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Your Computer As Your Singing Coach
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jul 06, 2008 12:26 AM
from the but-my-computer-already-is-my-singing-coach dept.
from the but-my-computer-already-is-my-singing-coach dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Israeli researchers have developed an electronic ear to coach vibrato technique. Until now, the quality of a vibrato — the pulsating change of pitch in a singer's voice — could only be judged by voice experts. Now, a Tel Aviv University research team 'has successfully managed to train a computer to rate vibrato quality, and has created an application based on biofeedback to help singers improve their technique.' Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"
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Automated help centers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.
This task should be quite easy. Frustration and anger are the only two emotions I tend to experience when I get through to an automated help center. It would be a better investment of time to evaluate how long I spend interfacing with the system, how many times I have to re-navigate the menu hierarchy, how many times I have to call back and start over, how many actual people I end up being directed to, how many times I have to restate the same information and how long I spend talking to someone before I solve my problem, if I ever do. .. but I'm not bitter..
Even easier (Score:3, Insightful)
"Goddamnit!"
"You piece of shit!"
or the always indicative "FUCK!"
Just by checking for those 3 phrases, they should be able to ID an angry caller with at least a 99% positive rate.
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To prevent a hostile workplace, you'll be kept on hold until you calm down, or possibly in a menu system that keeps you busy and distracted so you forget whatever it was that was bothering you.
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Machine vs. Human (Score:2, Informative)
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By and large yes, but it's also dependent upon a few other things.
The quality of the equipment and the amount of time a person has spent learning to listen. When I moved up to my Senns, I noticed a real difference, and those aren't really even high end.
Things like those annoying stray frequencies that some people's voices have are not apparent if you're not using decent equipment. The ability of a person to stay at the right pitch, keep tempo and use a major versus minor cord all have huge impact on the qua
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They said nothing about the pleasantness of the singing voice. The system judges the quality of the vibrato. Though that seems like it would be fairly easy to assess. Just measure the consistency of frequency range and the consistency of each pulse, and generate a score.
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I'm not sure that's necessarily true. The summary says they're using "biofeedback to help singers improve their technique". Based on that, it would seem they're more interested in it as an educational tool rather than a tool for critics. There are a number of other technologies to help musicians improve their technique, so it's not like this is the first. For instance, many wind musicians w
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I just don't understand these singing competitions, their appraisals seem totally random. I've sang in a bunch of choirs and worked on the open vowels and prop
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how pleasant someone's singing voice is, is a completely subjective thing that can only really be properly judged by other human beings.
They said nothing about the pleasantness of the singing voice. The system judges the quality of the vibrato.
While I believe the above was referring to "quality" in a scientific sense rather than how "good" or "bad" it was, the whole hypothesis of one's "vibrato" having all that much to do with whether one is a good singer or not is hogwash. There are many uses of vibrato from virtually none (listen to a good singer perform Handel) to a ton (listen to a different good singer perform Wagner), where the amount of vibrato in a given style changes over the course of a phrase...etc.
In the end, all this algorithm can p
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Well, you're not really talking about quality there, you're talking about whether it exists at all, and how it's used. Assuming a vocalist is using vi
Re:Machine vs. Human (Score:5, Informative)
I have to say, you're stepping into a high-expertise field armed with a perilous lack of technical knowledge.
There are already numerous types of acoustical analysis and biofeedback in use in many places for the training of elite vocalists - by that I mean high-level classical singers. These include spectography which can be used to examine tonal balance factors, legato, vowel differentiation and modification, and so on; the electro-glottal graph which is a device that measures vocal fold closure and displays the individual cycles which can be used to evaluate pressed vs. breathy phonation; a device which measures the relative expansion and contraction of the chest and abdomen during breathing and singing and graphs them.
Contrary to your assertion, vibrato is a very important pedagogical tool. Vibrato rates that are too rapid (above 7.5 cycles per second or so), too slow (below 4 cycles), or too wide all indicate specific types of technical deficiency.
Vibrato is an important element of vocal technique as well, because the achievement of consistently vibrant sound through the range, and through different vowels, is an important goal in the training of singers. Vibrato is generally not related to muscle control factors except largely to the extent that through muscle tension or 'holding' the presence of vibrato can be reduced or eliminated. This is called "straight toning."
