Celebrating the Final Starry Court Member: An Interview with Eclipsed Sounds
The stars have aligned for fans of Eclipsed Sounds as the final member of the beloved Starry Court series, NYL, makes their debut. After a journey filled with passion and celestial inspiration, this release marks the culmination of their first Synthesizer V vocal line-up project.
In celebration of this occasion, we sat down with the talented team behind Eclipsed Sounds to talk about their experience while working on the Starry Court.
Greetings to the team of Eclipsed Sounds! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us. We really excited to talk about NYL and the whole Starry Court project. But before we get into all that, could you all introduce yourselves to the readers?
Hello! I’m Elijah (he/him), also known by the producer name ‘khanadee’. I’m the founder of Eclipsed Sounds, a co-owner with Taylor, and the CFO! Sometimes you’ll spot me responding to questions to our contact forms.
Hi! I’m Taylor (they/she/he), I’m also one of the members of Eclipsed Sounds since SOLARIA’s crowdfund, back then I was the Lead Developer and currently I’m the CEO and a co-owner with Elijah! I’m also still-acting Lead Developer. If Brielle or Elijah didn’t catch your email inquiry first, you probably have spoken to me there! I also frequent casual vocal synthesis spaces under the username ‘celestrai’ - but please don’t ask me about work there!
Hey! I’m Brielle (she/they), and I’m the Outreach Lead for Eclipsed Sounds! I’m the one that’s sending emails and scouring the internet for people for us to work with. I’m always trying to keep an eye out for everything going on online - you might catch me in more casual spaces as ‘onairic’ on my personal account!
Congratulations on completing the Starry Court! It must be a mix of excitement and sadness now that the project has reached its final release. How do you all feel about this milestone? Can you share some of your most memorable moments while working on the project?
I’m trying not to think about the fact that it’s over now at least for a few more months! I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of this project. I moved around a lot as a teen, and kind of grew up in the vocal synthesis community online because of that, and we really focused this project on trying to create a series of vocals that would meet the needs and requests that longtime vocal synthesis users had been making for years. I hope that that much is clear at this point with the whole set out now!
Some of the most memorable moments were - in the beginning, right after the crowdfund launched I was at my college graduation, and I was sitting and waiting to be called up to walk across the stage and I was answering people’s questions about the crowdfund while hiding my phone underneath the graduation program! My other teammates were watching the graduation stream when I walked the stage - that was a really special moment, it still reminds me we were really all in it together, even back during the most stressful time! Niamh and Elijah also flew out to pack the SOLARIA crowdfund orders with Brielle and I back when we lived in Nebraska, and that was such a wild time, every surface in the apartment was covered! Otherwise - for every vocal, the first time we hear them, and the first time that we get to share them with everyone are always such special moments. I think with every voice, there has been a moment where the first person will say: “this is the voice I’ve been waiting for!” and that always sticks with me, I hope everyone who has ever felt this way knows that everything Eclipsed Sounds does is for you.
It’s so incredible to me we’ve been able to achieve all that we have. It was all a little bit of being in the right time and the right place, and a whole lot of trust in us. Sometimes I still stop and think, “wow, we did that.” I’m really excited about where we go from here, but we’ll never actually leave the Starry Court behind.
I think each vocal had its own most memorable moments. For SOLARIA, the first time we heard her AI database. Kanru Hua (founder of Dreamtonics) sent us her singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” as a sample before we received her installer. We were all floored with how real she sounded - and also laughing so hard at the choice of song. With ASTERIAN, just how deep his voice was able to reach. For SAROS, the implementation of Spanish! And last but certainly not least, NYL’s rap vocal modes. I’ve probably used them in every single thing I’ve created with NYL.
It’s so crazy to think that this all began only two years ago with SOLARIA! I think it’s incredible that we’ve been able to complete the Court and make a full set of vocals that people can enjoy! I feel so grateful to be a part of this team and to the community for supporting us along the way!
One moment that initially sticks out to me is the first time I heard ASTERIAN after he was finished. I wasn’t a part of SOLARIA’s development, so after working on labeling Eric Hollaway’s samples, I was floored with how ASTERIAN was just Eric inside my computer! I still get that feeling every time another one of our voices is finished.
Looking back, is there anything you personally wished you could have added or developed further in this project but couldn’t due to time or other constraints? Or do you feel like you achieved all of your goals?
