Reply #12: Judging from the responses in this thread...

[Shandris]

...I'm going to assume most of you are not familiar with Vocaloids?

Vocaloids is, in a brief nutshell, the search to blend software and art in the formation of music. It's starting by mimicking, then will move more and more towards 'creation' by recognizing patterns that bring responses from audiences and piecing them together. It's tremendously huge in Japan. Wiki it if you're bored.

I should add, while Vocaloids are an amazing example of technology, I too feel that music is an art and that eventually, people will come to the realization that it isn't the perfection of sound that makes music, but the tiny flaws in it. Those flaws carry with it the emotion, the intensity, the...LIFE of music. I can always remember my dad telling me about Joe Cocker's voice at Woodstock, and what he seems to remember most was the way it cracked and warbled near the beginning (apparently from the coke, my dad says), but its that flaw that brings that 'look' to his eyes when he thinks back.