A tool that can help to measure quantitative vibrato factors: rate, consistency, pitch excursion, changes in dynamic, etc., could be very helpful in the training of singers. These are all subject to acoustical analysis and there's no reason to think that this machine wouldn't be able to do it.
As a matter of style, for both historical reasons and modern aesthetic reasons, I believe Handel should be sung with a fully vibrant sound. The tenor for whom Handel wrote Messiah and many of his other works was a full dramatic tenor whose large voice bore little resemblance to the light, lyric tenors who generally perform that music today for reasons of "historical accuracy."
I also find it somewhat odd that Shakira is held up as a model for good vibrato. She has a bleating vibrato which varies not only in pitch but in dynamic as well, which in another singer would be considered a serious technical deficiency.
Parent
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It's not odd when you consider that most people can't tell when Auto-Tune has been used on a track.
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She IS? Who holds Shakira up as a "model for good vibrato"? I get seasick when I hear her voice.
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Yeah, but Shakira makes up in lack of singing talent with huge... tracts of land.
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Isn't good muscular control part of good technique? Maybe such a computer program couldn't train someone in all aspects of singing, but I would imagine it could help them improve some aspects of their technique...
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I'm looking forward to it.
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If you're singing just for yourself, you're really wasting your time.
I have to disagree with that... at least for me. When I'm suffering from a bout of depression, I can often pick myself up by singing. It works better for me than many other things (even other musical things like playing piano). I put on one of my favorite Jazz musicians (Kurt Elling) and sing along where I can (he has quite a range). 20 minutes of that does wonders for my mood.
A few of my close friends have heard me sing and say I have
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You know, Duncan, up to now, you've been just on the border of being overbearing, pretentious and a horse's ass in this conversation.
Now you've just crossed over.
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If you can't deal with singing in front of a coach or teacher, then you're never going to sing in front of ANYONE -- and if that's the case, then you need to find another hobby. If you're singing just for yourself, you're really wasting your time.
Yeah, because obviously you should ultimately do your hobbies for other people's enjoyment or you're just wasting your time. Anyone spot a flaw in this line of reasoning? :)
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I wish you hadn't admitted that.
I was with you up to then.
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Don't you talk bad about Wing.
new? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Talking is as musical as singing. Listen to Stephen Hawking's robot voice or any other decent text-to-speech translator and note the syllables' changes in pitch.
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cheaters! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Want bad vibrato and notes? Listen to any American Idol entry. Instant ear bleed. In a bad way.
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Seriously, just pick a note and sing it. What's so wrong about that?
Many a good choir is ruined by people who sing vibrato. Once a singer learns it, their voice is rarely if ever 'natural' again and many great (usually early) choral works cannot be sung properly.
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Many choir directors have a certain conception of good choral singing. This often includes straight toning (singing without vibrato), unnatural vowel modifications to reduce 'brightness', and a number of other things which are foreign to trained singers. More than anything else, these methods are designed to compensate for poor individual voices. If you listen to the early work of the Robert Shaw chorale, particularly his collaborations with Toscanini, it is clear that his choir consists of professional
So what? (Score:2)
1. Gather a bunch of recordings of good and bad vibatos
2. Analyse their characteristics with a spectrograph to find what makes the good ones.
3. Make a simple program that analyses such characteristics using fairly basic techniques such as FM demodulation.
4. Wait for Roland to praise your work in his blog and cross your fingers that Slashdot will relay the 'news'.
5.
6. Profit?
No really, someone explain to me what's the big deal, that's something simple that could probably be done in analog electronics. Or is
Truly impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
...every programmer should work with something like this at least once. I did some audio programming work in college, and its a totally different world than the regular web dev stuff I have done, because you're working with the convergence of acoustics and physics with programming. In true signal processing apps, what you are doing has to happen FAST as well, which makes the guys who work in it true wizards, and that's without even considering the subjective recognition stuff that these researchers had to do. Kudos to them.
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every programmer should work with something like this at least once
Agreed. My pet project of this sort is a wiimote hack, whereby you can play music with the wiimote. And no, it isn't just playing loops, it's indicating a tone with the angle of the wiimote (and nunchuck).
