CT-S1000V, singing synth from Casio

Looking in the back of the manual on pages EN-351 and EN-352, Casio lists copyrights for five open source libraries for vocal synthesis and vocal singing. A considerable amount there lists work done at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. There are web links there if you would like access to the code.

One of the copyrights is for Sinsy, ( wiki page on Sinsy ), which takes a MusicXML file and generates a WAV file. Supposedly there is an on-line version of Sinsy, to create singing audio. Sinsy only supports Japanese and English, though there is a Mandarin version as well.

ADDED : Someone with the skill and with a significant amount of work could probably port some combination of this code to run on a computer like a Raspberry Pi.

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I’m interested in an arranger thread/DM group. Roland was very wise in marketing the Jupiter Xm as a pile of synths with an Intelligent Arp rather than an arranger keyboard, but I’m pretty sure it’s an arranger keyboard for us. I would like to smash my ignorance on this topic.

Yes !!! I’m quite unaware as well.

Yeah that is the trouble for me… like if they had just put all the effort into making a pure vocal synth it would have been way up my alley, as it is I am sure it would be fun but not really something that would make sense in my studio space. Feels like a bit of a half step, maybe it will like some fire under yamaha to put out a proper hardware version of vocaloid. Then again I am not totally sure hardware vocal synths really need to be a thing considering there are a lot of things about them that makes far more sense on a computer.

I wish they could have made it look as nice as the CT-S1.

No:

image

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Found this list of seven computer based software packages that generate sung lyrics, that are alternatives to Sinsy.

https://alternativeto.net/software/sinsy/

ADDED :

The seven software alternatives to Sinsy :
  • VOCALOID
  • DeepVocal
  • Emvoice
  • UTAU
  • Chipspeech
  • RenoidPlayer
  • eCantorix
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This guy is a challenger to Jukka for the title of Supreme Geek Over the Voice Technology. He went and looked up every single piece of software technology he could find on this thing.

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/casio-speech-synthesis-technology/

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Thanks for that link GovernorSilver ! I feel honored by the title, but Paul Drongowski, is the real deal. ( I actually had followed the links in the Casio manual, and peeked at the code, but figured best to hold all that detail out of my post. )

In the link you gave, toward the bottom, he has another link to a list of recent Casio Patents relative their musical products. Also he details the technology they use in their products, like the custom LSI processors, etc. Impressive engineering and design !

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Spooky performance utilizing the Ghost voice setting and incorporating live human vocals

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Following on now for a trio of performance videos. Here’s a pop song from the Kazakh electronic dance music producer Imanbek performed with the S1000V.

At 35 seconds notice the use of the “Death Voice” ( ? ), chording in the lower register a “threatening” nonsense phrase. That’s the start of the sorts of vocal incantation usage i might expect with a S1000V.

EDITED.

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Some of you might recognize Rich Formidoni from his days with Korg. Here he answers questions as a Casio product manager. There some demo of the effects and the assignable control knobs. When asked “who is your target market”, he included “experimental musicians”. I’m surprised he didn’t bring up the non-singing professional lyricist/songwriter like Pete Sinfield or Bernie Taupin.

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Links to timestamps of interest (well my interest, maybe not yours) from the Casio livestream video that was posted earlier:

Demo of less robotic voices - more Mellotronish sound, plus use with arpeggiators

Demo from Indonesia featuring some gamelan sounds

How to turn the onboard speakers off when it’s connected to $5000 Genelec monitors

Benn Jordan releasing music on Github - ok, OT but the idea of putting your music in a repo and letting people branch off of it appeals to some geeks.

Vocals with ring mod and parameter tweaking

Registrations - what they are, using them, etc

Rhythm variations and what DSP FX can and can’t be applied to

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Bought. Just got the dispatch notice. Should have it by Monday.

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Thanks for putting this together!
I really like what this thing is capable of. The same engine in an elektron digi format would be my dream machine. Right know, its too big and seems a bit too cumbersome with the app for me.

…wow…casio’s coming back !?

my very first intrument was the vltone1…this white pocket calculator mini keyboard thing…
and my first full size keys instrument was some casio vl 501 with brown plasic wood finish…
and within my first electronic band approach, we bought one of their first kind of serious synth…

and if THIS thing would also cover the realtime vocoder terretory, i swear, it would be a no brainer for me… :wink:

With the low price, this could be a candidate for a Heartbreaking Cutdown, turning a keyboard into a module, like i posted about in another thread.

Maybe it’s not possible, and surely a lot of work, but it’s probably less work than porting and adapting open source software to stand alone hardware as i mentioned up-thread.

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The keyboard chop-off idea might work, but one would have to take a close look at the MIDI implementation chart in the manual to make sure all the functions you want are accessible over MIDI. There seems to be a decent selection of MIDI CCs.

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There’s nobody here (yet) who deserves this response, but I saw it elsewhere and thought it was hilarious

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