I was at choir practice yesterday and I can hear it when someone in my section - the altos - is not singing the right notes. Usually an alto singing wrong notes is singing lower rather than higher.
It seems to me that anyone inclined to sing higher seeks to be a soprano. But that doesn't spare them when they sing wrong notes as I expect sopranos singing the wrong notes also sing lower. This is called "tone-shy" compared to tone-deaf and people seek a "comfortable" pitch which generally is lower than the intended note.
This morning the Globe and Mail had an article on how call centres are using AI to change the accents of customer service centre representatives. That's to make them more understandable to "us." What do you make of that? First that they are still using real people, and second they can alter their voices in real time. To me it seems like science fiction.
We shouldn't be surprised. They already do that with celebrity singers in need of pitch correction. Auto-tune became famous when Cher used it for a stylistic vocal effect on Believe. It is now standard practice.
Not surprisingly, the article says that Justin Bieber uses auto-tune. How do I know it isn't surprising? I remember him as a teenager singing outside the Festival Theatre in Stratford and he sang so badly that Rick thought someone should put him out of his misery. It may be that Rick offered to do the job.
So would auto-tune be usable for our sopranos who have difficulty with those high notes? My guess is yes. I see them all hooked up with tubes and little iPhone sorts of machines on their laps. I guess I am inclined towards a science fiction sort of motif.
My complaint about wrong notes goes nowhere - I can't expect it to help the wrong note singer. It says it cannot fix singing that is extremely off-key. Still in the science fiction motif my answer is this: Wait a few days, and AI will have something to completely replace the singer in real time. We'll just stand there.
Would people be tempted to change their voices? This seems like a lazy way to do it - rather than elocution lessons. Get accents that are considered attractive, remove unattractive accents, change the pitch and emotion of voices and so on. I expect it has already started.
Will there be actual 'real-time' people in the future?
Are you ready for some giant exotic Trilliums? These were in Marion Jarvie's garden on the weekend. They are known as Giant Trilliums. Maybe it is Trillium chloropetalum var. giganteum ‘Alba’ - the flower petals stay vertical and don't open up like the Grandiflorum.
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