#learn to get better with singing

[percy-thrills-thrillington]

I’d love to be objective about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but unfortunately I listened to that album when I was a kid and it was the first time I knew music had magical properties, so. Can’t do it.

[dreamgirlevil420]

the only redeeming quality about being super congested is my low notes are fucking great right now, I've never sang "I'll make a man out of you better" if I had a YouTube channel I'd be filming like fifteen song covers

[yvesdot]

It's amazing that you can go back and watch the original Kids React video that got me into VOCALOID at the same age as the children pictured and see the exact same arguments that grown adults over a decade later use to react to AI art.

"People actually go to see this? But she's not real!"

"So the computer is singing and people like it. Robots are going to take over the world!"

"I dunno, I think people should actually sing! Not let the computer sing!"

"Machines shouldn't be pop stars!"

"Maybe [the benefit of having a fake singer] is that you don't have to pay the real singer?"

"They're kind of taking a spot that can be filled by a human"

"I'm sorry to all those singers out there; you're gonna get replaced"

"Lady Gaga is gonna be gone" (cue Miku opening for Gaga)

Don't worry though gang the moral panic is right THIS time. You know it's right, because it's happening right now! VOCALOID is fine because its popularity has grown and it has become normalized as its own unique art form, but AI? That could never happen! It's new and scary and Thomas Edison is out there right now flying on broomsticks and cavorting with the devil!

[deathemayor]

saw a take that peeved me in the vocaloid feed on bluesky but i don’t wanna be confrontational there + my thoughts are too powerful for a 300 character per post thread so im making it tumblr’s problem

due to my intense vsynth brainworms this is going to sound incredibly pedantic and annoying which is why i am posting it here okay here we go

the post was sort of a ‘callout’ of a creator who uses synthv for covers of fnf songs or whatever. the general body was like “they write their own lyrics but they make the vocals using ai with a program called synthesizer v” (the implication being, “this person is an ai-using fraud, don’t support them”)

if ur in the community or like have a little bit of an idea of how ai is associated with synthv specifically this is a nonsense uninformed take (the ‘ai’ training is used for autotuning/cross language synthesis/some other shit idk but the point is it’s not the type of ai that like, writes the melody/lyrics for you and is voiced from random samples from unknowing providers but i’ll get back to this later)

ai is mentioned on synthv’s website (also vocaloid’s much to the detriment of news articles that report on hatsune miku) so it’s a common misunderstanding, whatever. it would be nice if people actually looked into the ways ai works in vsynth at least a little bit but in an age where artists are on the defense against the ai boogeyman i guess i sorta understand the knee jerk reaction to assume the ai in vsynth software like synthv is the Bad kind. annoying, but nothing new.

but i think what made this post rotate in my mind to the point of crystallizing into unnecessary rage is an add-on that was like “i just prefer my music to be sung by real people!” followed by “by the way, vocaloid isn’t ai, so no you’re not bad if you like hatsune miku music”

ohhh man this actually did piss me off a little cuz wow way to really shout to the heavens that you have no damn clue what you’re talking about

firstly, i COMPLETELYYYY understand that the premise and general sound of vocal synth music is not for everyone. the computerized words, the unrealism, or even the fact that it’s not an actual person singing, like whatever that’s fine i get it. but like you can’t go around and be like “by the way vocaloid [aka hatsune miku] is chill don’t worryyyy” bc that line of thinking from my understanding doesn’t really make sense? miku isn’t a real person either 😭😭 her latest release even uses ai! (at least i think it does cuz vocaloid 6 has ai support but idk i guess that doesn’t matter) does she just get a free pass cuz she’s an internet darling?

miku is a piece of software where you write the midi for her vocals and input the lyrics so a slurry of samples recorded by saki fujita can be played back in an in-character singing voice. synthv is a piece of software with similar character voice databases where you do the same thing, write a midi and input lyrics so a database’s voice samples put it all together to sing back. the inclusion of ai in this process is to streamline the workflow for the user to automatically work out the pitch transitions between notes to save on time manually tuning, creating a more realistic playback. this ai, perhaps merely the inclusion of these two letters in the proximity of synthv’s marketing, is what makes synthv both Significantly Different and Inferior to miku.

the lack of ai with vocaloid (as far as op knew, cuz need i remind you vocaloid as of its 6th installment uses similar ai to synthv lol) making it Better than synthv sent the implication, TO ME, that op thinks that the ai used in synthv is the type that like, takes samples from other people without their permission to create the voices (then leading to the “i just want my songs sung by REAL people” aka not sung by dubiously gathered samples). i recognize this means of creating ai voices to impersonate other people and make them say things they should not without their knowledge or permission is CERTAINLY bad but like that’s not how any of this works if we’re talking synthv (you could argue this applies to those utau banks that make voicebanks for like sonic the hedgehog and shit but those usually sound like ass and are about as convincing as a sentence mixed youtube poop). maybe that’s not what they meant (i don’t wanna dig up the post cuz i don’t wanna be bothered and it’s probably gonna piss me off to the point of starting something which i don’t want) but based on my understanding of their point this is like. wholly untrue. in fact synthv voicebanks (particularly those from eclipsed sounds whose terms of service are free to read on their website) have special terms specifically designed to protect the voice providers of their databases BECAUSE of the extra realism in their voices (terms such as, “you can’t credit any voice work done with Solaria to Emma Rowley [her voice provider] or anyone else besides the software itself” in the case Solaria is used to say something objectionable and cast it on Rowley, that would be a breach of the terms and might even get your license revoked). shit like that is likely what people who are afraid of ai voices expect to happen but there were contracts signed to protect and inform the voice providers of what their vocal likeness is being used for + compensation paid to them for their work providing vocal samples SPECIFICALLY for this product. and ofc miku is the same. ITS THE SAME. BUT MIKU IS A FUNNY INTERNET MEME SO SHES FINE. GRRRRR!!!!!!

