The David Lee Roth Isolated Vocal Track Piano

Oh god. Oh god, it's running.

My second attempt (previously) to pay homage to Peter Ablinger's amazing speaking piano!

The sounds you're hearing are Diamond Dave's singing/emoting transformed into MIDI events and played back with a piano sound. None of the original sound is mixed in -- any words (or woos or growls) you might hear are a product of the analysis-resynthesis process, with your brain filling in the missing details.

Enjoy!

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posted by speicus (17 comments total)

The lyrics, as if you don't already know:

Oh!
Oh, yes!
Yeah, Yeah!
Ah, yeah!
I live my life like there's no tomorrow
and all I've got, I had to steal
Least I don't need to beg or borrow
Yes I'm livin' at a pace that kills

Oooh, yeah
Ahh!
Ahh-hah! Yeah!
Woo-hoo-oo!
I'll tell ya all about it

I found the simple life ain't so simple
When I jumped out, on that road
I got no love, no love you'd call real
Ain't got nobody, waitin' at home

Ah, yeah-ah!
God-damn-it-baby-you-know-I-ain't-lyin'-to-ya
I'm-only-gonna-tell-you-one-time-ahh-yeah!
Yes I am! Yeah!

Ah-hah!
Woo!
(whistle)
Woo!

You know I, I found the simple life
Weren't so simple, no
When I jumped out, on that road
Got no love, no love you'd call real
Got nobody, waitin' at home

Ah, yeah!
Oh god, oh god I'm runnin'! Ah, yeah!
Uh! Uh! Run on one more time!

Ha-yeah!
Oh, yeah! Ya-yeah!
Woo! Woo!
Ah-ha, yeah! Ah-ha, yeah! Ah-hah, yeah!
Ooh!
posted by speicus at 11:04 AM on October 12, 2009

wicked rawk awesome.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:40 AM on October 12, 2009

Excellent. Now if only you could find someone to play it live. Can you slow down the tempo without losing intelligibility?
posted by umbú at 11:53 AM on October 12, 2009

Unfortunately, I don't think I can slow it down... the trick relies on playing scads, veritable oodles of notes per second. I could modify it to create a piano accompaniment though, which I might do someday if I feel like ripping off Ablinger again.

Also, I added this to the mefi music challenge. This counts as a "scary song," right?
posted by speicus at 7:02 PM on October 12, 2009

Holy crap.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:22 PM on October 12, 2009

That's some nutty stuff, very interesting. It also prompted me to finally check out the original MeFi post and the videos about Ablinger's speaking piano, so thanks for that.
posted by edlundart at 10:02 PM on October 12, 2009

Wow, it seems like slower singing in that initial verse's register is much more discernible. Good work. Now all we need is some SongSmith all up in that background.
posted by spiderskull at 8:57 PM on October 13, 2009

Fanfuckingtastic, sir. Is the processing getup basically plug-and-play for random input files at this point, by chance? I can think of a couple bad ideas that this would be useful for.
posted by cortex at 11:07 AM on October 14, 2009

You should make an AU/VST plugin that does this.
posted by umbú at 1:46 PM on October 14, 2009

cortex: Thanks! Yes, it can take any wav/aiff input. I wonder if your bad ideas are similar to mine?

umbú: Good point... I should get pluggo one of these days...
posted by speicus at 8:15 PM on October 14, 2009

I can actually hear the timbre of DLR's voice through the piano. It's fucking scary.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:03 AM on October 20, 2009

Your results sound better than the clips from the FPP.
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 11:28 PM on October 20, 2009

In the original post subject's defense, building an 88-key mechanical triggering system to actually play an upright piano is a hell of an undertaking and in large part what that particular project was about.

Both are awesome, with somewhat different goals.

Yes, it can take any wav/aiff input. I wonder if your bad ideas are similar to mine?

One of my bad ideas involves piping Laurie Anderson tracks through it.
posted by cortex at 7:04 AM on October 21, 2009

Also in Ablinger's defense, my version has a very fast rate of attack that is probably not possible on an actual mechanical piano.

So I discovered that Max 5 can no longer make VST plugins (boo hiss), but if I rebuild this in SuperCollider, I can make an AU plugin. This may take a while, but with luck you'll have your granulated Laurie Anderson someday soon.
posted by speicus at 7:31 PM on October 21, 2009

This is so, so awesome. I love the screamy parts the most.
posted by evisceratordeath at 6:41 PM on October 25, 2009

What's playing the samples? If it's just FM synthesis, try Timidity, which uses wavetable synthesis sample-based synthesis. It'll sound more like a piano.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:16 PM on December 11, 2009

It's just the standard DLS synth that's built into the Mac OS, which I think is sample-based.
posted by speicus at 8:57 PM on January 30, 2010