There is another program that I find very useful when producing learning
tracks for Barbershop songs. That program is
Harmony Assistant
by Myriad Software. Harmony
Assistant, when used with the
Virtual Singer
add-on, is capable of producing very nearly human-sounding vocal tracks. When
the notes are adjusted to the proper Just Intonation tuning using JustChords,
the result is a great starting point for learning a new Barbershop song.
I have written a Harmony Assistant plug-in, available here,
that imports a MusicXML file which has been augmented with tuning info by JustChords
and produces a 4-part song with lyrics, ready for splitting into separate
learning tracks for a quartet or chorus to use. Here is a brief outline
of the process:
- Create a MusicXML file of the song. One free program that is quite
capable of producing a usable file
is MuseScore. This file
can be a "standard" two-staff file with Tenor and Lead on one staff and
Baritone and Bass on another staff, or it can be a 4-staff file. It
should include the lyrics.
- Open the MusicXML file with JustChords and step through it, making
chord selections and tuning tweaks to perfect the tuning.
- If the file is of the two-staff variety, select Split Staves
from the File menu to create a four-stave version.
- Save the file. It will now contain tuning information for each note.
- In Harmony Assistant, select
File->Import->Import MusicXML
With Pitch Bends
(near the bottom of the menu) to open the augmented file.
- Enable Virtual Singer, choose "Virtual Robert" for each voice, select
US English as the language, tweak the voice parameters to minimize vibrato
and scooping (see below), and play the song. You probably will
need to add some pronunciation tweaks to get the words to sound more natural.
- Create separate tracks for each voice. You can do this by soloing one voice
and exporting it as an MP3.
- Combine the separate vocal tracks using
Audacity or
any other Digital Audio Workstation tool. This step can be done using just
Harmony Assistant, but I find Audacity easier.
The process is actually pretty simple, and most of the necessary tools are
free. Harmony Assistant plus Virtual Singer currently (May 2020)
cost only $110 for a lifetime license, including all future upgrades. The other
tools mentioned here are absolutely free. With a little practice, you should be
able to go from a PDF to perfectly tuned learning tracks for a new song with less
than 8 hours of work (estimated).
VirtualRobert
Virtual Singer comes with many different sampled voices. I find that
the one called "VirtualRobert" works quite well for Barbershop, once you
tweak it a little. The changes I recommend are the following:
-
Open the Virtual Singer window. Drag the four little "paper dolls" to
four separate spots on the "stage" so you can select each one. This step
also sets the "pan" position (left to right) and relative balance
(nearness to the front of the stage).
-
Click on the flag icon below each singer and select "US English." The flag
icon will show the American flag.
-
Double-click one of the singers. This opens the "Edit" window. Select
"VirtualRobert" from the list.
-
Click on "Edit voice." In the window that pops up should be five tabs. Click on
the "Vibrato" tab.
-
Set the two parameters, "Rise time" and "Depth" to 0 by dragging the knobs with
your mouse.
-
Click on the "Pitch" tab. In the lower right, under "Drift F0:", set the
"Min time" and "Max time" values to 0 by dragging the knobs with your mouse.
-
Click on "Ok". Click on "Add to list" to save your modified voice to the list of
available voices. Choose a new name; I chose "VirtualRobert-BBS".
-
Use the "<<" or ">>" buttons to select another singer. Click on your newly-added
voice in the list. Repeat for the other voices.
If you find zero vibrato and zero scoop to sound too "robotic," feel free to add
some humanness back in.
SAMPA
You can get Virtual Singer to pronounce a syllable completely differently
from the way it's spelled. I find that I need to "correct" a handful of syllables
in nearly every song. The mechanism for doing this is called
SAMPA.
This notation gives you precise control over the consonants/vowels that Virtual Singer
uses to render a given syllable, if its pronunciation is somewhat off. The SAMPA
notation does not show up in the printed score, so you can still use the same file
for printing, if desired, after correcting the pronunciation.
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