'virtual' Beach Boys?

[modestmaus]

Imagine, it's 10 or 20 years from now and the 'virtual singer' has come a long way from the virtual Japanese-created singers of today. The virtual singer sounds less robotic and more smooth, natural; Various families & estates of certain long passed singers got on board to have virtual versions of said long passed singers. Of course, such things are not without their controversies (who can forget the violent riots of November 2028 incited by release of (virtual) Elvis Presley's "Get Crunk, Lil' Mama"?) but that does not mean there's only a negative side to the whole concept.

And so, thanks to the whole virtual singer shindig, we get a new release of SMiLE and it has complete vocals (or at least what the complete vocals of SMiLE would have likely sounded like, had it been finished in '66 or '67). You go to the 'Do You Like Worms? (Roll Plymouth Rock)'  track and, by golly, it really sounds like the gang circa 1966-ish singing the "Wavin' from the ocean liner" lyrics! And although you naturally have people making their "I don't think Brian Wilson would have used that vocal arrangement had this been originally completed in 1966" points & arguments, as a general rule people who listen to this new 'virtual Beach Boys assisted' SMiLE agree it's pretty damn close to what SMiLE would have sounded like if it had been finished in the mid 1960's.

Okay, back to present time (and reality.   )

Would any of this actually be quite feasible at some point in the future? Or is such a concept on the same level of likelihood as Star Trek technology?

For what its worth, I actually think technologically wise, this is actually quite a likely possibility! What I can't predict though  is if The Beach Boys, their estates and legal teams would go for such a thing. Still, I'd like to believe if the technology was there (and I think it will be someday) The Beach Boys would take advantage of it in such a way.

[Kurosawa]

I'd love to hear Smile finished even if it was just a fan mix flying in BWPS vocals where they're missing, although I guess they'd be in the wrong key. As much as I love TSS, the second and third movements aren't as good without the vocals..or maybe I'm just that used to BWPS.

To be honest Al is so close vocally to his younger self that no electronic trickery would be needed for his parts.

[rab2591]

I'd like to imagine that the Beach Boys legacy will live on throughout man's near-future existence...much like Beethoven or Mozart (whoops, don't mean to offend any musical aficionados with this comparison).

I think their music adapting to popular musical innovations will occur if there is a market. Look at 'Love' by The Beatles - a wonderful album (though some would say blasphemous) - due to technology Martin was able to recreate the Beatles music into a whole new enjoyable sound.

Hopefully one day there will be a kid on mars, in a bio-dome, sitting in his bedroom with a pizzabox sized hologram generator, watching a vintage performance of The Beach Boys from '64. There will be sonic mashups lighting up raves on the craters of the moon with The Beach Boys as a centerpiece (where the smell of the ocean will be technologically replicated for surf tunes, smells of fumes for car songs).

Technology will be so great that audiophiles will be able to hear exact copies of the original warm-sounding mono Surfin USA album.

I imagine there be astronauts exploring the methane oceans of titan whilst listening to 'Cool Cool Water'.

The possibilities are endless! I'm a sci-fi geek so I love stuff like this. Great thread!

[The Shift]

Can't rule anything out these days. When I were a lad you'd've been laughed out of school if you'd talked of miniature phones that slipped in your pocket and could be used at Everst base camp; you'd be called a tosser if you suggested that one day he second brightest object in the night sky would be an international space station; you'd be beaten up and smeared with cow poo for suggesting the Tories would ever win a general election; and girls wouldn't have given you a second glance if you'd suggested that the SMiLE sessions would be released one day in a light-up SMiLE shop box.

I'm willing to bet the farm that, one day, electric sheep will dream of androids, that the Beach Boys will release a double album of doo wop standards with leads handled by Farmer, Baker and Foskett, and AGD will slip up.

[AndrewHickey]

you'd be beaten up and smeared with cow poo for suggesting the Tories would ever win a general election;

They still haven't, yet

As for the original post... it depends.

As far as being able to get the sound of the band's voices, I'd say it's not a trivial problem, but not exactly unsovable. If there was actually a market for such software, my guess is that a small team of ~20 people could come up with something in under five years that would take, say, a recording of me singing and make my voice sound like Carl Wilson's voice. I can see difficulties in doing it, but they're just the kind of difficulty that go away if you throw money and processing power at them.

But it's not just the voice that makes someone a great -- or even good -- singer. Things like timing, microtonal variations, when to switch from chest voice to head voice if you have some notes you can hit in both -- those things are far more important. Someone like Sinatra, for example, didn't have an especially great voice, but he *did* make the perfect (or near-perfect) choices. Compare a vocal from Christian Love with one from Carl. They both have very similar voices, but Carl (at least until he got lazier in the 80s) used his voice with far better effect.

Now programming a computer to make the same *artistic choices* as a specific singer would have made, so that the result actually *sounded like* Carl or whoever, rather than sounding like someone with a voice a bit like Carl's... that, to me, sounds like an Ai-complete problem. Which doesn't mean it's impossible, by any means, but does mean that if you could solve it, there would be much, much better uses of the resulting technology than using it to complete a pop album...

[SMiLE Brian]

I want a full hologram of the TAMI show performance.