So, you've learned about Google's new Blob Opera. It's fun, right? This online machine-learning app is more than just a fun time filler. It has the potential to enable creativity, and can give learners the opportunity to play with the concepts of not only composition, but also arranging, blend and vowel formation, ear training, voice types and ranges, computer programming, and even theory! Here are some ideas for including Blob Opera into your lesson plans.
Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice. Play four opera voices in real time. No singing skills required! Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice. Play four opera voices in real-time. Dec 15, 2020 Or at least, they do in Google's latest machine learning experiment, the awe-inspiring Blob Opera, which will see a chorus of four adorable, colorful blobs serenade you with spine-tingling operatic. Download the Opera browser for computer, phone, and tablet. Opera for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS. Free VPN, Ad blocker, built-in messengers.
Composing
This seems like the most obvious one. It gives the user the ability to record a composition. We often think that a composition has to be written out, but it just needs to be recorded in some form, and that can be an audio recording. This app defaults to an A major tonality and lets the user play with a melody within the parameters of those pitches. Learners could plan out a melody and find those pitches in Blob Opera and compose a short piece of music with them.
Plug in a MIDI controller and things get different. Once the MIDI controller is in, all the chromatic notes become available. The user will have to be comfortable with ranges because each blob will take over if the user is in their range and if there is overlap, there will be a bit of a fight for which blob sings. An incredible learning opportunity for a young choir. Turn on the arpeggiator on your MIDI device and watch what happens! By the way: the blobs are touch sensitive, so the softest touch on your MIDI device will be ‘oooo,' and the heaviest will be ‘AH.'
Blend and Vowel Formation
The blob opera makes it pretty obvious when one of the blobs is not on the same vowel as the others. You can achieve all different vowel sounds with a MIDI device using different velocities. This can be a great way to introduce blending in a choir by illustrating the idea clearly.
Ear Training
Use Blob Opera to help find inner harmonies. The user has the ability to isolate parts within a chord and within the pre-set songs too by turning off particular parts or ‘soloing' out others. Use a MIDI controller to help regulate how loud a particular harmony is. Ear training and learning by ear are much more effective on one's own instrument.
Voice Types
Choirs new to four-part harmony or voice types might find it useful to play with some of the ranges on this to explore the tendencies of each basic voice type.
Arranging
Using their ears or a written melody part, users can input the melody by dragging the mouse (to get the harmonies) and record it when they feel ready. To create the effect of a repeated note, change the vowel sound. Or using a click track and a MIDI controller they could play each part separately (more advanced) and record each part into Audacity with the Loopback feature or a tab recorder like Chrome Audio Capture and arrange their work into a DAW. There is a bit of a delay from when the controller is pressed to when the blob makes the sound but it is pretty consistent and something they could get used to using.
Programming
Learn about machine learning and how to program their own musical experiments using Scratch or start a crash course in Google Machine Learning and guide learners through the machine learning process. Another popular machine learning music app by Google is the Bach Google Doodle.
Common Practice Period Voice Leading
I'm not an expert in common-practice period theory but this app definitely sounds like it attempts to follow those rules. Figure out what chords the blobs are singing and analyze what they are doing. Try not to use 'right' and 'wrong,' instead talk about why something sounded the way it did, because if it sounds good, it is probably fine. Use the arrangements provided with the app or use your own.
Part-singing
Use it to introduce or advance part singing. Input the part into Blob Opera with a MIDI device and record it. After you record the parts together on Blob Opera, you can take out parts and add them back in when needed.
Transcribing
Either by using a pre-set piece or by composing one, have learners transcribe the parts into a standard notation of their choice.
I hope this helps spring some ideas for you and I have a feeling Blob Opera isn't done adding songs or features, so stay tuned on the new ways you and your learners will be able to interact with this web app.
2020 is almost over, and 'COVID-19' coronavirus is still here. With the holiday coming, Google has something in its mind to festive.
And that is by introducing four singing blobs called 'Blob Opera'. Developed by Google and AI artist David Li, it's essentially a machine learning experiment that allows users compose their own operatic renditions through a quartet of colorful singing blobs.
To make use of these blobs, users can simply drag the blobs up and down to change their pitch, while moving the blobs side-to-side to produce a range of vowel sounds.
Google Blobo Opera
And just for the holiday, users can make the blobs recreate Christmas classics such as The First Noel or Joy to the World.
It looks like a simple web application, boasting animations and some rendered voices.
But behind the scene, Blob Opera wasn't easy to build.
The AI that powers Blob Opera was trained with 16 hours-worth of singing from four professionals (Cristian Joel [tenor], Frederick Tong [bass], Joanna Gamble [mezzo‑soprano], and Olivia Doutney [soprano]) By learning from the professionals, Blob Opera uses its AI to synthesize the noises it produces.
'In the experiment, you don't hear their voices, but the machine learning model's understanding of what opera singing sounds like, based on what it learnt from them,' said Google on a blog post..
Long story short, the AI is smart. But Blob Opera isn't at all revolutionary. It doesn't introduce anything much to the table.
In the past, similar AIs were introduced in select video games, with them having the ability to automatically transition music created between two longer pre-recorded pieces, for example. The auto-tuning correcting errors in many pop hits also work on a similar algorithms.
Download Google Opera
Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice. Play four opera voices in real time. No singing skills required! Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice. Play four opera voices in real-time. Dec 15, 2020 Or at least, they do in Google's latest machine learning experiment, the awe-inspiring Blob Opera, which will see a chorus of four adorable, colorful blobs serenade you with spine-tingling operatic. Download the Opera browser for computer, phone, and tablet. Opera for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS. Free VPN, Ad blocker, built-in messengers.
