With Help From AI, Randy Travis Got His Voice Back. Here's How His First Post-Stroke Came To Be

[TTL News 319]

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“There were certain aspects of it that were not authentic to Randy’s performance,” he said, so he began to edit and build on the recording with engineer Casey Wood, who also worked closely with Travis over a few decades.

The pair cherrypicked from the two models, and made alterations to things like vibrato speed, or slowing and relaxing phrases. “Randy is a laid-back singer,” Lehning says. “Randy, in my opinion, had an old soul quality to his voice. That’s one of the things that made him unique, but also, somehow familiar.”

His vocal performance on “Where That Came From” had to reflect that fact.

“We were able to just improve on it,” Lehning says of the AI recording. “It was emotional, and it’s still emotional.”

Mary Travis says the “human element,” and “the people that are involved” in this project, separate it from more nefarious uses of AI in music. 

“Randy, I remember watching him when he first heard the song after it was completed. It was beautiful because at first, he was surprised, and then he was very pensive, and he was listening and studying,” she said. “And then he put his head down and his eyes were a little watery. I think he went through every emotion there was, in those three minutes of just hearing his voice again.”

 

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You can listen to the song below. Let us know what you think!

 

 

[Kevin 344]

It sounds fantastic, I am glad someone is finally using AI for something useful

[Chris 2,238]

Yeah while I know it’s not really Randy singing per se, if he was in the room and gave the “okay” to use his (past) voice to produce this, I have no problem with it.

Where I’d draw the line is if a singer is deceased but they keep churning out music using AI ( which I keep reading as “AL” 🤪 ) without them.

I really enjoyed this song.