LONDON: A musician in the UK who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) has been able to sing again after losing his voice.
Patrick Darling, 32, has been a musician and composer since the age of 14 but was diagnosed with MND aged 29.
Before his diagnosis he was the singer in Irish folk band The Ceili House Band, but is now completely unable to sing and can only speak a few words.
But that has now changed, as Darling was able to perform in front of an audience in London after he used a groundbreaking AI tool to recreate his singing voice.
Darling has been communicating through assistive technology and last year created a digital replica of his speaking voice using software developed by ElevenLabs.
Using the firm’s AI music generator, he has been able to turn recordings of his past performances into a singing voice indistinguishable from the one he lost.
At an event on Wednesday, Darling took to the stage with Ceili House Band guitarist Nick Cocking and violinist Hari Ma for the debut performance of Ghost Of A Man I Never Met.
Darling composed the music using ElevenLabs and combined the score with original lyrics he wrote himself. This was the first time he had been able to perform with the band since his diagnosis forced him to retire.
"Singing has always been my biggest love and I’ve spent most of my musical life performing live in various bands. Sadly, due to my motor neurone disease, I have completely lost the ability to sing and play my instruments," Darling, 32, from Bristol, said.
"Losing my ability to sing had a deeply profound and devastating effect on me. But the ElevenLabs singing voice that we’ve created is wonderful and definitely sounds like me," he said.
"The technology created by ElevenLabs changes lives. It provides hope, support and meaning to people in ways that you can’t fully appreciate unless you’ve lived it yourself. All I can say is thank you."
His family, who had not heard him sing since the effects of his MND diagnosis, were in the audience to watch his performance.
ElevenLabs’ technology enables users to take previous recordings of natural speech or sound from any audio source and generate accurate digital replicas of their own voice.
"Motor neurone disease is a devastating illness, especially for people like Patrick, who started experiencing the disease at an unusually young age," said speech therapist Richard Cave, who worked closely with Darling to design his AI voice.
"I’ve worked with MND patients for many years, and rarely do we see developments that make such a huge difference to the lives of patients as we have with voice AI technology. The quality of ElevenLabs’ voices is unmatched," he said.
"Working with Patrick to give him back his singing voice after a lifetime making music has been an absolute privilege, and watching the song performed on stage with a live band is a moment I’ll never forget." – dpa
