset you._
               | 
               | I wouldn't say that I'm angry, I've been on the internet
               | a long time and random posts have to be really special to
               | do that, but I do write sharply when I care about
               | something. If one believes genuinely in the openness and
               | democracy of art--and I do--I don't think there's a
               | properly strident reaction to the implications you laid
               | down that wouldn't be a little bit testy.
        
               | Orcastrap wrote:
               | my point is that you're depriving yourself of good art
               | for an arbitrary moralism. just as ridiculous as saying
               | "i'll never listen to a singer that uses compression bc
               | the artists i listen to MUST have perfect dynamics (even
               | though this has zero impact on the final product)"
               | 
               | im making fun of you for being silly
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | I never said I don't listen to it. I said I want the
               | option of explicitly filtering it out sometimes. The two
               | are entirely different.
        
               | zasdffaa wrote:
               | He says 'I' meaning he's choosing for himself for his own
               | reason, he's not forcing it on others. You might at least
               | respect that even if you, and I, don't share the
               | reasoning.
        
               | WhiskeyChicken wrote:
               | Imagine thinking there aren't people with exceptional
               | hearing that notice all sorts of things the average
               | person doesn't.
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | It's sort of like thinking statistical outliers are
               | relevant to a general argument.
        
               | Nadya wrote:
               | Sorry but it falls into the realm of audiophilia to me -
               | people who think they hear a difference in their audio
               | because they're using $30,000 gold plated wires lifted
               | 0.25mm off of any surface such as to not disturb the
               | audio harmonics or whatever voodoo they've been sold to
               | believe in.
               | 
               | There are absolutely edits so subtle that without having
               | seen or heard the original you'd have no way of knowing
               | it was modified at all. Pitch correcting someone's voice
               | up 1/1400th of a step is not going to be noticeable no
               | matter how perfect one thinks their hearing is. These
               | kinds of subtle changes are far more common than the
               | drastic and noticeable edits or even smaller but still
               | quite large edits where people with a trained eye/ear
               | will notice but the average person wouldn't.
        
             | varispeed wrote:
             | It may not exactly be about artist. For instance person
             | mixing the artist's song (putting together all the
             | individual instrument and vocal tracks and ensuring it
             | sounds good together) may use autotune without artist even
             | knowing.
             | 
             | Then you have problem of the budget. Studio time is quite
             | expensive and after nth take hard decisions have to be
             | made. Booking another session or fix the tuning with
             | software?
             | 
             | Also take into account that vocals that you hear in songs,
             | that are not obviously autotuned may actually be composed
             | of dozens of takes. That technique is called comping and
             | the mixer (sometimes together with the artist) would choose
             | the best take out of dozen often for each phrase or even
             | single word. Sort of like natural autotune, when e.g. only
             | phrases that sound in tune are picked.
        
             | klodolph wrote:
             | > I don't want to listen to artists who use autotune. I
             | _do_ want to listen to artists who don't.
             | 
             | If you can't tell the difference, why do you care? If you
             | _can_ tell the difference, why do you need the label?
             | 
             | Speaking as an amateur musician, I think these arguments
             | reflect a lack of understanding of how music production
             | works, and how that's connected to the artist's creative
             | vision. I'll say that a big part of the blame lies with
             | poorly used autotune. Just to pick an example, the entire
             | first season of Glee is especially bad, to the point where
             | I want to leave the room. Then there's various places where
             | autotune has been overused on singers who don't actually
             | need it to begin with (Buble comes to mind), or where
             | autotune has been used to cover up some sloppy singing.
             | (Buble is particularly illustrative--it is known that he
             | uses autotune, but he has said that he doesn't... I suspect
             | that Buble is simply unaware that autotune is being used. I
             | suspect that many other singers are also unaware that they
             | are being autotuned--but you can sometimes find clear
             | evidence for it when you analyze their songs with a
             | computer.)
             | 
             | But autotune is also used, manually, by producers, to make
             | small adjustments as needed to improve a take. It can mean
             | that the singer does fewer takes to nail the song, because
             | with your comping and autotune choices, you get what you
             | need faster. The amount of comping and autotune that you do
             | is a matter of style and situation--producers are free to
             | do comping and autotune as they see fit, to capture what
             | they think is the best version of each part.
             | 
             | It means that you can say, "take 3 has the most beautiful
             | phrasing and a lot of soul to it, it's just a little sharp"
             | and then manually adjust the pitch by the amount you think
             | is appropriate.
             | 
             | > Normally when you make a statement like this on HN I'd
             | expect to see a citation or reference to where that
             | statement came from.
             | 
             | I'm not sure why you have that expectation or think that it
             | is at all reasonable. Like everyone else, I have a lifetime
             | of experience. Not everything that I tell you was written
             | down in the first place, and I can't reasonably be expected
             | to remember the exact source for every piece of
             | information, nor should I be expected to shut up just
             | because I don't provide a source for something I say.
        
