ChaNTeR: digital singing with real time control

The goal of the ChaNTeR project is to develop a synthesis system for high quality singing voices, which can be used by the general public musician. The system should not be limited to sing vowels, but allow to generate complete songs including arbitrary texts. Such a system does not exist in the French language. The synthesizer will operate in two modes: “text to singing”, in which the user must enter the text and the notes of the score (lengths and heights), that the machine will then sing, and “virtual singer” in which the user operates the real-time control interface to control the synthesizer as a musical instrument. To achieve the synthesizer, we propose in this project a combination of advanced voice transformation techniques, including analysis and processing of the parameters of the vocal tract and the glottal source, with state of the art know how about unit selection for concatenative speech synthesis, rules based singing synthesis systems, and innovative gesture control interfaces. A central objective for the synthesizer to be developed is the ability to capture and reproduce the variety of singing styles (opera/classical, popular/song). Besides evaluation techniques that are commonly used for speech synthesis systems, the usability of the systems will be evaluated in particular with respect to the creative aspects that they allow (evaluation in form of mini-concerts and compositional mini-projects using the developed control interface.

The prototype system for singing synthesis that will be developed in the project will be used by partners to offer products including singing voice synthesis as well as virtual singer instruments. These functions are currently lacking or exist only in a very limited form. Thus, the project will provide for performing musicians, composers and the general public an artistic new singing synthesis and new means to create interactive experiences using the vocals.

Project partners

Coordinator: LIMSI

Partners: IRCAM (Analyse/Synthesis team), Acapela, Dualo