Some years back I wrote this to a kind person in Steinberg helping me out. He proposed that I post it in Steinberg Forums. Not the greatest Forum-reader I did not do more about it, but I will try now, and please understand, if I do not respond quickly to eventual posts about this. I actually just want to pass the idea on and hope someone will take it up and do something about it. Here we go -:
Please forgive me, if I - once again-again - try to pass this “next-level”-idea on - hoping that you see my point handling it on to your “user-ideas”-boss and he/she perhaps even landing it on the table of the great Charlie Steinberg himself. LOL
I played and composed music as a happy, little amateur looong before synths, MIDI and DAWs took scene - how wonderful when we suddenly could make it sound like “any instrument” having “unlimited tracks” &.c. - Buuut one thing that I do not have at my disposal - even if the basic technology exists - THE HUMAN VOICE!
So let me just state a few facts and what I would like to see in a future update to Cubase & Halion and via VST to the rest of the world:
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- Yamaha, the owner of Steinberg. has the patent to the Vocaloid system, a rather primitive synth/sample-engine that will sing a text and notation.
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- EWQL too has hacked their - also rather primitive - “word-builder” that will make a “human” voice sing a given text.
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1+2 - Using a simple “pronunciation”-dictionary anyone can sample the basic sounds of any language, & use a simple “word-parser-algorithm” to quickly suggest how to sing a given word by any chosen and sampled/synthesized/modulated singer “singing” it back, just as I can chose a violin, a guitar, or a piano to play back the MIDI-file created in SCORE.
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A. So I would like Cubase to read my Score-file, not just the MIDI-notes but the words written under each note in the Score and sending the text to an instrument (HumVox) that will sing the text aligned to the notation - using some next-level development of Vocaloids f.ex.
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B. Steinberg has now build Dorico and could do a few things - apart from offering cut-down-low-price-versions and cross-grades - to place it better than the competing apps:
- B1. Make it possible to create a videofile showing the playback (as with AVID´s Scorch) just as seen If you play a MIDI file created in Score and press Control/Command R and play in Cubase (I have to use OBS to “screen-capture” Score’s playback in Cubase).
- B2 I know well, that Dorico aims to write the whole arrangement and to print a partiture for the conductor/real players to follow. Fine! But please consider the little amateur, the singer-songwriter, the teacher, the historian, the church-organ-player, the “minnesänger” collecter: all those folks needing just the melody in notation, the chords, and the words (AND an able singer).
SO: 1+2 & A+B: Whilst refining your fine product line please envisage a “bank” of singers ready to sing the words linked to the notation created in Score/Dorico or by some such system as with Vocaloids and the dictionary-solution that I propose (easy to do much more so, than sampling a whole orchestra.)
Kind regards & KUTGW
Per Olsen, Denmark