               | boomskats wrote:
               | > why do you need the label
               | 
               | I don't want to get halfway through listening to a song
               | to hit autotuned vox. I just don't, I'd like the option
               | to filter on that. I would like a
               | recommendation/discovery engine that eliminates that
               | anxiety.
               | 
               | > a lack of understanding of how music production works,
               | and how that's connected to the artist's creative vision
               | 
               | Quite the opposite. I understand music production
               | extensively. I studied it, I have used it, half my social
               | circle are studio engineers or conservatoire grads. I
               | just want the option of filtering on artists whose
               | creative vision _is_ the original vocal recording.
               | 
               | > I suspect that Buble is simply unaware that autotune is
               | being used
               | 
               | The only reason that man has a career is because his
               | geriatric target audience is too old to know what
               | autotune is (hence his denial is plausible). I'm pretty
               | sure his record sales depend almost entirely on the abuse
               | of autotune for the hard of hearing. He isn't an example
               | I'd have used in this argument.
               | 
               | > But autotune is also used, manually, by producers, to
               | make small adjustments as needed to improve a take. It
               | can mean that the singer does fewer takes to nail the
               | song, because with your comping and autotune choices, you
               | get what you need faster
               | 
               | I totally know and appreciate all of this. Recording
               | without it is considerably more effort and money, it's
               | often not economically viable. Nevertheless, I want to be
               | able to sometimes filter on it.
               | 
               | > I'm not sure why you have that expectation or think
               | that it is at all reasonable. Like everyone else, I have
               | a lifetime of experience. Not everything that I tell you
               | was written down in the first place
               | 
               | When your argument is your opinion or something drawn
               | from your personal experience, that's fine. However your
               | words were: "Fact is, people say this, but when artists
               | actually release music that uses no autotuning, it tends
               | to be less popular". Stating a 'counterintuitive fact'
               | the way you did suggests it was proven in a study or
               | experiment of some kind. When putting arguments like that
               | forward, most posters on HN tend to reference their
               | sources. Otherwise your 'fact' is just an opinion.
               | There's nothing wrong with that, but it is not a 'fact'.
               | If you state something is a fact, I think an expectation
               | that you can back it up with an external reference is
               | entirely reasonable.
               | 
               | > nor should I be expected to shut up just because I
               | don't provide a source for something I say
               | 
               | Not sure where I said that you were expected to shut up.
               | If I implied it I apologise. However, I stand by my
               | expectations of providing external references for things
               | stated as fact.
        
           | coldtea wrote:
           | > _Fact is, people say this, but when artists actually
           | release music that uses no autotuning, it tends to be less
           | popular._
           | 
           | The kind of artists worth listening to wouldn't touch
           | autotune with a 1000ft pole. They're less popular to begin
           | with - but can still have tens of millions of fans globally
           | (say, someone like Tom Waits).
        
             | Tade0 wrote:
             | Any recommendations? I get why singers do it, but I want to
             | hear the imperfections.
        
             | mjr00 wrote:
             | > The kind of artists worth listening to wouldn't touch
             | autotune with a 1000ft pole. They're less popular to begin
             | with - but can still have tens of millions of fans globally
             | (say, someone like Tom Waits).
             | 
             | Whoops, bad news! Tom Waits' mixing engineer is explicitly
             | mentioned in Melodyne's brochure.[0] Melodyne 3, too, so
             | he's been using it for quite a while. You may want to
             | shorten the length of that 1000ft pole.
             | 
             | [0]
             | https://musicmarketing.ca/DNET/rack/brochure_melodyne_3.pdf
        
               | coldtea wrote:
               | > _Whoops, bad news! Tom Waits ' mixing engineer is
               | explicitly mentioned in Melodyne's brochure_
               | 
               | Which is not Tom Waits. A guy worked with 200 clients,
               | has done gigs with Waits, and puts the most famous client
               | names as ("has worked with"), not necessarily the one
               | they used Melodyne on (which he doesn't even claim).
        