Maybe very small, but we were working towards a vocal mode for NYL that we didn’t get to implement due to lack of data for that style. Otherwise, I think we achieved our biggest goal; to create a group of vocals that fill the niches that have been truly lacking within vocal synthesis products.
As a small team, I feel that all of us are close enough that if there’s something we really want to aim towards, we discuss it ahead of time and see it through best we can! The only thing I can think of not achieving due to time is adding more low range data to SOLARIA, which was an update we were considering for a while.
I have a few other things I think we could have done if time and budget weren’t as much of an obstacle - but I’ll save those on our end. I would like to think that if we don’t admit defeat other things may still be possible!
Were there any unexpected challenges during the development process that specifically changed the course of the project?
Getting a little personal, I had major health problems going on during ASTERIAN’s development and, in my own words, may as well have been on an unofficial break. I think a lot about how I wish I could go back and help more, given how even the Synthesizer V Studio engine needed to be updated to truly capture his voice. He’s as unique as a vocal could possibly come and I’m so happy to see how loved he’s been.
Luckily no difficulties have changed the course of our voice productions significantly. The true worst thing we’ve ever had to do was our website migration, since it had to be done unexpectedly due to an undisclosed code change from our previous website provider that stopped our custom automatic activation code delivery system from working. I spent 3 months getting that system to work and the site host suddenly changed the way things function on their platform without any changes in documentation - I’m still upset about it! For our vocals - ASTERIAN’s development was definitely difficult due to personal issues the rest of the team faced at that time - we had to bring on Brielle to get him done in time in the end, and otherwise a lot of his work I did solo, like his design, audio processing, and the majority of his data labeling while onboarding and training Brielle. I just hope that that sort of perfect storm of difficulty never comes back for a vocal in the future!
We had many things that caused us to have to pause or reroute development along the way, from hurricanes to family emergencies. Taylor and I moved across the country in May of this year, and so we were cutting things close with parts of NYL’s development! Like Eli, I’ve also dealt with a myriad of health issues over the past years, and sometimes that can be challenging even now. Overall, I’m just happy we can get our vocals out to everyone!
On a scale from 0 to 10, how would you rate the complexity of developing each vocal?
I don’t think I have a single bone in my body for creating designs, so that was really complex to me. Nonetheless I did my best to contribute! We all brought little bits and pieces and everyone’s contribution is still helpful in the end even if that specific part of development isn’t everyone’s primary focus. For the actual dev work, I mostly work on the data labeling; I’m a little too thorough with adding the lyrics in before we actual label the voice. I think I’ve spent up to two hours doing this with just one song!
Each vocal had their difficulties; SOLARIA was probably…a 4 or 5? Mostly because we were so new to the development at that point. For ASTERIAN, also a 5. From here it just goes up! SAROS and NYL both get an 8. Each vocalist sings things so differently that you can’t always carry what you did for one to the next!
The work I do on our vocals is mainly labeling their data, so my opinions are based solely on that! For SOLARIA, I wasn’t part of ES at the time of her development but I’m sure the first vocal was pretty hard on them. ASTERIAN: 5. SAROS: 7. NYL: 8. In regards to other types of development like design, SOLARIA was primarily designed by our former teammate Niamh, ASTERIAN was mostly designed by Taylor, SAROS by everyone, and NYL by myself. They each presented their own unique challenges!
SOLARIA was about a 4 on the difficulty scale, all of the difficulty from my point of view was picking up audio processing on-the-fly for her recordings, so maybe my part of the development was a 6 level difficulty, but everyone else picked up the data labeling process super quickly and worked on her pretty flawlessly. ASTERIAN’s difficulty was probably higher, at about a 6 or 7, but primarily due to the timing issues with his recording (Eric Hollaway had to evacuate for a hurricane in the middle of the process) and with the additional work that had to be done for Synthesizer V Studio’s engine to handle how uniquely deep his voice is. I mostly feel bad for the additional work we put Dreamtonics through there - I hope they know how much we appreciate them!
