{"id":15213,"date":"2016-01-16T13:45:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T18:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=15213"},"modified":"2016-01-16T20:04:20","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T01:04:20","slug":"notes-mostly-musical-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/notes-mostly-musical-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes, mostly musical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15421\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2-640x640.jpg\" alt=\"Design partly influenced by Hyperdimension Neptunia\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-15421\" srcset=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2-640x640.jpg 640w, http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2-768x768.jpg 768w, http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/poster-alys-a2.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The French-Canadian company Plogue has entered the vocal synthesizer business. So far, no occidental virtual singer is serious competition for the Vocaloids, <span id='easy-footnote-1-15213' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/notes-mostly-musical-2\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-15213' title='Some sound very nice indeed, but they have limited vocabularies and constructing words looks tedious. They also are too pricey to experiment with and require NI&amp;#8217;s Kontakt.'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but Plogue&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plogue.com\/products\/alterego\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alter\/Ego<\/a> shows promise. The software is free and runs on both Macintosh and Windows. (Yamaha&#8217;s Vocaloid software is still Windows-only, though Hatsune Miku and her family are usable on Macs with Crypton&#8217;s PiaPro software.) &#8220;Daisy,&#8221; the first Alter\/Ego voice bank, is also free. It&#8217;s not particularly expressive, but its English is generally intelligible. Alter\/Ego is also easier to use than Miku.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.voxwave.fr\" target=\"_blank\">VoxWave announced ALYS<\/a>, a voice bank for Alter\/Ego, which is intended to be a French counterpart to the Japanese Vocaloids. ALYS&#8217;s languages are French and Japanese, but according to the CEO of VoxWave, &#8220;&#8230; we also ALYS to sing in English too thanks to an alias system&#8221; (sic). If ALYS&#8217; English is tolerable, it might be worth considering when it&#8217;s released in March.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-ykrwtL-cIk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfgangpalm.com\/phonem.html\" target=\"_blank\">Wolfgang Palm&#8217;s entry<\/a> into vocal synthesis also looks very interesting, and rather different from the other systems I&#8217;ve looked at. Then there&#8217;s Plogue&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plogue.com\/products\/chipspeech\/\" target=\"_blank\">chipspeech<\/a> for old-style computer voices.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hooktheory.com\/theorytab\/common-chord-progressions\" target=\"_blank\">a list of common chord progressions<\/a> with numerous examples from popular music. The site features partial analyses of a wide range of music. I was particularly interested in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hooktheory.com\/theorytab\/artists\/z\/zun\" target=\"_blank\">the many Touhou tunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in what&#8217;s going on in Beatle tunes, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.icce.rug.nl\/~soundscapes\/DATABASES\/AWP\/awp-beatles_canon.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>Marty Friedman, formerly of Cacaphony and Megadeth, got bored with metal, learned Japanese and became part of the J-pop scene. Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/07\/05\/328513393\/megadeth-guitarist-marty-friedmans-journey-to-japanese-pop\" target=\"_blank\">brief, unsatisfactory but interesting NPR interview<\/a> with him I recently came across.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>See how many tunes you can identify:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7OYkWSW7u4k\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dustbury.com\" target=\"_blank\">Dustbury<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The French-Canadian company Plogue has entered the vocal synthesizer business. So far, no occidental virtual singer is serious competition for the Vocaloids, but Plogue&#8217;s Alter\/Ego shows promise. The software is free and runs on both Macintosh and Windows. (Yamaha&#8217;s Vocaloid software is still Windows-only, though Hatsune Miku and her family are usable on Macs with &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/notes-mostly-musical-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Notes, mostly musical&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-3Xn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15213"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15439,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions\/15439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}