Ideas 2016
Last updated 2016-07-06
Virtual singer
Several users have requested a virtual singer in MuseScore. This feature would make MuseScore sing the lyrics in a score. It's useful for singers in choirs who like to rehearse with actual synthesized lyrics. There are several specialized (open source) software projects and libraries which do "sing synthesis".
Harmony Assistant has a virtual singer plugin
Vocaloid. The software is very popular in Japan, where one of the voices of the software and the virtual character on the software box, Hatsune Miku, has even made large concerts.
A free competitor is Utau. The license of UTAU is unclear to me.
On the same topic, see Cadencii, Aquestone VSTi, Cantor2, Realitone Blue
WORLD seems to be a good open source start
Festival, the open source text to speech engine has a singing mode. See also this
Flite and Flinger based on Festival
An attempt using a now closed web API named Canoris and MuseScore
Sinsy, an open source MusicXML to singing voice converter, working only for Japanese.
An external tool that could process a MIDI, or MusicXML file created by MuseScore and make an audio file would be good for singers to practise along.
Difficulty: Hard
Skills: C++/Qt
Possible mentor: Nicolas Froment (@lasconic)