I think SAROS was beyond the most challenging vocal, I would probably rate them an 11 if I could. With help from AkuP and our other Spanish language consultants it was possible, but I don’t think I ever want to go through that sort of development juggernaut again. While our work on Spanish probably helped it happen for Synthesizer V Studio, I think we will leave work on any additional languages to Dreamtonics for the time being if any more opportunities come up. Our team is just way too small to bring those sorts of changes without a great deal of funding behind the work, especially with me as the sole programmer! (That being said - I would love an opportunity to get back in and make a few last adjustments)
NYL was difficult for similar reasons to ASTERIAN - there were unexpected technical and availability difficulties with recording, I would put them at about a 7 or 8 for that since our timeline kept moving around. Overall, management is a huge part of development, so when that is difficult the whole thing becomes a struggle. Luckily - all of our VPs are absolute angels and made the progress as good as it could possibly be, so I am so grateful to them for that.
How do you think the personalities of each vocal align with their type? With who do you think you could become best friends among the Starry Court?
I think that Rice (ricedeity) really nailed their portrayal in the release comics - SOLARIA’s naïve but energetic personality just screams “newbie soprano” to me so it seems like she aligns quite well. For ASTERIAN, I think there might be a bit of a disconnect with the typical bass part - a lot of bass roles are typically pretty showy which his voice fits well, but his personality is a bit more chilled out. That sort of gap in expectation was something we had fun playing with for him - the contrast between being a crazy cool bass vocalist while also being a laid-back older guy type. SAROS I think fits perfectly - an intense and chatty personality for the show-offy, belty high tenor vocalist. NYL is pretty much the same for character fit, a laid-back but reliable alto that brings the whole group together. We designed them to fit well as a group with singing and also with their character settings, so I’d like to think that they are all good friends.
If I had to say, I think I’d probably be closest with NYL since I think we share a similar wider perspective on things.
They’re 100% all best friends. I feel like SAROS and NYL would be closest - except they have wildly different perspectives on things and kind of confuse each other.
If I knew them in real life, I feel like I'd get along with ASTERIAN or NYL best! I'd love to go out bowling with them.
I find that SOLARIA and SAROS are pretty much the perfect example of Soprano and Tenor stereotypes- they want the spotlight! NYL and ASTERIAN being more lowkey also suit their Alto and Bass parts perfectly. In my head, they all get along like roommates or family! I can imagine SAROS and NYL being extremely funny together, with their contrasting personalities.
I have sort of an intense personality, so I think someone like SOLARIA is someone I could commiserate with! I would say SAROS as well, but I think they would intimidate me…
And a final question! What are your favorite music genres?
I really listen to every kind of music, so I have a little bit of everything in the mix. Something that sticks out really bad is that I got into folk punk by accident in college and so there’s a lot of that on my playlists (it’s not for everyone), but otherwise right now I really like listening to the more overly cutesy, silly idol-style stuff, and a ton of indie artists. I really just dabble in listening to a lot of different music so I don’t really follow single artists very well, but I’ve always been a huge fan of Billy Joel! I am also constantly adding vocal synth community music into my rotation.
I listen to so many different genres, but default back to things various types of pop. Some of my favorite artists are The Weeknd and Ellie Goulding - and from within the vocal synthesis community VocaCircus, meltberry and nostraightanswer.
Ah, it’s impossible for me to pick! I grew up on oldies and hard rock (with a dose of metal mixed in), but I really just gravitate towards any music that has a story to tell.
Anything else you would like to add?
Thank you for all your continued support! Please stick around as we head into our newest project; something we're only able to do because of the love for the Starry Court.
At the end of the day, I have absolutely nothing but gratitude and love in my heart for the vocal synth community. Vocal synths gave me a safe place to go to when I was younger, where I could be creative and interact with people who understood me for what felt like the first time. I’m so, so happy to be a part of Eclipsed Sounds. Thanks for everything!
Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Your support really means the world, and from the crowdfund to our final release in this series, we could not have done any of it without you. We will always be beyond grateful to have given so many songwriters a voice. Thank you for trusting our Starry Court with your songs!
Thanks again to all of you for chatting with us! It’s been great hearing about everything what's happening behind the scenes and what you've experienced. I’m sure everyone is excited to see what’s next. Wishing you the best with the upcoming projects!
Got some questions left for the team at Eclipsed Sounds? Feel free to reach out! They’re also currently on the lookout for vocalists for their next series. So, if you have experience in a specific genre of music and want to get involved, don’t hesitate to fill out their contact form.
Don’t miss your chance to grab the Starry Court vocals at a discounted price! The preorder discount is available until Monday, October 14th. Be sure to check out the store and secure your copy before the offer ends!
Eclipsed Sounds' Social Media:
Official Website
Official Twitter Account
Official YouTube Channel
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