Although something like this was first suggested back in 2015, shouldn’t it by now be available?
There’s no current open suggestion though I believe but in my DJ requirements for partner dance events, there’s a preference to although have some definite criteria around music that works for jive and swing dance, it puts a certain profile off when there’s a degree of explicit lyrical content.
So given the current level of software that can isolate lyrics and have as reference to, surely it’d be straightforward to have a feature selection for muting or doing a sound key to muffle a designated expletive?
I know there’s even sites now like nofanity that are gaining users and showing that there’s a demand for this kind of tech, so c’mon djay creators, let’s get this going and not fall behind even further on!
I’ve seen this question again and again over the years and wonder why people would want to do that. If there are lyrics in a song that you don’t want, shouldn’t or aren’t allowed to play in the respective environment, you can simply leave them out. It wouldn’t be worth the effort to activate an extra option that mutes the lyrics because of this. There are so many songs you can play, it can’t be that important to have to play this one song. But of course that’s just my personal opinion, you can see it differently.
Is there a way we can just filter out just the clean versions and also just filter out just the dirty versions? This way I’m guaranteed not to accidentally play the dirty version. Thanks
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Algoriddim’s Neural Mix engine is awesome …best in the game but there is one game-changing feature I am desperately wishing for: Automatic Live Censoring.
For those who haven’t seen it, VirtualDJ has an AI tool that scans lyrics on the fly and automatically mutes explicit words. For mobile, wedding, and clean-radio gigs, something like this in djay Pro would save us hours of prep time and act as the ultimate safety net.
Since djay Pro already isolates vocals perfectly in real-time using AI, adding a lyric-recognition layer to trigger automatic mutes seems like the next logical step.
Yes the AI does the initial scan, but it’s possible to check the results and correct them if necessary. The words you want censored are entered manually in the settings and there are comparision options.
Once set up, it can mute the audio and the lyric display on screen (if you’re using that).
Obviously the best solution is to play clean versions, but sometimes they don’t exist.
“Mental”? What a ridiculous response. I’ll never understand people who feel the need to be combative with total strangers.
Anyway, no, I wouldn’t rely solely on it. I’ve been doing this professionally—and making a great living at it—for 25 years, and I’ve been using djay PRO since almost day one.
But occasionally an oddball request comes in and I’ll need to grab it from a streaming service. If it’s some deep hip-hop track I don’t really know, it would be great to have at least some assurance that an explicit word might get skipped.
And I’ve used VirtualDJ live a few times—actually, I used it while I was waiting for djay PRO 5.6.8 to come out, because before that update the jog display on my REV7 wasn’t working correctly.
So I’m not looking for something to DJ for me. I’m talking about a useful safeguard for those occasional situations where you’re playing an unfamiliar request on the fly. I like to cover ALL the bases.
And lastly, AI is getting pretty far from “sketchy” very quickly. Doing something as simple as identifying a curse word in a song is practically child’s play for AI at this point. I’m not suggesting we hand over the decks to AI—I’m talking about using it as one more tool in the toolbox.
Chill out, nothing combative about that word at all, it’s just a slang phrase
As far as the AI goes, you’ve given a prime example of the exact type of track it’s likely to not recognise the word that needs censoring, hip hop is hardly the genre of clear well defined lyrics spoken in BBC English is it.
Hi @CALI68, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve merged it with this existing one as they sound closely related. Please use the blue Vote button at the top left of this page.
I guess you haven’t actually tried the feature yourself Stu?
It actually works really well. As I said, the results can be easily checked before playing (if it should have made any mistakes) but for example, I played a track this afternoon which contained a bunch of words I’d listed as offensive, and it caught every one without any editing from me.
The lyrics are also displayed above the scrolling waveform, so (as a secondary check) I can look ahead and if there’s anything that’s not been caught, when it gets to that word I can pull the fader down, or mute the vocal stem.
To be fair the only feedback I’d ever seen about it was from you on the other forum, where you said it was far from perfect and not to be relied on.
I get that AI is ever evolving and that this could be used as a great way of speeding up track prep. But do you think it’s in a place where you can download a streamed track on the fly and just bang it on at a gig and expect no swear words to come out of the speakers?
In the UK it would probably just be brushed off by punters, but in the land of over emotional, blow everything out of proportion, im gonna sue yo ass culture that is the US, where would this sit if some Karen who’s kids party you were working at decided the swear word that got past the AI had ruined the event? Lawsuit? Social media outrage? Blacklisting?
Did I say the censoring was “far from perfect” (just searched and can’t find that phrase being used) or was it the AI’s ability to get the lyrics correct?
[EDIT] I found the post. I said it does a reasonable job of catching the naughty words.
Some tracks it finds the lyrics itself. Others it needs a nudge. Sometimes it gets a word or phrase wrong but it’s easily edited. The words to censor are entered by the DJ so there’s no AI involved there. The lyrics can be monitored as the track plays.
Yeah I was just using kids party (teens or whatever) as an example, but wedding, corporate event anything. The land of lawsuits won’t care will they.
Im all for it as a way of cleaning up tracks, I was just addressing the seeming willingness to blindly rely on it for unprepared tracks on the fly. I use or deal with AI every day at work and I know that you have to double check everything it pumps out to ensure it’s not leading you up the garden path.
Anyway it’s great that tech is moving forward and removing some of the rubbish jobs from track prep
I used it on Tubthumping recently (Chumbawamba) and for the sung line “Don’t cry for me next door neighbour” the AI gave me “The price of tea. Ask the neighbour”
I use that for vocal isolation quite often