So, it's really simple, right?
- You steal the code that gives you the vertical angle of the wiimote from wmgui,
- quantize it to [-12, 12],
- raises the twelfth root of two to that power (or do a lookup into a temperament table),
- multiply it onto the base frequency (say, 441 Hz),
- generate a wave of that
Singing Couch (Score:2, Funny)
Yep. It's time for bed. I read "Your computer as your singing couch"
good night folks.
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Oh, please (Score:2)
This reminds me of the time (perhaps six years ago) that my friend got a great deal on airline tickets to Italy, so he and his wife and another friend decided to go on relatively short notice. My friend got a "Learn Italian in 10 days" cd, and would practice in his office.
The lady on the CD would say a phrase, and you were supposed to repeat it back, into the microphone, and it would grade you. My friend got phenomenal scores.
One day, I listened to what he was doi
Other uses (Score:2)
Training vibrato (Score:2)
Vocal vibrato? Where's my earplugs? (Score:2, Insightful)
It should be programmed to give a poor score for using a vibrato. I don't know about you but I can't stand it when I go to a ball game and have to tolerate a 40 minute version of the national anthem because the singer vibratos every line of the song for a full minute.
eg: "The land of the FRE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E............."
Personally I consider it a mockery of the anthem.
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It should be programmed to give a poor score for using a vibrato. I don't know about you but I can't stand it when I go to a ball game and have to tolerate a 40 minute version of the national anthem because the singer vibratos every line of the song for a full minute.
eg: "The land of the FRE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E............."
Personally I consider it a mockery of the anthem.
I agree. I think vibrato is like the special effects of singing. It can be impressive if used in moderation, but it should not be overused. And much like action movies, nowadays it's all car chases and explosions, instead of any real contents.
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Great! (Score:2)
Automated Help (Score:2)
"Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"
STFU with this bullshit. Just get someone to actually solve my problem. Don't spend cycles getting a robot to figure out my emotional state that you can't do anything about anyway.
As a professional tenor (Score:3, Informative)
Here's what I know, and forgive me if any of this seems rudimentary, but I think vibrato (like singing generally) is not well understood by most people:
Vibrato is a cyclic departure from and return to a pitch. When a cellist holds a note and wobbles her left hand without starting a new note, or when B.B. King does the same, that is vibrato. It is heard as a "throb" in the voice, especially in those voices where it coincides with a cycling of intensity as well. This pulsing quality is something that musical instruments can rarely capture.
Some things vibrato is not:
-Tremolo: the repetition of a note, usually rapid, despite the misuse of the term in electric guitar circles to mean pitch-bending equipment.
-Glissando: a change in pitch moving in one direction, like a slide whistle or a pianist running a finger across the keys.
-Trill: the rapid alternation of two distinct notes, though in some voices this can sound a lot like vibrato
-Melisma: in vocal music, the inclusion of many notes on one vowel -- think Mariah Carey
In singing, most or all of the excursion of a person's vibrato is below the note being held. The graph of a person's vibrato would rarely look like a perfect sine wave, but usually would have an element of saw wave mixed in. That is, during the 1/6th of a second of an average vibrato cycle, the pitch might drop fairly quickly to the bottom of the range of excursion (let's say 1/3 of a whole tone) and take the rest of that time to climb back to the "correct" pitch, and perhaps go sharp by a few cents briefly.
The rate, shape, dynamics and excursion of a singer's vibrato is something that a well-trained singer can tell with some accuracy after a few seconds of listening. "Eight beats per second, rather smooth, consistent dynamic, and shallow," for example. It is a an objective evaluation, and I'm not surprised a machine can do it too.
But it is terribly difficult to change one's natural vibrato. It takes months of practice and guidance for the typical voice student with a poor vibrato to improve it. Knowing that the end result (the voice) comes from a combination of physiology, psychology, and technique that involves muscles from the face to the feet, I don't see how this type of feedback will help them fix it.
Assuming, of course, that it needs fixing. The ideal of a moderate and inoffensive vibrato, while present in many successful singers' voices and most opera singers' voices, is also conspicuously absent from the voices of many well-loved singers and entertainers.