Jodi Krangle

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calm vocal

Singing Blobs and Electric Melodies

July 7, 2021 by Jodi Krangle

Machine learning has helped shape just about every aspect of our digital lives, whether it’s deciding which Netflix show or YouTube video to recommend to us or even teaching cars to drive themselves. One of the most innovative uses for machine learning, however, is in creating music. Just recently Google released Blob Opera, a machine learning tool by David Li that “pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice.” There’s a link below for you to try it out for yourself: all you have to do is direct each of the singing blobs by sliding its range up and down with your mouse, and listen as they compose their own harmonies.

https://experiments.withgoogle.com/blob-opera

This sort of musical collaboration between humans and computers has been evolving for a surprisingly long time. There’s some debate on just when the first electronic music was created, but the oldest recording comes from 1951. It’s a sample of three songs created by Alan Turing’s Ferranti Mark 1 computer, which filled up a whole room; the melodies were programmed by Christopher Strachey, a computer scientist who also drew upon his experience as a piano player to teach the computer how to play music. This early melding of art and science would pave the way for similar fusions of musical and scientific genius over the years.

Want to hear the Ferranti’s groundbreaking music for yourself? Just check out the link below for a digitally restored recording of that historic moment, and what the people listening had to say:

https://soundcloud.com/guardianaustralia/first-ever-recording-of-computer-music

Of course, synthetic music’s come a long way over the past seventy years. Now, thanks to machine learning and the development of artificial neural networks, computers can compose their own songs with hardly any human guidance at all. Here’s a link to “Mister Shadow,” a song entirely composed and performed by Sony Computer Science Lab’s “Flow Machines” AI system:

They can even mimic human voices, using deep learning paired with existing recordings to study and then duplicate a particular kind of voice. In 2019 Yamaha used its new VOCALOID:AI vocal software to recreate the voice of legendary singer Hibari Misora on the 30th anniversary of her passing. There’s a link to the song below, and I think you’ll agree that the result are uncanny:

But how did we come all the way from a computer beeping the national anthem to writing and singing its own songs? What does machine learning really mean, and what does it mean for the future of the audio industry? The answer lies in patterns, and a computer’s ability to recognize patterns and then generate new ones.

Computers don’t really know what music means, or even that they’re making music. But by studying thousands and thousands of different songs, machine learning allows them to create a profile of all the different elements that those songs have in common, much the same way that facial recognition programs use thousands of pictures of people’s faces to teach them what to look for.

Then the computer takes everything it’s learned about those songs and tries to create something new that fits the same profile. The first try probably won’t be very good, but computers work fast, and each failure gives them more to learn from for their next try. With enough samples and enough feedback, the results start to sound less like noise and more like real music, even real singing.

For Google’s Blob Opera experiment, David Li recorded 16 hours of audio from six different opera singers and used it to teach the program how to sing opera. What we hear when we play it, however, doesn’t come from any of those singers, but from the program’s own attempt to create music based on what it’s learned.

Machine learning’s already starting to make a big impact on the audio industry. Amper, an online composition tool, offers computer generated music based on user settings like genre and tempo as a substitute for stock music. Another app, Endel, creates personalized soundscapes that take into account factors like the time of day, weather and even the user’s vital signs, in addition to the program’s own unique compositions. Content creators in particular need more music than ever before, and machine learning is helping to meet that growing demand and broaden the market for original music.

The next time you hear a piece of music in a commercial or streaming content, you may want to give it a closer listen. With more and more audio content now being produced through machine learning, you might just find a singing blob behind the microphone.

Would you consider giving this podcast an honest review? You can do that here: https://lovethepodcast.com/audiobranding.  And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!

And if you’re interested in crafting an audio brand for your business, why not check out my FREE download – Top 5 Tips For Implementing An Intentional Audio Strategy at https://voiceoversandvocals.com/audio-branding-strategy/

Filed Under: Research & Technology, Technology Tagged With: Alan Turing, Amper, artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, blob opera, calm vocal, Christopher Strachey, computer generated music, David Li, Endel, Ferranti, Flow Machines, machine learning, music composition, vocal ai

Interview with Vocal Coach for Singers & Speakers, Julia Langley – Part 2

June 30, 2021 by Jodi Krangle

In the first part of my interview with Julia Langley, we discussed everything from how she’s transformed her career with life changing events to a few quick exercises that are great for helping singers and speakers to visualizing sound.  I can’t wait for you to jump into this second part of our interview to hear the rest of the great advice and knowledge Julia shares with us.

We discuss:

  • How tone is perceived by an audience (in general)
  • The importance of projection and annunciation 
  • Bringing in dynamics to make vocals interesting
  • Improving your speaking voice for a podcast
  • Great for a podcast – calm vocals and clarity
  • Overcoming vocal battles
  • To improve your voice, record your voice and listen back
  • Where a vocal coach comes in
  • Being okay with who you aren’t
  • Knowing the things you’re not good at allows you to step into what you are good at
  • The need for breath support
  • Standing out
  • Embracing the little pieces of you that allow you to be identifiable
  • Tone and rhythm, how you breathe and where you breathe
  • Your own personal audio branding 
  • Catch phrases 
  • The importance of hearing something over and over again
  • Julia’s first thought when she originally heard the term “audio brand”
  • Where TV shows use their audio brand throughout the show
  • Musical themes across different media to create familiarity and comfort
  • Sound’s role in PTSD
  • Julia’s story with PTSD
  • PTSD makes a physical change in the body and you can’t control your body’s reactions
  • Learning to manage PTSD
  • Using singing as therapy for PTSD
  • Julia’s techniques for working through PTSD situations
  • The role listening to music plays in your brain and on your body
  • The role singing music plays in your brain and on your body
  • Resources to use music to help with PTSD
  • Long term memory and music
  • Julia’s new website and online course
  • All the questions Julia’s course answers

If you want to learn more about Julia or get in contact with her, check out these resources:

Resources on PTSD:

  • Book:  “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma” by Besser Van Der Kolk, M.D.
  • On Amazon video there is a great documentary that addresses PTSD – consequences and overcoming.  It’s called “Quiet Explosions: Healing the Brain”

She has two upcoming projects on the subject:  A book she’s writing in the early stages now called “A Warrior’s Hymn – How to bounce back from adversity and find the champion within”.  And a podcast on the same topic.  

She’s also planning on having an online vocal training course by August 2021.

Julia’s website: https://julialangley.net/ (will be live by the time the episode is out)

Julia’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgUhHViaw0FhJ1vDOhq0mAQ 

Julia’s Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/julia.langley 

This episode was very skillfully made to sound beautiful by the talented Humberto Franco (http://www.humbertofranco.com/)

Would you consider reviewing the Audio Branding Podcast?  If so, here’s the Apple Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/audio-branding/id1489042453  And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!

And if you’re interested in crafting an audio brand for your business, why not check out my FREE download – 5 Tips For Implementing An Intentional Audio Strategy at https://voiceoversandvocals.com/audio-branding-strategy/ 

Filed Under: Vocals Tagged With: annunciation, breath support, calm vocal, dynamics, musical themes, personal audio branding, projection, PTSD, singing therapy, speaking for podcasts, tone, TV show audio brands, vocal coach

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