Behind the music: PureSolo gives karaoke a revamp
Helienne Lindvall - The Guardian Newspaper
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/jul/02/behind-music-karaoke

Some of the best music services are created by musicians. That applies to PureSolo, which could inspire serious young musicians and revolutionise karaoke too.

Not a week seems to goes by without some new 'innovative' music venture entering the market. Often, once I dig deeper into their business models, it turns out the artists whose music is essential to the services get screwed one way or another. I tend to think that the ones that get it right are usually the brainchildren of musicians themselves (Benji Roger's Pledge Music is a good example).

Another one I've come across recently is PureSolo. Basically, it's an online platform where users can record themselves over a track (they currently have around 26,000 of them), burn it onto CD, share it on social networking sites, attach it to emails etc without worrying about copyright infringement. The site provides free software to download: a browser plug-in, which allows you to record over the tracks. I was surprised at how good the sound was, even when I used the computer microphone instead of lining an external one directly into the computer.

You can pick the instrument (there are 20 options) you want to play – anything from guitar and piano to oboe, recorder and, of course, the voice – then find a version on the site that has that instrument taken out of the track, download it (prices range from 49p to £1.99 per track) and record it locally. Before you record on top of the track you can't take it anywhere else, but there's no DRM on your own recordings. You can record an unlimited amount of versions without having to pay any more, and there's no time limit.

One of the founders, John Thirkell, is a professional horn player. He started out with Level 42, decades ago, and has since worked with George Michael, Tina Turner, Jamiroquai and hundreds of other recording artists. Perhaps that's why PureSolo made sure to get licenses for everything on the site before launching. It's probably also why it made sure it was useful for aspiring musicians, who can use their page to identify themselves on Google.

You have the option of having the sheet music or the guitar tabs displayed as the track plays and you can scroll through the pages if you want to practice a particularly difficult section (there's a tutorial section on the site). Once you've recorded yourself you can add effects, like reverb, do a live mix, name it and save it, after which you can do whatever you like with it – though, if you want to sell it, PureSolo makes it clear that the user has a mechanical royalty obligation and provides a list of local collecting societies. The first thing users tend to do is post it on the site and allow people to vote on it.

The site runs competitions, and currently there's a Mark Knopfler one running until August. Knopfler has gone into the studio and remastered three of his original tracks, stripping out the guitar. Entrants can either replicate the original guitar or put their own slant on it. First prize is a one-on-one mentoring session with Knopfler (though the site users vote, a panel chooses the winner), including air travel and two-night stay at a five star hotel. The runner-up will receive a Fender Guitar, courtesy of the National Guitar Museum in the US.

The part of the site that will attract the most users, I suspect, is the karaoke section. One of the features is the option to video yourself while recording and, browsing through the pages, I swear I must have seen some future X Factor auditionees. I was mesmerised by Emer Shovlin. What she lacked in talent she made up for in enthusiasm as she videoed herself doing I Gotta Feeling and It's Raining Men. Few people, however, have taken advantage of the opportunity to really go to town with the video feature. It seems obvious to me that people could use it instead of Karaoke at a party, and post the resulting videos on YouTube.

Apparently, PureSolo has picked up on an emerging trend to use 'proper' instruments instead of the old Rock Band/Guitar Hero plastic ones that barely resemble them. At the games industry's recent E3 show in LA, Rock Band 3 revealed a keyboard and a guitar controller which is a fully functioning guitar. The Harmonix team has also teamed up with audio signal processing company iZotope to add real-time pitch correction to Rock Band 3 – a technology that is used by quite a few pop artists (I won't mention any names) when they sing live. This feature does not exist on PureSolo, so far. Maybe Thirkell is too much of a musician to endorse that sort of voice manipulation. Or maybe he, like me, thinks half the charm of Emer Shovlin's version of If I Were A Boy is the wonkiness.
Submitted by David on 04-07-2010

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