Australian IT
Rapping Along in Replication
by Unknown 08.01.06
COMING soon to a mobile phone or iPod
near you: hip-hop stars such as Puff
Daddy (aka P. Diddy), Mary J. Blige and
TI rapping in flawless German, French,
Japanese and Spanish.
A proprietary speech conversion system
can produce their voices in any language
spoken in any of the global markets for
their music, branded clothing, ringtones
and other lifestyle extensions.
The system, called Voxonic, replicates a
voice in any desired language. It's
already used in limited applications,
such as film dubbing and corporate
communications.
A chance encounter in April between the
white, middle-aged software executive
who developed Voxonic and a black
hip-hop entrepreneur has prompted them
to shift focus to the more glittery -
and, they hope, far more profitable -
world of spoken-word music.
"This is the most significant innovation
in rap music since digital sampling was
introduced in the middle 1980s," says
Andre Harrell, a music industry veteran
credited with discovering Blige and
founding Uptown Records.
Harrell recently became a partner of
Fred Deutsch, founder of Voxonic, which
is the name of both the system and the
company that has been developing it
since 1998.
"We think we're on the edge of something
big," Harrell says. "The amount of
revenue this can generate is
unbelievable."
Harrell then plugged his iPod into a
speaker system and played Baby, by the
rapper Fabolous, switching between
English and French.
Other than the change in language, there
was no discernible difference between
the two recordings. Harrell also played
Bring 'Em by TI, first in English and
then in Spanish, to similar effect.
Voxonic may not be embraced by everyone
in the music industry as
enthusiastically as it has been by
Harrell. After all, he will become an
equity partner in the company if it
takes off, as he believes it will.
"Rappers take new technology and make it
their own," he says. "There are 10
million young people standing behind me,
ready for this."
Harrell got his first taste of the
technology earlier this spring when he
was spotted by Deutsch's son, Arie, at a
7-Eleven store on Long Island. An avid
rap-music fan, Arie Deutsch asked
Harrell to listen to the product on his
iPod. The sample, which can be
downloaded from the company website,
features Bill Clinton delivering his
inaugural address in 1993 and appearing
to switch between English and Spanish.
The Deutsches had been pitching Voxonic
to corporate chief executives who wanted
to address global staff in their own
voices.
Harrell proposed a different use of the
technology.
Voxonic works by taking speech patterns,
recorded during 15 minutes in a studio,
and breaking them down into the phonemes
that compose an individual voice. A
second performer, fluent in the desired
language, then records the entire lyric,
mimicking the star's vocal patterns.
The Voxonic technology aligns the two,
resulting in vernacular speech that has
a "99 per cent level of accuracy" in
replicating the original speaker's
voice.
Currently, the technology can work only
with the spoken word, although Fred
Deutsch says the ability to replicate
singing - such as opera - is "not far
off". Harrell describes himself as the
company's chief emissary.
Deutsch admits the Voxonic technology
could raise complicated copyright and
artists' compensation issues. The
technology is currently awaiting
protection from the US Patent and
Trademark Office.
Bloomberg
The Australian
