Smule, Inc.

Other

Turner Evan Kirk

Perry Raymond Cook

Tom Lieber

Ari Lazier

Mark T Godfrey

Perry R Cook

Ian S Simon

Nick Kruge

Despite many practical limitations imposed by mobile device platforms and application execution environments, vocal musical performances may be captured and continuously pitch-corrected for mixing and rendering with backing tracks in ways that create compelling user experiences. Based on the techniques described herein, even mere amateurs are encouraged to share with friends and family or to collaborate and contribute vocal performances as part of virtual 'glee clubs.' In some implementations, these interactions are facilitated through social network- and/or eMail-mediated sharing of performances and invitations to join in a group performance. Using uploaded vocals captured at clients such as a mobile device, a content server (or service) can mediate such virtual glee clubs by manipulating and mixing the uploaded vocal performances of multiple contributing vocalists.

Coordinating and mixing vocals captured from geographically distributed performers

A generally diverse set of audiovisual clips is sourced from one or more repositories for use in preparing a coordinated audiovisual work. In some cases, audiovisual clips are retrieved using tags such as user-assigned hashtags or metadata. Pre-existing associations of such tags can be used as hints that certain audiovisual clips are likely to share correspondence with an audio signal encoding of a particular song or other audio baseline. Clips are evaluated for computationally determined correspondence with an audio baseline track. In general, comparisons of audio power spectra, of rhythmic features, tempo, pitch sequences and other extracted audio features may be used to establish correspondence. For clips exhibiting a desired level of correspondence, computationally determined temporal alignments of individual clips with the baseline audio track are used to prepare a coordinated audiovisual work that mixes the selected audiovisual clips with the audio track.

Coordinated audiovisual montage from selected crowd-sourced content with alignment to audio baseline

In some examples, a system includes a first portable computing device that audibly renders a backing track, captures and pitch corrects a vocal performance of a first user, and transmits the first user's pitch corrected vocal performance. The system may also include a second portable computing device including a data communications interface that receives the first user's pitch corrected vocal performance, an audio transducer that audibly renders a mix of the backing track and the first user's pitch corrected vocal performance, a display for concurrent presentation of lyrics temporally synchronized with a vocal score and the backing track, a microphone interface that captures a vocal performance of a second user, and pitch correction code executable on the second portable computing device to pitch correct the second user's vocal performance in accord with the vocal score to produce a composite multi-vocal performance.

Pitch correction of multiple vocal performances

Despite many practical limitations imposed by mobile device platforms and application execution environments, vocal musical performances may be captured and continuously pitch-corrected for mixing and rendering with backing tracks in ways that create compelling user experiences. In some cases, the vocal performances of individual users are captured on mobile devices in the context of a karaoke-style presentation of lyrics in correspondence with audible renderings of a backing track. Such performances can be pitch-corrected in real-time at a portable computing device (such as a mobile phone, personal digital assistant, laptop computer, notebook computer, pad-type computer or netbook) in accord with pitch correction settings. In some cases, pitch correction settings include a score-coded melody and/or harmonies supplied with, or for association with, the lyrics and backing tracks. Harmonies notes or chords may be coded as explicit targets or relative to the score coded melody or even actual pitches sounded by a vocalist, if desired.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Turner Evan Kirk