Vocal Parts Don’t Have to be Singing Parts
I’ve been writing musical parts, pieces, and songs for a long time. Guitar riffs, chord progressions, piano parts, synth layers, loop arranging… I’ve been into creating things like that for years and years now. It has just been in the last two or three years, though, that I’ve ventured into writing lyrics and vocal parts to songs.
Even then, though, I was striving to search for things that were different. I have and have had the luxury of working with some really good singers and lyricists over the years. I’ve had band mates that have done it, Casey from BHP, my dad is a songwriter, my wife is a songwriter, I’ve had several friends that are good singers… so for me, writing lyrics or vocal lines wasn’t always a necessity for me to complete a good song.
Because of that, when I started writing I felt like I had a lot of room to explore and try weird things, even if I knew they might not be “hit song” material.
Singing? Computers Can Do That?
One of the things I’ve played around with is using Text-To-Speech (TTS) software and/or websites to do vocal parts for me.
I’ll tell you right now that if you experiment with it, it’s not going to sound natural. Don’t really even attempt it if you’re looking for a fair substitution of a real singer. They’re really only good for experimental sounds, weird projects, and “for fun”.
But since I personally love experimental sounds, weird projects, and “for fun” music, I was all over it.
A few months ago I mentioned a song called “Jim’s Acoustic” in a post. That was an example of using text-to-speech software to sing the chorus of a song. I wanted to go a little farther on the next song.
For my musical experiments I often use pieces of muse that me or Jim (James Blair, part of BHP, occasional writer for this blog) have laying around that never got used in anything else. A quick side note, Jim and I write a LOT of stuff, and we record EVERYTHING. What that means is that the best parts and pieces get selected for projects, and the others lay around in a “riff library” that we’ve built over the years. When I’m just trying to experiment with something or hone my lyric writing skills, I often go digging through that library.
I wrote a collection of about 10 “experimental” type songs to riffs that Jim had written over the years, and to challenge myself, I tried to keep the title of the riff that Jim had originally given. “Jim’s Acoustic” was one of those songs, for example, so I wrote the lyrics about Jim’s Acoustic guitar.
Okay, back on track… the reason I brought all that up is because the text-to-speech song that I’m talking about today was another one of those songs. Jim had originally entitled the riff “Falling Behind”, so I wrote the lyrics based around the title Falling Behind.
The verses were done “spoken word” style, but I used a website TTS program (I don’t remember which… there are tons. Just use Google) to record the parts. For the choruses, I used a very simplistic melody and programmed the singing with FL Studio (Image Line FL Studio 9 Fruity Edition Regular)
Here’s the song:
(If you’d rather download it than use the play button, click here)
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Verse 1
——–
Sometimes I feel like I can’t keep up
Like the waves are over my head
I feel like I can’t face the day
Like I should’ve stayed in bedWhen life gives you lemons you gotta make lemonade
Boy, that’s sure easy to say
But the truth is sometimes the lemons taste so sour
That they can ruin any dayChorus
——-
Life keeps throwing me curve balls
I can’t stop falling behind
Life is loaded with pitfalls
I can’t stop falling behind
With hurdles coming my way
I have to stop and pray
Guide me through my life
Stop me from falling behindVerse 2
——–
I know I have to stay calm and keep focused on my goals
And keep the end result in mind
So that I don’t fall off the track in life
So I don’t keep falling behindEven though it’s easier said than done
I know that I can make it through
I can do all things through he that strengthens me
That much I know is true
As you can see, it creates a different sound, but for the musicians out there looking to experiment and find odd and unique sounds, it might be something worth playing with.
Has anyone else ever tried stuff like this?
You’ve binreminded.com –
see
http://www.kakomessenger.com for a singing text service
Great tips, these are useful and this site rocks especially for beginners like myself…
I used TruVoice, which is BonziBUDDY, Peedy and Genie (From Bellcraft MASH) ‘singing’ feature and Sampled each note onto a Creative SoundFont Bank and I used to impress my friends in middle school by making videos of myself making the piano sing words. I used to make it sing Laine Kaminski and Jordan Tyra who were my friends in middle school.