“What's to stop dilettantes from creating their own fonts? Could it be long before falsified but entirely convincing clips of Britney Spears begging for Justin's forgiveness circulate on the Web-to say nothing of George Bush conspiring with Tony Blair about weapons of mass destruction?”Īt first, Vocaloid software was meant to serve as a practical studio tool for producers. “If Napster and other online file-trading programs have taught the world anything, it's that once a technological cat is out of the bag, it can be difficult to control,” he wrote. Vocaloid was developed by Kenmochi Hideki and his Barcelona-based team at the turn of the millennium, and Werde’s New York Times piece was published just a few months before the first commercial release of Vocaloid software in January of two thousand four. But its arrival raises the prospect of a time when anyone with a laptop will be able to repurpose any singer's voice or even bring long-gone virtuosos back to life.īy “recently,” of course, I mean twenty years ago. The first generation of the software will be available for $200.

Just as a synthesizer might be programmed to play a series of notes like a violin one time and then like a tuba the next, a computer equipped with Vocaloid will be able to ''sing'' whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. “She’s just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend’s golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening’s dinner menu.” He goes on to suggest that “close friends of Madonna and Mariah may already have had that pleasure” but that for “everyone else,” this new technology offers “the next best thing.”ĭeveloped at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. “Imagine having a singer with a world-class voice at your disposal, any hour of any day,” the piece begins. It can do this without their direct involvement. Written by former Billboard editorial director Bill Werde, it describes a tool that can take existing recordings of a particular singer’s voice and synthesize them into “new” performances by that singer.

Recently, the New York Times published an article about a powerful new piece of software with the potential to change the music industry forever.

When was IA vocaloid made