Clear the decks? - Sand, software and sound

Yamaha have announced a truly stellar promotion to move Motif XF workstations. The Motif XF Fully Loaded expansion pack includes a FireWire expansion board, two FL1024M memory modules and an USB drive filled with content including Chick Corea’s Mark V electric piano. (See the promotions page at the Yamaha web site for additional details.)

Wow! This promotion really caught my attention and if ever there was a time to upgrade to an XF, it’s now.

Of course, this aggressive promotion could also mean that a new synthesizer workstation will be announced in the not-too-distant future. Winter NAMM 2016, perhaps? Old inventory has got to go!

After the Reface surprise, I’ve given up predicting specific product features, especially based upon a (rumored) product name. The word “Reface,” for example, means something completely different to a saxophone player and, yes, Yamaha manufacture saxophones and mouthpieces. 🙂 So, “Montage”, harumph. I am willing to predict, however, that the next high-end workstation will have a new member of the Standard Wave Processor (SWP) family — the hardware chip that underlies the tone generation infrastructure. (See Serial Memory and Tone Generation.) This is big step for Yamaha because the current SWP51L, for example, is used in everything from mid-range arrangers, to MOX/MOXF, to Motif, to Clavinova.

Just taking in the gestalt of Yamaha’s recent patent filings, they have been actively building their portfolio in at least three areas: human vocal processing and synthesis (VOCALOID), music analysis and combined MIDI/audio accompaniment.

VOCALOID has been a commercially successful software product. The tech has, by the way, some similarities to the “connective” capabilities of Articulated Element Modeling (AEM), known more broadly as “Super Articulation 2” on Tyros. VOCALOID requires frequency domain signal processing, so unless Yamaha have knocked down some real computational barriers, VOCALOID will probably remain a non-real time synthesis technique.

“Music analysis” is a broad area and a rather vague term. At a fundamental level, this area includes beat (tempo) detection and scale and harmony (chord) detection. I think we already see some of these results at work in the Yamaha Chord Tracker app. Chord Tracker analyzes an audio song. It detects the tempo and beats, and partitions the song into measures. Chord Tracker identifies the chord on each beat and displays a simplified “fake sheet” for the song. Chord Tracker can send the “fake sheet” to a compatible arranger keyboard for playback.

Music analysis also includes high-level analysis such as extracting the high level characteristics of a piece of music. This kind of analysis could allow a rough categorization and comparison between snippets of music (similarity index). We haven’t seen the fruits of this technology (yet), but one could imagine a tool that suggests an accompaniment based on what the musician plays or based upon an existing musical work. BTW, the word “musician” here includes guitarists, woodwind players, etc. and not just keyboardists. The world-wide market for non-keyboard instruments is bigger than the market for keyboard-based instruments. (Guitars alone outsell keyboards nearly 2 to 1 in the United States.)

The third main area of exploration and filings is combined MIDI/audio accompaniment. Up to this point, Motif arpeggios are MIDI-like phrases, not audio. Arranger workstation styles are MIDI (SMF in a Halloween costume). Neither product works with MIDI and audio phrases in a transparent way like the very successful Ableton Live. Yamaha’s patent filings disclose arpeggio- and/or style-like accompaniment using a mix of MIDI and audio phrases. Audio phrases are warped in time and pitch to match the current tempo and key scale.

Now, let’s throw these technologies into a bag and shake them around. Imagine a compositional assistant that analyzes a piece of music (recorded or played live), determines tempo, beats, chord changes and more, and automatically whips up an accompaniment or track. MIDI and audio phrases are selected from a library based upon a similarity index between the reference track and phrases in the library. If this is Yamaha’s vision, then double wow! The combination of these technologies would raise the level of music composition substantially from it’s tedious, point-and-click existence. It finesses the problem of listening to the phrases in the Motif/MOX arpeggio library, selecting the most applicable phrases and combining them. DigiTech TRIO is already sniffing around this territory.

Naturally, patents do not imply product. Therein lies the danger of making predictions.

Which brings me, finally, to US Patent 8,779,267 (July 15, 2014). If someone can explain this patent to me, thanks. The invention seems to analyze an incoming musical signal (using some heavy DSP), generate almost ultra-sonic (>18KHz) “control tones,” and produce a multi-timbral accompaniment or track. Amazing stuff.

The near ultra-sonic technique is already in use. The AliveCor Mobile ECG monitor uses ultrasonic tones to communicate with iPhone/iPad. The AliveCor doesn’t require power-sucking Bluetooth (and its emissions certification.) The monitor runs on a CR2016 battery. The downside, in the case of AliveCor, is that its monitor pad must be near the mobile device for reliable communication.