Blob Opera, another AI-supported music experiment by animator David Li and Google Arts & Culture, allows anyone to compose choral music similar to a professional opera. The AI, a Convolutional Neural Network, learned how to recreate the sounds from more than 16 hours of audio from professional singers.
The game begins in The Grand Blobpera House with anthropomorphized creatures in rainbow colors representing four ranges of voices. The yellow-orange blob (soprano), blue-gray blob (mezzo-soprano), green-teal blob (tenor) and purple-pink blob (bass) stand in a line on the stage. The player must stretch the blob bodies backward, forward, up and down to make them sing.
Backward and forward motions change the sounds of vowels that come out of their mouths. Up and down motions change the pitch of the sounds. The AI also responds by making one or more additional blobs harmonize just like a real choir. If the player wants all four blobs to sing together, for example, they must interact with the soprano blob.
Blob Opera offers more than a fun way to pass the time. A player can record the music they create and share it on social media. The game also features built-in inspirational music based on classic choral and other songs found in specific regions of the world. The player can make the blobs automatically sing Christmas music or show tunes, for example.
