Pink Windmill Karaoke: Can't Stop the Music

Those who sing and dance get all the credit, but sometimes it's fun to peek beneath the surface, and that's what I've been fiddling about with recently, what with all these new-fangled stem-separation 'machine learning' things. And now, with the excuse of marking the 40th anniversary of the Pink Windmill Kids' Can't Stop the Music hitting the airwaves for the first time, I present to you an AI (that is, Artificial Instrumental) karaoke version, complete with on-screen lyrics for you sing to along with at home.

It's amazing how far music technology has progressed lately. It's by no means perfect, of course: in this instance, the vocal reverb is still audible, and the algorithms seem to struggle to tell the differences between human voices and brassy instruments, especially on sustained notes. A fair bit of manual work was required to get it even this good. Nevertheless, I'm still hugely impressed, as I'd have dismissed the mere idea as impossible barely five years ago, never mind 40. The way things are going, maybe one day I'll Auto-Tune Rod.

In all seriousness, I've been tinkering with a whole load of these, and musical director Colin Campbell's arrangements deserve way more recognition than they're generally afforded. Also, I don't know who the bass player is, but they're very often surprisingly good. As the technology improves, maybe one day I'll upload more of these if there's any great clamour for them. Some songs lend themselves to the process more than others while some basically fail altogether, and making them into a karaoke video also requires me to be confident I've deciphered the lyrics accurately. Either way, it certainly gives a new dimension to old favourites.

Meanwhile, please help me in my last-ditch attempt to find the ten Pink Windmill episodes we're still missing. See this video for more details:

https://youtu.be/NbBdkfEdGC0

Oh, and knock me down with a feather: Can't Stop the Music begins with a drum fill. Never noticed that under Rod's presentation before.

(If you're a copyright holder and have any objections, please feel free to contact me. Alternatively, I haven't monetised the video, so you're welcome to do so, and that way everybody wins.)

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