[movedtonewblogcheckpinnedpost]

Does Sam Reid know how many people he impregnated with his deep low baritone voice

[discoballera]

if i change my phone's language to norwegian do you think id rememebr how to change it back in case of emergency

[cowardlycowboys]

wish I drowned when I was 8

[navysealt4t]

idk how to describe it but like . being confident my skills that are directly connected to my greatest passion is so fucking. ah it feels so cool

[crossbackpoke-check]

♾️!

shuffle said “your apartment” by wallows!!

Who said / I don’t understand or that I probably don’t remember / Time in the palm of your hand / we both let go together

&

Who’s been tryin’ to get their signal sent? / I promise I get your sentiment / I wonder who’s been at your apartment?

not like. lyrically the greatest song but i love that there’s a storyline that runs through the first few songs of the album and the ways they reference each other (you called me over to your apartment, whose signal sent? -> you can call me anytime -> i know you’re calling after me). shout out also to the pre-chorus pauses for questionable punctuation and interpretation because it’s one of my favorite things when the inflection and performance can change the meaning of the lyrics!!

[kuiinncedes]

:|

[unproduciblesmackdown]

listened to the obcr Voices In My Head over confirming there's that like half step up of the "made" in "me and the voices in my head have made up our collective mind" that makes it a line that comes to mind & loops there & gets sung to myself often enough, but then was freshly appreciating what's going on instrumentally behind jeremy singing the "(then make up) my own mind" of the chorus which i'm not even sure what it is, but the effect is striking, initially i was like is there an eighth note in the vocals there vs all quarter notes? b/c like noting that jeremy's pitch/steps go up, Up, down vs the instrumentation going [same starting pitch] down, down, but that there's Something going on rhythmically so that the instruments kind of happen "behind" / not exactly On jeremy's, and then i was like is it also just that jeremy is also singing evenly in quarter notes but the notes being played instrumentally are like just slightly barely After his, though following the same rhythm, like, an eighth note behind, fuck it a demisemiquaver behind. anyways it pwns & the end of the song getting me all hype of course like argh The Energy fr

[thebeautifulfantastic]

<3

[moreaujeans]

the weak spot of this audition being my singing DEATHHHH

[zincbot]

there's too many mountain goats songs

[lucianinsanity]

Every time some science fact is mentioned and it's something that was discovered thanks to the help or invention of your country and you die a little for the lack of acknowledgment

Anyway if you’re from the US and you ever wanted to know what tumblr feels like from a non-USAmerican perspective (please note that the rest of the world is not a monolith either and none of these apply without exception):

Everybody’s talking about brands and stores you’ve never seen in real life. You generally assume they exist, but they might as well be one giant prank the rest of the internet is in on.

You find a post that just sounds wrong. It makes no sense. It’s like OP lives in a weird alternate reality. 9/10 times, it’s just some USAmerican Thing.

You’re still not entirely sure how much an inch is. Or a foot. Or even how many of the former there are in the latter. You maybe know your height in feet and inches.

You have no idea how much a pound is. You’d also like to know how the fuck pound shortens to lbs.

What the fuck is “military time”

Somebody talks about some legal process or something similar. They don’t mention which country’s legal system this pertains to. You know anyway.

People talk about politics. None of it pertains to you. Many posts contain guilt tripping. “How can you not care about this?? Why won’t you reblog this?? People need to know this about x candidate for y position!” You’re busy trying to stay on top of the political landscape in your own country.

You pick up some random slang from the internet. Monkey see monkey do. You’re called racist. You didn’t know it was AAVE. You learnt it from black letters on white background, not from the mouths of people whose faces you could see. How would you have known? You try to unlearn it.

People tell you that you must publicly denounce Chick-fil-A or you’re homophobic. You don’t even know what a Chick-fil-A is.

People say you don’t know LGBTQ+ history. What they mean is you don’t know USAmerican LGBTQ+ history. Nobody cares about your country’s history.

You’re “called out” on using an “offensive” term. It’s (a direct translation of) a completely harmless word where you live.

People expect you to have an idea of how far apart 2 USAmerican states are. You barely know geography past your country’s immediate neighbors.

You randomly switch between British and American spellings. Nothing’s real and there are no rules.

People talk about multiple hour car rides and you get twitchy just thinking about it. You suddenly understand why USAmerican cars are so big.

Somebody talks about school shooting drills. You only ever had fire alarm drills.

You see a cool statistic. The study’s only about the US. It’s unfortunately of no use to you.

People misuse/misspell words and names from your native language. It’s tiring.

(You feel sorry for the French. Nobody should be allowed to mangle the word déjà vu like that.)

You’re still not over the fact that USAmerican school children are supposed to say that pledge thing every morning. You’re never getting over that.

You still don’t know why the men are fresh or what the fuck a sophomore is.

Who the fuck pays up first and then fills up gas??? That’s made up, right??

Everybody has a weird obsession with some comfort food you’d never even heard of before you signed up here.

Fellow non-USAmericans, please add anything else you can think of.

[halfmoon-horse]

I love this time of year, there are little birds called uguisu and they're named after the sound their song makes, it's just so pretty