         | 613style wrote:
         | I think you're underestimating how subtle and ubiquitous modern
         | autotuning is. The video here is an extreme example of a very
         | broad category of effects. In reality, almost every
         | professional recording you hear uses autotune in the same way
         | that almost every professional photograph you see uses color
         | correction. Most people don't notice it most of the time
         | (despite most people believing they always notice it).
         | 
         | An alternative you've also heard extremely often is a singer
         | recording the same line 100 times, then producers going through
         | each word (or each syllable) to cherry-pick the sample where it
         | was most on-pitch and blend them together.
         | 
         | Neither one of these represents the singer's real ability
         | (whatever that even means), but both can be unnoticeable by
         | 99.99% of the population when applied skillfully.
        
           | chmod775 wrote:
           | > almost every professional recording you hear uses autotune
           | 
           | That seems a bit too general. If we narrowed that down to a
           | few popular music genres I would probably subscribe to it.
           | Plenty of solo artists wouldn't be caught dead using autotune
           | or melodyne or whatever (outside of using it for
           | effect/intentional distortion). When being an exceptional
           | singer is your entire brand, you don't want to show up with
           | training wheels.
        
         | witherk wrote:
         | I'm sure there will always be music made with varying levels
         | technology. Seems like it will always be the case that any
         | technology past that made in one's childhood will be the cutoff
         | for some people.
        
         | ilikeitdark wrote:
         | Seriously, that was complete torture watching that video. I
         | thought for some stupid reason it might be interesting. Wrong.
        
         | agentwiggles wrote:
         | This is one of the funniest clips from the show I can think of,
         | the subversion of expectation from his initial clip to a legit
         | Lorde sounding song is so funny to me.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | oolonthegreat wrote:
       | now I know what simcard nano uses for their radiohead covers! I
       | have always wondered where did those vocals come from.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApL1d_OQYk4
        
       | FollowingTheDao wrote:
        
       | brap wrote:
       | It took me like 5 minutes to understand what the product does.
       | Why do so many landing pages NOT TELL YOU WHAT THE DAMN THING IS?
       | Are we just expected to know?
       | 
       | >VOCALOID6 is an AI-based technology created by Yamaha to fully
       | support the musical expressiveness of creators from all
       | perspectives, offering an even more natural singing voice than
       | ever before together with unprecedented freedom to express your
       | vocal ideas. This product lets you express your ideas on the spot
       | in vocal form while producing music.
       | 
       | What does this even mean? It reads like GPT-3 output.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | It's software that sings for you. You may have seen the stable
         | of characters marketed around the software, like Hatsune Miku
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnKX7kAgIc
        
           | brap wrote:
           | Thanks, I did figure this out eventually, I'm just frustrated
           | that it took me watching the video and scrolling through the
           | landing page for a while until I got it.
           | 
           | "Software that sings for you" is a great explanation, which
           | should have been right there at the top of the landing page
           | instead of that endless stream of buzzwords.
        
         | user- wrote:
         | Ever heard of Hatsune Miku? https://youtu.be/jhl5afLEKdo?t=65
         | 
         | Its just voice synthesizing
        
       | abetusk wrote:
       | Can someone point to a good open source alternative for vocaloid?
       | 
       | I know of Sinsy [0] but I couldn't get it working. eCantorix [1]
       | is very old and rudimentary (it uses espeak underneath [2]).
       | 
       | Searching just now I see OpenUtau [3] but I have no experience
       | with it.
       | 
       | Seems crazy there isn't a good FOSS solution for this.
       | 
       | [0] http://www.sinsy.jp/
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix
       | 
       | [2] https://espeak.sourceforge.net/
       | 
       | [3] https://github.com/stakira/OpenUtau
        
         | fullstop wrote:
         | My daughter has both OpenUtau and Vocaloid 5. She tends to use
         | OpenUtau more, although I don't know why.
        
         | sporkl wrote:
         | I haven't used it much but OpenUtau (under active development)
         | has been nice. Cross-platform, automatically handles
         | internationalization issues, and the phenomizer system is very
         | nice. Works well with the free multilingual Kumi Hitsuboku
         | voicebank[0].
         | 
         | Also has integration with NNSVS (neural net based vocal
         | synthesizer) and the entire UTAU ecosystem.
         | 
         | I would say this is the good FOSS solution!
         | 
         | [0]: https://cubialpha.wixsite.com/koomstar
        
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