Joysound, where are you?

When I have time, I like to compose music on the Mac, in GarageBand. I could go on and on about how wonderful this program is, but I'll just say that it allows you a wide latitude of creative ability. You can import existing music files into it to make an arrangement with real or software instruments. With a built-in or external microphone, you can record your playing into it and compose music.

So I was in the middle of composing a violin tune. I started by playing my instrument, recording it into GarageBand, then listening to it. The thought occurred to me that I had heard the tune or a similar tune like it somewhere before.

Not wanting to plagiarize, I went online in search of a free music recognition site. This is a very cool thing. You can record a piece of music to the website, including singing into a mic, which will then come back with one or more tunes that have "pattern matches" or an exact recognition. They'll then give you the title and artist.

The site I chose was www.Midomi.com, a Japanese site that allows you to play or sing your music directly into it.

It came back with no exact matches, but several pattern matches. One was a lovely piece called "Rain," recorded by someone named Joysound. Her clear, sweet voice rang out as I listened, and yes, part of her piece sounded similar to mine, although not exact.

Wow, I thought, looking at her list of recordings, which numbered more than 16,000. This is one prolific gal! I couldn't read her profile, as it was in Japanese. But I couldn't stop playing "Rain," it was so beautiful.

So I thought, I wonder if I can incorporate her piece into mine on GarageBand and make an arrangement of the two of us, her singing and my bowing? This idea excited me, so I decided to try to find out more about her, to see if she was just a hometown gal or some kind of Japanese pop star.

I put her profile in Japanese into an online translator (dontcha just love the Net?), which came back with not very specific information except something about a Yamaha Vocaloid.

Vocaloid? Uh-oh.

I didn't know what a Vocaloid was, but if the suffix "oid" was involved, I had a feeling it was something artificial, as in "android."

I was right. "Joysound" is a machine! She is not a real girl! In fact, she's the name of a company that produces karaoke and other music.

Further research revealed that a Vocaloid is a synthesizer software made by Yamaha that approximates the human voice. Often, the Vocaloid voices are based on those of real singers. It's hugely popular with the karaoke and animé cartoon crowds, who use it to compose soundtracks of animé characters singing. These animé characters are, in their own right, "pop stars." Just go on YouTube.com and put in "animé" as a search term. There are thousands of them.

Let down and disappointed, I tried to find the Vocaloid voice Joysound used to produce "Rain," but none of the ones I sampled sounded like her - I mean, "it."

No collaboration with some sweet Japanese girl in Tokyo, only another droid replacing a human being, a human voice.

It's kinda scary, when you think about it.