~Proceedings ICMCISMCI2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece
Unisoner: An Interactive Interface for Derivative Chorus Creation
from Various Singing Voices on the Web
Keita Tsuzuki*l Tomoyasu Nakano**2 Masataka Goto**3 Takeshi Yamada***4 Shoji Makino***5
* Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Japan
** National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
*** Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Japan
itsuzuki[at]mmlab.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp 2,3{t.nakano, m.goto}[at]aist.go.jp
4takeshi[at]cs.tsukuba.ac.jp 5maki[at]tara.tsukuba.ac.jp
ABSTRACT
This paper describes Unisoner, an interface for assisting
the creation of derivative choruses in which voices of different singers singing the same song are overlapped on one
common accompaniment. It was time-consuming to create
such derivative choruses because creators have to manually cut and paste fragments of singing voices from different singers, and then adjust the timing and volume of every
fragment. Although several interfaces for mashing up different songs have been proposed, no mash-up interface for
creating derivative choruses by mixing singing voices for
the same song has been reported. Unisoner enables users
to find appropriate singers by using acoustic features and
metadata of the singing voices to be mixed, assign icons of
the found singers to each phrase within a song, and adjust
the mixing volume by moving those icons. Unisoner thus
enables users to easily and intuitively create derivative choruses. It is implemented by using several signal processing
techniques, including a novel technique that integrates F0 -estimation results from many voices singing the same song
to reliably estimate Fo without octave errors.
1. INTRODUCTION
Derivative singings, cover versions of existing original
songs, are common in the age of digital music production
and sharing [1]. Many amateur singers sing a same song
and upload their singing voices to video sharing services.
Those derivative singings are called "Me Singing", and 1.7
million "Me Singing" videos have been uploaded on a popular video sharing service YouTubel, and 665,000 videos
have been uploaded on a Japanese video sharing service,
Niconico2. These derivative singings make it possible for
people to listen to and compare voices of different singers
singing the same song. Since derivative singings are so
popular, many (amateur) artists have provided karaoke versions to make it easier to create derivative singings.
Some creators have started creating derivative works of
such derivative singings by mixing (mashing up) them
Copyright: 2014 Keita Tsuzuki et al. This is an open-access article distributed
under the terms of the e Cn;, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original author and source are credited.
1 http://www.youtube.com
2 http://www.nicovideo.jp
Orignal ongsDerivative
Sing
A
singings
i ner
L4mospau-i
Listeners is en
\xx
C k~! } ~
iii\\ Y v. \ti\\\\\\ \\; l \\\\\\ \\\\ t, \\ \\M1
u \ ti \ \ > r D u u a V\ u u y \ j +
Figure 1. Relationship among original songs, derivative singings, derivative choruses, and listeners. Various
singers sing the same song to create derivative singings.
From these singings, derivative choruses are created.
Many listeners enjoy not only the original songs, but also
the derivative singings and choruses.
along with one common accompaniment. We call this type
of music derivative chorus. Figure 1 shows the relationship among original songs, derivative singings, and derivative choruses. Approximately 10,000 derivative choruses
have been uploaded on Niconico, and some derivative choruses have received more than 1 million views3.
Derivative choruses are similar to Eric Whitacre's "Virtual Choir"4. Virtual Choir was created by mixing singing
voices that were purposely recorded and uploaded for this
collaborative choir. In contrast, though, derivative choruses simply reuse existing derivative singings that are not
intended to be mixed with other singings.
Listeners can enjoy derivative choruses in the following
ways:
Listen to different expressions of derivative choruses
Famous original songs tend to have several derivative
choruses. Even if the original song is the same, the
derivative singings used and their arrangement (the way
of mashing up them) are different in each derivative
chorus. Listeners can enjoy comparing such different
singings and arrangements.
Compare characteristics of singers Listening to several
3 A derivative chorus at http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5132988
has more than 1.9 million views.
4 http://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir
- 790 -
0
