Expressive Singing Synthesis Using Local Style Token and Dual-path Pitch Encoder

Abstract

This paper proposes a controllable singing voice synthesis system capable of generating expressive singing voice with two novel methodologies. First, a local style token module, which predicts frame-level style tokens from an input pitch and text sequence, is proposed to allow the singing voice system to control musical expression often unspecified in sheet music (e.g., breathing and intensity). Second, we propose a dual-path pitch encoder with a choice of two different pitch inputs: MIDI pitch sequence or f0 contour. Because the initial generation of a singing voice is usually executed by taking a MIDI pitch sequence, one can later extract an f0 contour from the generated singing voice and modify the f0 contour to a finer level as desired. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluations, we confirmed that the proposed model could control various musical expressions while not sacrificing the sound quality of the singing voice synthesis system.