Singing Computers

     (Note: this was actually a bit difficult to write, as I personally don't like Miku very much. I also hesitate to post it so soon in the blog, as Miku can have a notable negative effect on people's opinions of Vocaloid. However, you can't talk about Vocaloid very much without mentioning Miku, so I figured I might as well explain her, so you don't get any misconceptions... singing anime girl *cough*)      Hatsune Miku      Voice donor: Saki Fujita, a professional Japanese voice actress      Engine: V2      Company: Made and sold by Crypton Future Media      Release date: August 31, 2007      Updates and/or additional voicebanks: Six V2 Appends, V3 update, V3 English, two V3 Appends, eVocaloid voicebank, V4 update, V4 English, V4 Chinese, and an English Vocaloid Neo VB. I think  that's all of them.      Language: Japanese, English, Chinese   ...

     Oops... I may have skipped the last four-or-so blog posts. But I can explain! See, I was very busy doing not-school. I made most of a new desk with my dad, went to Florida, got rear-ended (right before we were supposed to leave for Florida, in the same vehicle we were going to use- that was inconvenient, to say the least), upholstered kitchen chairs with duct tape, drew lots and lots of dragons, found some more good music, weeded our back garden for fun (it's surprisingly relaxing), went to an aquarium, petted rays and sharks at said aquarium, and in general did other spring break stuff. It was fun, and as a bonus, I have more post ideas... *trails off, muttering and pacing around the house*      And now that I've finished this explanation/apology/excuse note, back to your regularly scheduled blog. Oh, and listen to TechniKen and Voice V4 's music, please and thank you- that's the music I found during spring break. I'm going to schedule this to post ...

     The Meta-Notes shall never end! Muahahahaha! No, in all seriousness, I need these to inform you readers what I'll be doing with the blog, and I'm putting them in separate posts instead of mashing them into others because I like to be organized and it's easier to look them up that way.      You may have guessed already that, since I have posted a Meta-Note, I have something to talk about. I do, in fact, as the alternative would be to leave the rest of this post blank. That really wouldn't be interesting, would it?      The first item on my list is the Vocaloid Descriptions. I already have a Google Doc named Vocaloid Descriptions in which I have copy-pasted the format for a description eighty-something times (there are 85 Vocaloids in total, but I've lumped some of them together) and now I'm filling in the information. Some of them are finished, most of them are not, but basically I'll be finishing up one of the descriptions, then pastin...

     (Note: I'm finally starting the Vocaloid Descriptions section after procrastinating for so long. This is the standard format I have for descriptions, with a note like this at the beginning of each one. I think I'll do one description per week, with the other post being something else. I was going to do Miku first but then I decided to rebel against her fame and do Oliver first, so hah Miku, you're not always the first Vocaloid always ever! I should stop.)       Oliver      Voice donor: Anonymous 12-13 year old British choirboy (anonymous because Government says we must protect the smols)      Engine: V3      Company: Oliver was made by VocaTone and sold by PowerFX. VocaTone is the only American Vocaloid company, although in this case "company" is a loose term. They are small and not very professional. However, they did seem to do pretty well on their first Vocaloid.      Release da...

     Note, I am shortening any instance of VOCALOID# into V#. Also, what I call Vocaloid 1 was actually called Vocaloid, but as you can imagine, using that term would be very  confusing. Also note that you probably don't know any of the stories behind these names, that's because I'm doing this before starting the Vocaloid Descriptions section, so you know what I'm talking about when I mention which engine of the software Vocaloid so-and-so runs on.      V1 was the first engine of Vocaloid. The synthesis was not realistic at all, especially with multiple consonants, and it struggled with low notes. It was intended to be more of a prototype engine, however, and there were only 5 Vocaloids released on V1: Leon, Lola, Miriam, Meiko, and Kaito. The Vocaloids "Jodie" and "Ronie," intended to be V1 Vocaloids, were instead released on V2 as Sweet Ann and Big Al- although Al changed design once and voice provider twice during the process!     ...