Vocaloid

Thankfully the days of recording vocals are coming to a close now that Vocaloid is on the scene:

VOCALOID allows song writers to generate superb authentic-sounding singing on their PCs by simply inputting the words and notes of their compositions. The software synthesizes the sound from "vocal libraries" of recordings of actual singers, such as those being developed by Zero-G, and retains the vocal qualities of the original singing voices to reproduce real-sounding vocals. VOCALOID also features simple commands enabling users to add expressive effects, and as it runs on Windows-based PCs, amateur enthusiasts as well as professionals can now enjoy creating music with great-sounding vocals.

There's a demo MP3 here of Vocaloid synthesizing a line in Japanese. It's pretty damn impressive. I'd like to hear an English demo though, I can't tell how badly it's mangling the language.

Good to see folks other than me are still interested in replacing all artists with robots. I will name them artbots.