KARACHI: For Pakistani musician Shiraz Uppal, there was only one out-of-the-box solution to what he calls a “dearth of good female voices” in the country: Neha Gupta, the first “Indo-Pak” AI female singer.
Simply put, Gupta is an artificial intelligence-generated entity capable of producing music and vocals. Uppal, a renowned musician, composer and producer, has churned out a string of musical hits that have been popular both in Pakistan and India for the past 25 years.
Some of his popular songs, which have garnered praise across the border in neighboring India, include “Roya Re,” “Tu Kuja Man Kuja,” and “Raanjhanaa.” He owns a studio in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, named S.U. Studios, where he creates music for himself and other musicians.
It was here that Uppal fused music and technology to create Gupta, and decided to use the voice for his son Haadi Uppal’s recent track “Cheti Aa” released last Sunday.
“There is a dearth of good female voices in Pakistan while India is full of female voices,” Uppal told Arab News this week. “So, I decided to create a unique [female] voice that I can use as per my will.
“This hasn’t been done in India yet.”
Pakistani artists, whether they be actors or musicians, have garnered immense praise in India and gone on to become superstars in South Asia. Popular Pakistani artists who made it big in India include Mahira Khan, Fawad Khan, Ali Zafar, Atif Aslam and others.
However, political tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors often mean their actors and singers are banned from working in each other’s countries.
Uppal said he wanted Gupta’s voice to be heard globally, wherever Urdu is spoken.
“If it was a Pakistani, Indians wouldn’t have gotten her to sing for them,” he explained. “If it was an Indian, Pakistanis would not have gotten her to sing for them, given the situation between the two countries.
“For me, art has no boundaries.”
Uppal said Pakistani singers face the dilemma that their appeal among the masses increases tenfold when they work in India, which was why he decided to add Gupta, an Indian name that means guardian in Sanskrit, to Neha.
“Neha Gupta was the first name to come to my mind,” he said.
The Pakistani musician went to work on the voice last year as he wanted to create something “new.”
“It’s easy to recreate existing voices so I thought of creating a new voice,” Uppal said. “It took me around two to three months in the process to train AI how a female singer sings, what’s its timbre and tonality like.”
Uppal said he didn’t want to create a feminine sound like that of famed Bollywood singer Shreya Ghoshal but a rather “raw voice” like other Indian singers Rekha Bhardwaj and Sunidhi Chauhan.
Surprisingly, Uppal used a male voice to create Gupta’s sound.
“A male friend of mine sang in falsetto to mimic a female’s voice that was converted to Neha Gupta’s through AI,” he told Arab News. “Gupta represents a middle-aged woman in her early 30s.”
The singer said people really appreciated her first song “Cheti Aa” which features his son, adding that Gupta’s voice would remain the same and could be used in playback singing for women of different ages.
“I can create 10 more voices but right now, I am waiting for the response I get for Neha Gupta,” he said. “If it’s very good, I would love to create new male and female voices.”
Pakistani musician Shiraz Uppal fuses music with tech to create ‘first Indo-Pak’ AI singer
https://arab.news/njfjv
Pakistani musician Shiraz Uppal fuses music with tech to create ‘first Indo-Pak’ AI singer
- Shiraz Uppal, renowned Pakistani musician, producer and composer, created female AI singer Neha Gupta last year in his studio
- Gupta’s voice has been featured in a duet with Uppal’s son Haadi Uppal in a song named ‘Cheti Aa’ that was released last week
Lebanese singer Fayrouz’s second son dies just months after his brother
- Hali Rahbani’s passing described as ‘painful loss’ to family
- Elder brother, composer Ziad, died in July last year
LONDON: Hali Rahbani, the son of renowned Lebanese singer Fayrouz and her late husband, composer Assi Rahbani, has died at the age of 68.
Lebanon’s Minister of Information Paul Morcos announced the news on X. He described it as a “painful loss for a family that has given Lebanon and the world an invaluable artistic and humanitarian legacy.”
Rahbani’s death comes less than six months after his brother, Ziad, the acclaimed composer and playwright, died at the age of 69.
Hali, who had physical and intellectual disabilities, was confined to a wheelchair and was cared for by his mother. He was last seen in public in July at his brother’s funeral in Beirut, which was attended by thousands of mourners.
Fayrouz, 91, had four children with Rahbani. The elder of her two daughters, Layal, died in 1988 at the age of 29. Her second daughter, Rima, born in 1965, is an artist and singer.
The Rahbani family were key figures in Lebanon’s golden era of musical theater from the late 1950s to 1975.
