VIRTUAL MALE VOCALIST, powered by Yamaha VOCALOID? Singing Synthesis Technology.
VOCALOID is an entirely NEW kind of instrument, that uses the natural tone and articulation of a real human voice as its source - allowing the user to synthesize incredible vocals, the like of which have never been experienced before. It can also even sound remarkably like a real singer if required, with an unprecedented degree of realism for a synthesizer.
When it comes to creating vocal tracks, Yamaha's VOCALOID singing synthesis technology changes everything. Even a singing voice can now be SYNTHESIZED to a remarkable degree, through LOLA, LEON, MIRIAM, the VOCALOID virtual vocalists from Zero-G, thanks to the incredible new technology developed by Yamaha.
Since its first release, VOCALOID has already been greatly improved: Yamaha have provided many enhanced features and improvements in a major software update (version 1.1), which is free to registered users as a downloadable update at the Vocaloid.com website.
To download a free TRYOUT VERSION of the Vocaloid software (PC only), please click HERE
LEON is a virtual male soul vocalist modelled on a real professional singer, and when he is installed into your PC he will allow you to create synthesized singing with an unprecedented human quality. LEON will sing ANY words you ask him to in English - literally anything. You can create singing in any lyrics you want. You enter notes, type in lyrics, and the software renders the synthesized vocal. Then add expression to taste, and render again. LEON is under your total control.
"Vocaloid Lola is clearly going to be big in the music business. The start of something huge in modern music. Fascinating software which delivers everything it promises - and there's more to come!" - VOCALOID LOLA Review in MUSIC TECH Magazine, UK, rated 9/10 and MUSIC TECH RECOMMENDED Award.
"I can think of a number of creative situations where Vocaloid would certainly be useful, particularly for backing vocals. I'm very keen to see where Yamaha and Zero-G take this product next, with the release of Miriam being the obvious next highlight. Vocaloid is a brave undertaking, and hats off to both Yamaha and Zero-G for having the ambition to take such a significant first step!..." - VOCALOID LEON & LOLA Review feature in SOUND ON SOUND Magazine, UK.
"It can enhance compositions with solos or choruses of vocalists synthesized by the computer. The composer can realize complicated polyphonies, the jazz artist can realize backing vocals with realistic jazzy effects, and the experimenter will be able to create impossible effects with human voices. Pros: Impressive realistic choruses, perfect English pronunciation and reproduces jazz vocal effects with great realism." - VOCALOID LOLA Review from PC OPEN, Italy, rated 9/10
"From the sound, the Vocaloid voices can quite impress. They sing each speed, each note and at the same time, even simulate perfectly, the rhythm of human speech. Even the ending behavior of longer notes is affectionately copied. As the first software of its kind Vocaloid is unique, and I am very intrigued as to what will be forthcoming over the years thanks to this technology." - VOCALOID LEON and LOLA Review from Keyboards, Germany.
"The usage of Vocaloid is very captivating, and it is frankly magic to make text sing by computer!" - VOCALOID LOLA Review from MUSICRUN Magazine, France.
"As an amateur songwriter, who struggles with a computer far from powerful enough to run the necessary software to record vocals of good quality, I have looked for good solutions. I have had the pleasure of testing Leon, the Virtual Soul Vocalist. The complexity hidden behind the seemingly simplistic interface is astonishing. I hardly had to look at the manual at all while exploring ? quite atypical for music software. Leon is astonishing." - VOCALOID LEON Review by Haakon R. Ueland, for MENSA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL and website
www.smartsoftware.org
"Vocaloid is really the most innovative piece of software which has been released in a while. It's really taking voice synthesis to a whole new level. This is a great way for many bedroom and also professional composers to have great vocals in their music. I have given Vocaloid the maximum score because it's such a great technological progression in music making. It's just the thing many producers have been waiting for." - VOCALOID LOLA Review from
www.StudioFreaks.com, RATED 10 out of 10
"In 2003, Yamaha created a product that they call "Vocaloid". Its programming can be input by any musician; its basic graphical user interface is much like any software-based synthesizer. When all the programming is complete, press play, and it sings. No, not computer generated singing -- but it sings with a human voice that has been digitally sampled, deconstructed, and re-assembled according to your input. And Vocaloid can do its own harmonies and back-up vocals." - VOCALOID LOLA Review from Tech Central Station article "The Making of a Pop Star, 2010" by Edward B. Driscoll Jr., (
www.techcentralstation.com)
YAMAHA VOCALOID SOFTWARE ENGINE ? Accolades to date:-
- Game Audio Network Guild voted Yamaha's Vocaloid "Best New Audio Technology" in the Industry & Trade Category at their 2nd Annual G.A.N.G. Awards Show, March 25th 2004
- Popular Science Magazine voted Yamaha's Vocaloid as runner up in their General Innovation category of the "Best of What's New 2003" Awards.
