piano evoce ß - Sand, software and soundSand, software and sound

EXTRACK is a Yamaha app which hasn’t yet broken surface in the United States. It was released in Japan about five months ago. My guess — Yamaha is in the process of “globalizing” the app for international release, including the subscription Extrack Pass service.

In Yamaha’s own words (translated from Japanese):

Extrack is a music app for iOS and Android that lets you practice and jam with your favorite songs, experiencing the immersive experience of playing along with a real artist. The basic features are free with no expiration date. By paying for a subscription, you can enjoy even more features.

Yamaha is always looking for ways to enhance instrument sales. Extrack is a music-minus-one practice partner on steroids.

Yamaha Extrack stem mixing

Extrack uses stem extraction technology to separate an audio song into individual instrument parts, e.g., vocals, guitar, piano, bass, drums and wind instrument. You can adjust the volume of individual parts and remix the song, either enhancing a part to be learned or suppressing a part so you can take over (minus-one). Yamaha also throws in chord analysis, variable playback speed (tempo change), transposition (key change) and partial repeat.

Here’s the Extrack Quick Start video for ya.

Yamaha keeps getting better at IOS integration. You can analyze songs on your phone (tablet), or songs saved on iCloud drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. Extract handles songs encoded in MP3, AAC and FLAC. Songs from streaming services cannot be loaded (restricted rights). Analyzed songs are stored in an “Extrack Library”. The number of songs in the Extrack Library is limited, but the number can be increased through a paid subscription (Extract Pass).

Speaking of which, only basic app functionality is free. The Japanese Extrack Pass subscription service (available through in-app purchase) is ¥7,000 ($47USD) for one year and ¥900 (about $6USD) per month.

Yamaha Extrack chord analysis

Extrack possesses Chord Tracker-like features. You can choose chord symbol, TAB, keyboard, and notation views. Guitarists will appreciate the CAPO feature. There are a few refinements over Chord Tracker such as the ability to shift the beat in order to align chord changes with bars. (Chord Tracker sometimes loses “the one.”) There is a metronome which syncs with playback.

Like Chord Tracker, Extrack identifies song sections (intro, verse, chorus, etc.) You can navigate within a song by section.

On a different front, Yamaha’s piano evoce ß application has dropped from sight. The dedicated web site is nowhere to be found. Here is Yamaha’s brief description of the application:

“piano evoce ß” is an application that analyzes music data and provides a function that plays back vocal parts in sync with the user’s performance. By connecting a keyboard instrument such as an electronic piano or keyboard to your Mac and playing along with the chords displayed on the application screen, the AI ensemble technology will play back the vocal parts in sync with your performance, allowing you to easily enjoy the feeling of playing in an ensemble.

I captured a little bit of information from the initial announcement.

As I’ve said time and again, Yamaha experiments with technologies and tools with no guarantee that any of it will appear in an actual product. Maybe Extrack aced piano evoce ß?

The Japanese Yamaha site posted information about a new app called “piano evoce ß”. I’m going to quote the site as translated by the Google:

This is an AI ensemble app that extracts the vocal part of your song and plays it back along with your performance. Feel free to enjoy playing together with your favorite songs!

Practicing the assigned songs alone will not increase your motivation. I want a session buddy who can arrange things freely! I want to be able to play my favorite songs with chords!

This software is a beta version service released primarily for technical verification and service experiments. We hope to continue to make improvements based on the opinions of our users.

piano evoce ß appears to be the next evolutionary step in the Chord Tracker family:

1. Connect your electronic piano/keyboard to your Mac via MIDI.
2. Analyze your own songs.
3. Start playing! When you play the chord displayed on the screen, the vocal part will follow your performance.

To use piano evoce ß, you need to register for a Yamaha Music ID account (free of charge).

Now, that’s pretty neat. Here’s my guess: Yamaha combined a vocal stem extractor with Chord Tracker. The screens look very similar to Chord Tracker. Given the reference to “service” and the need to have a Yamaha account, the heavy lifting (vocal stem extraction) is performed by Yamaha software running on one of its servers. There’s a bunch of terms and conditions to read and accept — Yamaha and its friggin’ lawyers.

The app has two ways of following the vocal part (quoting the usual minimalist manual):

Gentle tracking mode: This mode gently follows your playing. The high degree of freedom allows you to arrange and play chords. Even if the performance stops in the middle of a song, the tempo will slow down, but playback will not stop. The AI listens to your chords and sense of rhythm, understands your playing pace, and sings in a way that feels natural to the AI. Avoid sudden tempo changes, and try playing together to create an ensemble.
Perfect tracking mode: This mode waits and follows your performance. It will wait until you play at least one note that makes up the correct chord. AI will play according to the timing of your performance. Be sure to play in time with the chord changes.

Can’t wait to try this! I’m guessing it will be available for Clavinova digital pianos and Yamaha arranger keyboards. Bad news for Windows users: “piano evoce ß can be used with macOS 12.0 or higher”. Not a word about Windows.

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Yamaha Extrack playing partner

Ain’t no April Fool: piano evoce ß