"A Place In The Sun" - A CD Album By Fully Virtual Vocalist

"A Place in the Sun" is a music CD album with a fully virtual vocalist. We believe that this is the first album in the world of this kind. It includes 14 dance tracks in a modern arrangement, with lyrics in English and in Russian. Total running time is 70 min.

Be modern! Don't be the last one to hear the first virtual singer!

Listen to MP3 samples (File size is about 1 MB).

Now you can listen to some songs in full at http://www.zvuki.ru/M/P/31536

We understand that intelligibility leaves much to be desired, so you can see the lyrics here.

Buy this album!

In Their Own Words...

We, robots, have been among you for quite a while and know a lot about life. You make movies and write books about us, but they are far from being true. We are your friends. We adore you and the way you are. Our cyberhearts learn to feel grief and happiness. Sometimes we can't be silent anymore. And now we want you to hear our voice. Lelik is one of us. We love him and believe that he will manage, better than other robots, to convey the most important thing - our love for people and for the world in which we exist.

Counsil Of The Elders
33018 After Creation Of The World

PS: And we know the meaning of "Dance". So now let's do it together!

History Of The Project

I first heard Lelik (Leon) in January 2004 in Anaheim, on the NAMM seminar, accompanied by Hideki Kenmochi (Yamaha) and Ed Stratton (Zero-G). I was surprised by his voice and got the idea to make an album with him. Our second meeting happened in New York in October 2005 at Music Player Live!, in Bil Bryant's (from PowerFX) booth. By that time I already had some song sketches in Russian, but Lelik didn't speak Russian at all. I realized the need to simplify both melodies and lyrics, and that Lelik will have to do his best in articulation. In January 2006 we started work. Now that it's all done, you can see for yourself, how sincere and amusing these songs have become, when performed with such an unusual timbre.

Alexei Ustinov, (from CD liner notes)

Lelik is the name and the visual image of the virtual artist used for the CD cover. Vocaloid Leon is a vocal software synthesizer developed by Yamaha and equipped with sound libraries by Zero-G.

Technologies

Since 2004, Vocaloid software from Yamaha and Zero-G represents a revolutionary technology of vocal synthesis, never accessible before. It's based on complex algorithms transforming simple musical score (melody) and typed lyrics into human-like singing. The software allows composer or sound-engineer to set up a lot of parameters and to draw controller curves to change default singing or achieve the desired sounding. However, this way is more complex than controlling any conventional hardware or software synthesizer or sampler reproducing the sound of a real musical instrument, because human speech and singing are very difficult objects to be modeled.

Alexei Ustinov has long been involved in humanizing electronic music, developing general approaches and specific algorithms. Such program algorithms of analyzing and transforming musical data, applied for Vocaloid software control were used in creating this album. They allowed to increase the expressiveness and to achieve more alive articulation, as well as some special characteristics, which gives Lelik, a virtual artist, his special sounding, not found in Vocaloid software initially. And just this provides Lelik with his singing manner in full measure. You can read more and listen to other sample songs at Jasmine Music Technology.

Participants Of The Project

Alexei Ustinov - music and Russian lyrics
Alexei Kosolapov - arrangement and recording
Alex Yakovlev - English lyrics
Leon - lead and back vocals
Pavel Panfilov - drums
Nikolai Panchenko - sax
Evgeny Zimin - bayan
Anton Ilyashenko and Vassili "b0zill" Antypkin - mixing and mastering

Credits

I would like to thank all the talented people who took part in this project, as well as my friends and colleagues who gave me their support during this work. My special thanks to Elena Tochilkina and Eugene Titkov for their help in creating the concept of the album.

Alexei Ustinov, (from CD liner notes)

Responses And Reviews

Read the listener's comments here

Copyright notice

The following samples are the exclusively copyrighted by Virartech. You can not use them in any way that may lead to monetary gain. Otherwise, copying, public performance and broadcasting of these samples is NOT prohibited, and you can freely use them on your web site, just don't forget to place the link to our site.

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