Your own backing singers.
With Vocaloid, creating your own backing vocals is a realistic proposition - even for complex harmonies and arrangements. And as you gradually develop your Vocaloid editing skills, you will find that with patience even lead vocal lines are possible, thanks to the arsenal of expression tools provided, which permit editing and manipulation of the finest nuances.
IMAGINE what all this could mean for your music
Now you can COMMUNICATE emotion so directly. You can add HUMANITY to ANY production in ANY style, with your own private virtual vocalist. You can create backing vocals in harmonies for your tracks. With skill and application you can create unprecedented vocal realism. OR... you can live in the exciting world between human and machine, where Vocaloid can even provide vocals that sound like they were performed by a superhuman virtuoso android. Using Vocaloid in this way, as a true hybrid of human voice and synthesizer, the potential for innovation is limited only by your own imagination.
What will YOU make LEON sing?
Do you simply want him to perform your lyrical ideas in a rough form as an aid to your songwriting process? Or will you use his freedom from human limitations to create stunningly innovative and experimental vocal effects? He can sing over a superb pitch range, he can sing much faster than a human could if you want him to, as fast as you like in fact, and he can jump any interval yet hit every note beautifully, IF that's want YOU want him to do. And he'll NEVER tire or complain.
In addition to singing any words or combination of syllables you can imagine, LEON will spread any sustained vowel (or voiced consonant) across as many notes as you like, with perfect legato. You can select from several different natural vibrato types and drag and drop your chosen type to any note or notes, and control the time-position and amount of the vibrato.
And that's just the beginning - you have control over all of the following parameters, which you can bring to bear on any part of your creation:
- Changing syllables/phonemes (e.g. enter "liddle" instead of "little" etc).
- Timing of each note (precise position/length).
- Vibrato (you can change its type/position/amount/frequency).
- Volume.
- Attack.
- Crescendo or diminuendo.
- Pitch bend (amount, and positionable in time).
- Glide (portamento).
- Resonance (Frequency/bandwidth/amplitude).
- Harmonics.
- Noise.
- Brightness.
- Clearness.
- Gender factor.
- And of course, you can even change the singer (if you have purchased and installed more than one virtual singer) - perhaps get LOLA or MIRIAM to sing your creation instead of LEON. Instantly.
Numerous audio demos can be auditioned by going to the VOCALOID DEMOS PAGE
To watch a VOCALOID TUTORIAL VIDEO, which takes you through the basic steps in creating vocal lines with Vocaloid, click HERE
How Does It Work?
Few events have dramatically diverted the course of musical history. Synthesis, MIDI, Sampling - inventions of this magnitude are very rare events indeed. Singing Synthesis is such an event. Most acoustic instruments can be simulated well using various synthesis techniques, but (until Yamaha's Vocaloid techology came along) the singing voice resisted any serious simulation attempts. Hardly surprising, since singing has an extremely wide range of articulations, timbres, and transitions between sounds. And singing can communicate words as well as melody, which means you have a double layer of meaning, unlike other instruments. The human ear is so used to hearing the voice that even the finest tonal shifts or anomalies are immediately noticed. However, Yamaha's Vocaloid is in fact a totally new vocal-synthesis technology, achieving a much higher level of sophistication in this exciting area! The team at the Yamaha Advanced System Development Center in Japan has created software that emulates the singing voice with incredible accuracy.
Zero-G's development team have been working closely with Yamaha to create many 'vocal fonts' (virtual vocalists) for the Vocaloid system. The team starts each project by recording a professional vocalist singing literally all possible phonemes and transitions between syllables. Each transition is slightly different depending on the particular combination of phonemes, and these differences play a big part in how we understand words and whether a vocal track sounds natural or artificial. For example, the phoneme "p" sounds slightly different at the beginning of a word than it does at the end, and it affects the vowels next to it differently than, say, the phoneme "t".
