Digital choirs?

[Dave2002]

It appears to be possible to get passable renditions of instrumental music using DAWs, synthesizers, samplers etc., and to use these with score writing or other tools to generate music and "performances" using virtual instruments and virtual orchestras.

One kind of thing which seems to me pretty dire though are the so-called "choir" effects, which many keyboards provide, and which are also available in software implementations.

Thus, although it might be possible to generate a passable rendition of the instrumental parts of various pieces, such as for example, parts of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Cosi etc., or more powerfully Verdi's Requiem, or Britten's War Requiem,
getting anything like a proper choir/vocal sound - with enunciated words - seems totally out of reach.

However, there are text to speech systems which sometimes produce recognisable speech, so is it really impossible to get something like a full choir sound - with enunciated text, to go with an instrumental or orchestral backing?

Has anyone even tried this? If they have, I expect the results are pretty horrible, but could they be much worse than the horrid "choir" sounds generated by many synthesizers?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes, I’ve often wondered about this myself. I suppose it’s because it’s a synthesise choir sound, rather than sampling. When piano sounds are synthesised, the result it pretty horrific, but with sampled sounds, it’s whole new ball game.

[MrGongGong]

Plenty of research into this

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680822?seq=1

http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/repmus/SMC04/scm04actes/P8.pdf

It used (? is it still ?) to be a kind of Turing Test for some areas of computer music
but, I think, most folks would now ask the question "why bother?" when there are plenty of choirs about in the world already

[Dave2002]

Plenty of research into this

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680822?seq=1

http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/repmus/SMC04/scm04actes/P8.pdf

It used (? is it still ?) to be a kind of Turing Test for some areas of computer music
but, I think, most folks would now ask the question "why bother?" when there are plenty of choirs about in the world already

I could ask "Why not?". It's a bit of a surprise that nobody has yet produced a consumer version of such a computer music system, either in hardware or software, given that other devices and systems have been monetized in consumer markets.

[MrGongGong]

I could ask "Why not?". It's a bit of a surprise that nobody has yet produced a consumer version of such a computer music system, either in hardware or software, given that other devices and systems have been monetized in consumer markets.

Several years ago I was working on some projects where we were using Cooledit as an audio editor / composition tool.
This was before Syntrillium software sold it to Adobe who turned it into Audition. We had the potential of thousands of educational establishments all over the world who would have been keen to buy an affordable and stable version. The reality of the commercial world is that there isn't money to be made from it.
The folks who would want (and more importantly PAY FOR) such a thing are a very small number, anyone who is keen enough and determined enough will spend the time and make their own.
The consumer market for these things is tiny compared to the costs involved in development.


Sadly Audition got worse and worse though I still use one of the early versions as a basic editor.

[Dave2002]

The folks who would want (and more importantly PAY FOR) such a thing are a very small number, anyone who is keen enough and determined enough will spend the time and make their own.
The consumer market for these things is tiny compared to the costs involved in development.

It's the sort of crazy (is it that crazy?) thing that film producers might like. Money would be less of a problem there - maybe.

[Dave2002]

I found this - https://youtu.be/1A9IZxFJPyA - EastWest Symphonic Choirs. Go straight to 26 minutes in, and you'll hear something that does sound more like a choir. If you start at the beginning it'll take ages before you get to hear what this thing sounds like. You can always come back later to the more detailed stuff.

It's still not great, but a heck of a lot better than most fake synthesised choirs. The demo of rolled "r"s is quite clever - that's about 3 minutes in.
Whisper words are about 4 minutes in.

Pronounced words seem - just about possible. There's a demo of singing "Hallelujah" about 10 minutes in.

Another video with examples here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqFO4x57xlw

There are more virtual choirs mentioned in this link - https://beatproduction.net/best-choir-vst-plugins/ but the EastWest one at around $500 seems to be touted as the best one. That would indeed be something that film producers might want to have.

I've not checked out the others yet.

[MrGongGong]

There are more virtual choirs mentioned in this link - https://beatproduction.net/best-choir-vst-plugins/ but the EastWest one at around $500 seems to be touted as the best one. That would indeed be something that film producers might want to have.
.

"Film producers" don't write music ?

[Dave2002]

"Film producers" don't write music ?

You're probably right - perhaps in more than one way - but they may have money or access to funds - and they can perhaps afford to divert some of their dosh to those who do write or perform music. Not all film producers will have huge budgets though, and there have been some truly terrible films produced with very small budgets - I can think of one with a title which sounds a bit like one of the UK's previous Prime Ministers - which actually went into cinemas.

[Beresford]

Several years ago I was working on some projects where we were using Cooledit as an audio editor / composition tool.
......Sadly Audition got worse and worse though I still use one of the early versions as a basic editor.

I still use Cool Edit for R3 downloads. It's great for simple editing, extracting tracks, and saving to flac format. Or extracting audio from a dvd.

[MrGongGong]

I still use Cool Edit for R3 downloads. It's great for simple editing, extracting tracks, and saving to flac format. Or extracting audio from a dvd.

Every computer in Broadcasting House used to have a version of Cooledit on it....