Larynxophone: using voice as a wind controller

In the context of music composition and production using MIDI sequencers, wind instrument tracks are built on the synthesis of music scores that have been written using whether MIDI keyboards or mouse clicks. Such modus operandi clearly handicaps the musician when it comes to shape the resulting audio with the desired expression. This paper presents a straightforward method to create convincing wind instrument audio tracks avoiding intermediate MIDI layers and easing expression control. The method stands on the musician ability to mimic, by singing or humming, the desired wind instrument performance. From this vocal performance, a set of voice features are extracted and used to drive a real-time crosssynthesis between samples of a wind instrument database and the musician’s voice signal.