The recordings of the professional singers are converted to the frequency domain using Fast Fourier Transform and divided into thousands of separate phonetic transitions which are processed in a unique way and then stored for use with the Vocaloid synthesis engine. Expressive tools such as vibrato, pitch bend, and attack are also derived from the real singing and stored separately.
To create a vocal track, you enter music and lyrics into the Vocaloid Editor (see screenshot). The melody can be entered by hand in the piano-roll style Editor or imported from a Standard MIDI File; the words are entered manually (either as words or as phonemes). Expressive elements can be imported from a MIDI File previously saved by the Vocaloid Editor, or entered via a graphic palette using drag-and-drop. Further detailed programming of expression parameters can be done graphically, for finely detailed results.
The data that you have entered in the Editor is sent to the synthesis engine, which fetches what it needs from the phonetic and expression databases to synthesize the track. To sing the word "part", for example, the software combines four elements from the phonetic database: "p" (as it sounds at the beginning of a word), "p-ar" (the transition from "p" to "ar"), "ar-t" (the transition from "ar" to "t"), and "t" (as it sounds at the end of a word). The two "ar" elements are blended together, and the resulting vowel "a" is lengthened as necessary to accommodate your chosen melody and rhythm.
Different pitches are derived by shifting the fundamental and overtones while leaving the vowel formants relatively untouched. The database elements were derived from phrases originally sung at different pitches, limiting the amount of shifting the engine needs to do (and therefore improving ultimate realism). A Pentium 4/ 2GHz computer should take less than one-third to half real time to render the track in the frequency domain and convert it into the time domain for use. For example, a 1-minute track can be rendered in less than 30 seconds.
Unlimited Horizons
The potential for Yamaha's Singing Synthesis Technology is virtually unlimited. LEON (together with his companion LOLA) are the genesis, the "Adam and Eve" of the new era of virtual singing. A third virtual vocalist, MIRIAM has already taken Vocaloid to new heights. Pretty soon you are going to hear synthesized vocals in a lot of music. Don't get left out of the picture. Experience the difference VOCALOID can make for yourself!
PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS:
Package Includes:
* VOCALOID Editor
* VOCALOID VST** Instrument
* VOCALOID LEON Male Vocal Font
VOCALOID Editor Features:
* Vocal Edit & Synthesis environment.
* Piano-roll note editor
* Easy-to use lyric editing.
* Drag & Drop musical expression assigning.
* Reads VOCALOID vocal libraries.
* Synthesizing vocal tracks (not real-time).
* Saving vocal data as wave files.
* Up to 16 vocal tracks.
* Standard MIDI File Input/Output.
* 104-page full-colour printed Owner's Manual provided.
* Video Tutorial provided (.AVI movie).
VOCALOID VST**/ReWire** Instrument:
* Reads VOCALOID vocal libraries
* Plays vocal MIDI tracks generated by VOCALOID Editor via VST- or ReWire-compatible host sequencer**.
* Easy to manipulate voice characteristics
**Users of FL Studio and SONAR 3.1.1 please note: The ReWire functionality of Vocaloid does not work properly with FL Studio. Also the VST Instrument cannot be used with VST hosts that do not send NRPN's. FLStudio and Sonar 3.1.1 are such VST hosts. However, both functions (ReWire and VSTi) work in Cubase VST/SX and other major sequencers.
VOCALOID LEON Vocal Library (virtual soul vocalist):
* Complete male voice in English, in professional quality.
* Suits all soul and dance music styles, but also many other styles.
* Full coverage of phonemes. You can use any English lyrics you want.
* Vibrato templates and expression templates as typically used in natural singing.
Minimum System Requirements:
* Windows XP or Windows 2000
* Pentium III, 1 GHz or faster
* 512MB of RAM or more
* Approx 700 Mb Hard disk space or more
* CD-ROM or DVD-ROM Drive
* SVGA Display (1024x768)
* Sound Card with Microsoft DirectSound Compatible driver
* LAN/network card must be installed, or a USB network card must be connected to the USB port
Recommended System:
* Windows XP
* Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz or faster
* I GB of RAM or more
Supported Interfaces & Standards:
VST** 2.0, ReWire**, Windows MME.
Recommended Retail Price:
$199.95 US Dollars (169 Euros / 114.95 pounds sterling, including VAT)