LaDiDa application from Atlanta’s Khush provides musical accompaniment for the rest of us
By Allan Maurer
Lot’s of us like to sing, but most of us confine our warbling to the shower or singing to the radio in the car. Now, however, thanks to a “reverse karaoke” application for the iPhone developed by Atlanta-based Khush, you can sing into your iPhone and play it back with the kinds of vocal effects that make professionals sound so hot.
Using artificial intelligence, the application, called LaDiDa, analyzes the voice of the person singing into the phone and plays it back with appropriate music.
Love to sing? There’s an app for that. Khush CEO Prerna Gupta sings into her iPhone demonstrating the LaDiDa application.
Prerna Gupta, Khush CEO, chatted with us and demonstrated the application in the lobby of the Atlanta Technology Development Center.
One of Shotput Venture’s firms
Gupta, who says, “I’ve been singing my whole life,” sounded good without any backing. She sang some instantly made-up lyrics into her iPhone, and seconds later, played it back with perfect musical accompaniment.
(Here’s a demonstration see: How it works); for a duet of her singing a Bollywood tune with inventor of the technology Dr. Parag Chorida, director of the Georgia Tech Music Intelligence Lab and Gupta’s spouse, see Bollywood Duet.
The Music Intelligence Lab is working on some of the most unusual projects we’ve heard about anywhere.
LaDiDa is the first product made by Khu.sh
Khush was founded in May 2009 as one of Shotput Ventures first class of eight companies. It raised a total so far of about $129,000 from a Shotput seed investment, a grant from Georgia Tech’s VentureLab, and an angel investment from Rackspace executive Pat Matthews.
LaDiDa is the company’s first product, but likely won’t be its last. It’s already selling briskly through the Apple iTunes store where it sells for $3 and Apple takes a buck of that.
The technology for the application took about two semesters to develop and commercializing it through the iTunes store took only two months.
We can all make music
Gupta says the app “Really pushes what the iPhone can do.” It required considerable testing to get something complicated but light.
Everyone of the eight people on the Khush team have credentials in both music and technology, Gupta tells us.
But many of the rest of us may not be so well trained when it comes to belting out a tune. When we used to do live karaoke, we warned the audience, “People turn off the hot water in the shower when we sing.”
State-of-the-art algorithms analyze the pitch and structure of the vocal input, and use that information to compose a unique accompaniment in real-time that matches the song. Khush is also working on pitch and tempo detection algorithms to help novice singers sound better.
A weird blip in music history
The application uses pitch correction and reverb features to help those who are not natural vocalists.
“Giving people the vocal effects all the musicians use now makes a big difference,” says Gupta.
Khush’s in-house composer, Alex Rae, has developed a collection of rich sounds arranged into different styles, such as E Piano Pop, Rhythm Synth Pop, Dub Tone, Underground Rap, Tasty Breaks and Dirty South.
TechView Atlanta reporter interviewing Prerna Gupta at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center in Atlanta.
”The last 50 years are a weird blip in music history,” says Gupta. Most of the music made in the last five decades has been by professionals.
“But look back and before that, people were making music from the time they were small children. This technology can help people tap back into that very natural thing. You just use your voice and create professional sounding music. I think we’ll see a major transformation over the next ten years.”
Gupta says LaDiDa’s goal is to develop an ecosystem in which artists can sell their styles and generate revenues from their musical content.
”Khush” is a Hindu word that means “happy,” and Gupta says it is appropriate for her company because, “Music is one of the fundamental things that make people happy.”
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