Voice conversion: From spoken vowels to singing vowels

In this paper, a voice conversion system that converts spoken vowels into singing vowels is proposed. Given the spoken vowels and their musical score, the system generates singing vowels. The system modifies the speech parameters of Fundamental frequency (F0), duration and spectral properties to produce singing voice. F0 contour is obtained using F0 fluctuation information from training singing voice and music score. Duration of each vowel of speech is stretched or shortened according to the length of the corresponding musical note. To transform speech spectrum to singing spectrum the following two approaches are employed. The first method employs spectral mean shifting and variance scaling method. And, the second approach uses weighted linear transformation method to transform speech to singing spectrum. The system is tested on the database including 75 speech and 30 singing voices sung using vowels. The results show that the proposed system is able to convert spoken vowels into singing vowels with a quality very close to the target singing voice.