Completed production of Valor

It is probably just my age, but in the last few years I've started getting into short cinematic orchestral pieces, and have been enjoying it ever since. Even though I really know jack-shit of classical music, and probably all the time break all the rules, I'm not letting that stop me and ended up creating "Valor".

The piano part formed the foundation, and was actually a project where I experimented with my piano chords, that I've abandoned about 2 years ago. I discovered it recently again in my lost and found section on my digital audio workstation. After listening to it, I decided to resurrect it and pushed through to finish the music.

There are only string instruments in this piece: piano, violas, contra bass and of course - my favorite, a solo cello. I played the (fake) cello using Friktion, made by Reason Studios. Such an amazing piece of software. The cello ended up becoming the focus of the song, as it contains something humanlike. I don't understand it, but I just love it! It took a lot of work to express the feeling on the cello, but I think it came out alright.

There is no percussion, so some dramatic stabs strings had to help with a simple rhythm on most part of the track.

In the last section, I've used the "Lucy" computer voice from Emvoice to perform soft melodic "oohs", to add more emotion.

But, the original and truly remarkable artwork was yet another pencil sketch made by my brother, more than 2 decades ago. It is part of a few of his drawing that I have "acquired" since that time (and he probably forgot all about them). The saying is "a picture paints a thousand words", so there you go. And you thought this instrumental had none? How this guy never got his art works to be displayed in an art gallery, is just beyond me. This drawing came in handy to set the scene for this track - in fact, it might just get more attention than the music!

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Complete Production Demo of Get Away using EmVoice Keela

EmVoice created another artificial voice called Keela, and I must say it is quite impressive! Of course it still requires lots of work to let it sound more human, but not as much as the previous voices. I've only completed short demo projects with any of the EmVoice vocal synths up to now, as I find it too intensive to create a full length track that requires the constant tweaking of the voices. There is no control over expression for example, so I can't see that it can ever compete with a real human. Who would ever want to trade anything for a real human voice anyway? Never the less, these guys are getting better with every new voice they create and it is remarkable what they have achieved, keep an eye out for them. For this demo I have a finger picking acoustic guitar with soft strings and a cello emphasizing the song's mood, sad of course. Here is the result: EmVoice Keela - Get Away

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Produced demo Lost It All with EmVoice Lucy

 

I was in the mood to create a short demo again using the synth Lucy vocals from EmVoice. And to fit with these times, the theme just had to be about war. I wanted to make the melody and message simple, as you can paint a pretty picture with words - and this subject should not be so.

I always challenge myself to get Lucy to sound really like an actual human, and this time was no exception. The songs starts out timid and calm with a classic-ish sound, but be warned that in the middle it gets quite loud with the hard rock instrumental section.

The song ends with a simple, final and sad message of what we humans result in with our actions, so often affecting everything else. Not that a robot or program can teach us anything about ourselves, no matter how nice it sounds.

But as before I had fun with this attempt, and zoomed into the little imperfections of the stock Lucy vocals. It took a lot of work and many polishing attempts to get to this point, from bringing out subtle mouth noises, to pitch bends and EQs to make it sound as natural as possible.

No, there is no chance in hell I'll trade Lucy for real vocals ever, but I think this is still quite impressive. The world is moving forward and these toys are getting better and better, and I believe there will be a time when most of us will not be able to tell if it was a real singer or faked. But we are not there yet.

Listen to it here: EmVoice Lucy - Lost It All

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Produced Despair (EmVoice Lucy)

I tried my skills using the Lucy plugin on another ballad. This time I really went way out to manipulate the vocals to include a different style, where the voice breaks at some points. I attempted to let the voice have some natural bending, instead of the rigid notes it normally has. This is my favorite track from the EmVoice songs I've done so far: 

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Produced Eternal Dream for EmVoice One (Jay)

I was asked by EmVoice to create a demo for their Vocals Synth voice Jay, so I thought I'll give them two! For this version I decided to make a slow ambient ballad, and wanted to really feature the synth vocals. Again they did not like or accept it. Apparently it was too jazzy...what jazz? Fail!

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Produced Hunt For You for EmVoice One (Jay)

I was asked by EmVoice to create a demo for their Vocals Synth voice Jay, so I thought I'll give them two! For this version I tried to make a funky contemporary pop track and did the guitar work on my friend's Fender Stratocaster. They did not like or accept it. Fail!

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Producing Coming For Me

Buying the plugin

I've committed to buying the EmVoice Lucy plugin, after playing with the trial / demo version for a while. I though it is a great addition to the studio and will help with the creativity part of things. I often struggle to get the intended melody of a new composition across the to artists just by playing it on an instrument, so this looks like it will definitely add value in that process. I think the cost is quite high for the software, however I am a Software Engineer myself, and I can imagine the amount of work that EmVoice had to put into the development for this.

Setting up the software

That was simple, since if you try the demo version it is already installed. The only difference is that the demo has only 7 notes that can be used, while the paid version enabled the full vocal range

The experience using the software

Lucy has a UK accent. I found it impressive that the lyrics are mostly sang with acceptable pronunciation, and gets sung to the pitch you enter. After every change it on the fly, connects to the Cloud to render the output. To me the most important missing part, is expression. That is expected though, so Lucy sounds pretty much the same everywhere. It is after all just a program, and everything is artificial (easy to forget).

My studio DAW is Propellerhead Reason Studio, and I first created the music for the track - setting somewhat of a classical theme. I then created the melody line with piano, pulled that into the plugin, and created lyrics for it. But only then the real work begun to make Lucy come alive. It took a lot of effort and time, and I had to pitch change a lot of the start and end of words (for how I imagine a real person might perform it), make some parts louder of softer, including non music/melody parts (for example a little crack in the throat), and played around quite somewhat with EQ, compression and effects.

It was hard work, but it paid of - this track now belongs to the EmVoice, since after I showed it off to them they bought it from me. The track has already been played hundreds of times on SounCloud. This time it for me it took a robot to get noticed, but never the less - I'm quite proud!

The track is just a short demo, as it is what it is and just too much work to make a full length song like this. What would be the point anyway?

But Lucy and Jay is now a permanent part of my studio tools. Listen to it here and let me know your thoughts: Coming For Me

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Produced Love Letters (Lucy - Emvoice)

This was my first attempt to work with the vocals synthesizer from EmVoice. I tried to make the vocals sound human, since I am human and like to work with humans! I actually got a few complements on this one, so it definitely inspired me to work some more with the plugin. It is tedious work, so I decided that I will probably never create a full length track, and instead only focus on short demos. It is a nice alternative when I want to work on something else:

 

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