It’s true!!!
Because they were programmed to!
Okay, I know that I normally blog about heavier subjects, but please indulge me in a moment of whimsy.
Recently on my personal blog I did an entry featuring a bit of computer animation I had discovered that offers a fascinating presentation of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (it’s really cool).
But this was not the only animation in the series. There are a lot of them, and one that caught my eye was titled “Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, from Cantata 147 (sung by alien robots).”
Alien robots singing a favorite like Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”? That’s worth checking out.
BTW, here is what the alien robots are singing in German:
Jesus bleibet meine Freude,
meines Herzens Trost und Saft,
Jesus wehret allem Leide,
er ist meines Lebens Kraft,
meiner Augen Lust und Sonne,
meiner Seele Schatz und Wonne;
darum laß’ ich Jesum nicht
aus dem Herzen und Gesicht.
—from BWV 147, Chorale movement no. 10
The usual English translation of this does not correspond with the German text, but here is a more literal translation (source (see no. 10)):
Jesus shall remain my gladness,
Essence of my heart, its hope;
Jesus from all grief protecteth,
He is of my life its strength,
Of mine eyes the sun and pleasure,
Of my soul the joy and treasure;
Therefore I will Jesus not
From my heart and sight allow.
So with no further ado, alien robots sing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”!
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It’s hard to tell if those are completely synthesized voices or if they’re human voices run through a vocoder…I’d be interested to know (just out of curiousity).
Geeky goodness! I love that you find this stuff, Jimmy. Thanks for sharing it.
Is the alien holding a broom?
That does sound like a vocoder… a la Imogen Heap.
So are the robots singing in German for the same reason Buzz Lightyear was speaking in Spanish?
Remember, robots are made of metals smelted from ore, with “brains” of silicon chips and precious metals, and pliable plastic components made from oil gotten from deep in the crust of the earth.
Luke 19:37-40 And now as He was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen.
They proclaimed: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”
He said to them, ” I TELL YOU, IF THEY KEEP SILENT, THE STONES WILL CRY OUT!”
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”!
Ah yes, the classic “Piano Roll View” which has been the mainstay of music sequencing applications since the heady days of Opcode Vision and probably many Atari ST applications before that. It is still alive today, despite challenges from Abelton’s Live (which attempts to, as they have been attempting to do for the last 6 or 7 years, do away with traditional paradigms sequencing altogether, BUT THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED!). The Piano Roll View is here to stay, and I think it will outlive the notes and staff music notation.
Anyway: rotate the classic piano roll view 90 degrees around both the X- an Z-axes and you have your “Guitar Hero/Rock Band” game view.
AND—to answer jpjackson’s question above, they are vocoded human voices, not actual robots (sorry!). If you want to hear the current state of artificially-generated (but not entirely synthesized, as they’re made up of individually sampled, sung phenomes) vocals, look no further than Yamaha/Zero-G’s latest in their (often times HILARIOUS! search YouTube for “Big Al Vocaloid”) “Vocaloid” line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ_9Oz0pPJY
The first truly synthesized voice product I personally used, 7 years ago, (this is apart from “SAM” on my Commodore 64 back in the 1980s) was the always fun “Delay Lama” chanting-monk software instrument: (Air on a G-string) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vvAnKdhiSk
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