Composing
This seems like the most obvious one. It gives the user the ability to record a composition. We often think that a composition has to be written out, but it just needs to be recorded in some form, and that can be an audio recording. This app defaults to an A major tonality and lets the user play with a melody within the parameters of those pitches. Learners could plan out a melody and find those pitches in Blob Opera and compose a short piece of music with them.
Plug in a MIDI controller and things get different. Once the MIDI controller is in, all the chromatic notes become available. The user will have to be comfortable with ranges because each blob will take over if the user is in their range and if there is overlap, there will be a bit of a fight for which blob sings. An incredible learning opportunity for a young choir. Turn on the arpeggiator on your MIDI device and watch what happens! By the way: the blobs are touch sensitive, so the softest touch on your MIDI device will be ‘oooo,' and the heaviest will be ‘AH.'
Blend and Vowel Formation
The blob opera makes it pretty obvious when one of the blobs is not on the same vowel as the others. You can achieve all different vowel sounds with a MIDI device using different velocities. This can be a great way to introduce blending in a choir by illustrating the idea clearly.
Ear Training
Use Blob Opera to help find inner harmonies. The user has the ability to isolate parts within a chord and within the pre-set songs too by turning off particular parts or ‘soloing' out others. Use a MIDI controller to help regulate how loud a particular harmony is. Ear training and learning by ear are much more effective on one's own instrument.
Voice Types
Choirs new to four-part harmony or voice types might find it useful to play with some of the ranges on this to explore the tendencies of each basic voice type.
Arranging
Using their ears or a written melody part, users can input the melody by dragging the mouse (to get the harmonies) and record it when they feel ready. To create the effect of a repeated note, change the vowel sound. Or using a click track and a MIDI controller they could play each part separately (more advanced) and record each part into Audacity with the Loopback feature or a tab recorder like Chrome Audio Capture and arrange their work into a DAW. There is a bit of a delay from when the controller is pressed to when the blob makes the sound but it is pretty consistent and something they could get used to using.
Programming
Learn about machine learning and how to program their own musical experiments using Scratch or start a crash course in Google Machine Learning and guide learners through the machine learning process. Another popular machine learning music app by Google is the Bach Google Doodle.
Common Practice Period Voice Leading
I'm not an expert in common-practice period theory but this app definitely sounds like it attempts to follow those rules. Figure out what chords the blobs are singing and analyze what they are doing. Try not to use 'right' and 'wrong,' instead talk about why something sounded the way it did, because if it sounds good, it is probably fine. Use the arrangements provided with the app or use your own.
Part-singing
Use it to introduce or advance part singing. Input the part into Blob Opera with a MIDI device and record it. After you record the parts together on Blob Opera, you can take out parts and add them back in when needed.
Transcribing
Either by using a pre-set piece or by composing one, have learners transcribe the parts into a standard notation of their choice.
I hope this helps spring some ideas for you and I have a feeling Blob Opera isn't done adding songs or features, so stay tuned on the new ways you and your learners will be able to interact with this web app.
2020 is almost over, and 'COVID-19' coronavirus is still here. With the holiday coming, Google has something in its mind to festive.
And that is by introducing four singing blobs called 'Blob Opera'. Developed by Google and AI artist David Li, it's essentially a machine learning experiment that allows users compose their own operatic renditions through a quartet of colorful singing blobs.
To make use of these blobs, users can simply drag the blobs up and down to change their pitch, while moving the blobs side-to-side to produce a range of vowel sounds.
Google Blobo Opera
And just for the holiday, users can make the blobs recreate Christmas classics such as The First Noel or Joy to the World.
It looks like a simple web application, boasting animations and some rendered voices.
But behind the scene, Blob Opera wasn't easy to build.
The AI that powers Blob Opera was trained with 16 hours-worth of singing from four professionals (Cristian Joel [tenor], Frederick Tong [bass], Joanna Gamble [mezzo‑soprano], and Olivia Doutney [soprano]) By learning from the professionals, Blob Opera uses its AI to synthesize the noises it produces.
'In the experiment, you don't hear their voices, but the machine learning model's understanding of what opera singing sounds like, based on what it learnt from them,' said Google on a blog post..
Long story short, the AI is smart. But Blob Opera isn't at all revolutionary. It doesn't introduce anything much to the table.
In the past, similar AIs were introduced in select video games, with them having the ability to automatically transition music created between two longer pre-recorded pieces, for example. The auto-tuning correcting errors in many pop hits also work on a similar algorithms.
Download Google Opera
But Google didn't introduce the blobs without giving them some gimmicks to make them interesting.
For example, users can use their own voice to voice the blobs. Users can run a simple pitch tracker of their voice in real-time, and then use the harmonization component from Blob Opera.
When users drag the blobs, the blob with the highest voice will always take the melody while the bassier blobs will do the harmonious groundwork for their star soloist.
What makes the blobs smart, is the way the AI harmonizes the voices in real-time to any new directions.
This kind of feat requires a large dataset of existing harmonies, fed into machine-learning algorithm that can find patterns in that data. To do this, Blob Opera uses a second machine learning model to make the blobs respond to and harmonize users input in real time.
This kind of capability could change the AI music revolution.
Such software is many years away. To really utilize the technology, many more researches about behavioral and neuroimaging modelling are needed.
For Google, the four singing blobs are just the start, and it is its way to end the sorrowful 2020 with a little joy.
