Singing Computers

(Note: Someone told me to space out my paragraphs a bit more, to make them more readable. How's this? Also, sorry for no update last week. I think I've got it under control now, but thanks for your patience.) Here is the YouTube page of a Vocaloid Producer I've gotten into: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHf9og9JlOD7YNYezW_tVew/featured He's much more active on his SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/oddeeoofficial His general style is a mix of 80's synthpop and whatever subgenre Porter Robinson does. Not only do I like that style a lot, another thing I like about him is his attitude towards Vocaloid- as a computer program, an art form, a collection of characters, a  phenomenon  in general. One of his videos is an "interview" with his characterization of the Vocaloid Avanna. Named MON1T0R, this fictional character that he made up was a computer program (presumably the Vocaloid program) that gained sentience through some kind of anomaly. Here was one...

(Note: I homeschooled for middle school, and for writing class in eighth grade I took a very good writing class from someone local who hosted writing classes for homeschoolers at her house weekly. She was an incredibly  good teacher, and in some ways I owe this whole blog to her. To be honest, I was occasionally annoyed by how much of a stickler she was on avoiding "to be" verbs and not repeating words. Only one of those lessons have I eventually taken to heart, as you can see... But one of the things I liked about her was how freely she allowed us to interpret the prompts. As you can see from the title, I wrote an essay about Vocaloid. I'm posting it here, along with (my commentary in bold and parentheses, like this) because it's actually pretty good, at least for an eighth grader. Since their invention, people have manipulated computers and computer programs to accomplish incredible tasks, things once thought only accomplishable by a human. To name a few, co...

So. I have mentioned AegisSan as one of the Vocaloid Producers I like. Well. This is a comment thread from about 6 months ago on their song Without You : Click on image for large size- Sorry :( Fast forward to six months later, to yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2izfT3axnI That collab happened and released! It was definitely  a learning experience- I had to find: -A microphone (My dad had one he had bought to record audiobooks with and never used) -Recording software (I eventually decided on Voice Recorder Pro, by Splend Apps) -A metronome system to keep me on the beat (Headphones that are 'broken' in exactly the right way) -A good space for recording (Basement) -A way to convert the files AegisSan sent me into sheet music (Midis and MuseScore) Then I got my two best friends into the project (one of them plays/played viola, the other plays cello) and had them record parts too, so scheduling was also a problem since at the time of writing they are un...

     I was looking for blog post ideas for today, and I decided to look at my old Vocaloid Doc. First, wow, I have improved so much at writing since I last edited that. Second, most of the sections have been posted on my blog already- except the Glossary. That just defined a bit of Vocaloid jargon that I was confused about when I first joined the fandom. I decided to define it for the readers of this blog as well. Enjoy.      Fanloid/Derivative: The official description on the wiki is this: "FANLOID (commonly abbreviated from Fanmade Vocaloid) are VOCALOID inspired characters, created by the Vocaloid fandom." These can range from  IO  to  Yowane Haku  to  Shiteyan'yo . Here's a Wiki page explaining them .      MMD: Standing for MikuMikuDance, MMD is a 3D modeling program specifically focusing on creating music videos for Vocaloid songs (although they're sometimes used for talkloids as well). There are a ton of mode...

     (Note: I have nothing to say except "Wow, I'm so glad I got this done.)      This is an analysis by yours truly on the shifting popularity of Vocaloids throughout the years, from its development to now.      When it was first being developed, Vocaloid was... Hmm. It was certainly groundbreaking technology- LEON and LOLA even won a couple of awards. However, it was really expensive, hard to use, and didn't sound very good. Additionally, LEON and LOLA missed their audience, American DAW Producers, with their British accents, plus the fact that they were sold by a British company. MIRIAM failed because of competition with Cantor, a rival software to Vocaloid at the time. Kaito failed, again, because of a missed audience (I'll elaborate more on Kaito's popularity on his description). Meiko was the first Vocaloid to actually do well.      Then V2, a vastly improved version of the software, released, a bit before the first V2...

     I did one of these a while ago, except in two separate posts, so that was weird, and I put my Vocaloid music in an unusual format, and I have more music I like now, so in summary, I'm doing another one. Wow, that was one sentence. Anyway, let's get started.      I like most electronic music in general, although I don’t like songs with nothing going on in them, musically, like this one . It’s just boring and harsh. That’s probably a result of my extremely classical/folk musical ear.      I like the music labels Monstercat (especially Tristam): Disconnected , Saturday Morning Space Ride , Frame of Mind , Bone Dry , Till It's Over      ...and The Arcadium. Luminous , Until We Fall , Sugar High , The New Beginning , Levitation , Delphinium , Ball Bounce , Around You , Flute Gamer , Lights , Awe , Our Last Time , Never Let Me Go , Keystone      I got into JJD and Skylike from The Arcadium. I haven’t listened...

     If you feel like my Vocaloid Descriptions and poor attempts at explanations of Vocaloid history, I would like to recommend a good resource for you. There's a YouTube channel called addictedtoheriones , or AtH, which has good, comprehensive videos on the history of Vocaloid and individual descriptions.      My apologies for this disappointing blog post. I am very busy today.      :(

     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!     ...

     Hmm, not much to say here. Let's get started:       UTAU : Can you think of a single popular software, or popular thing in general, that has not spawned spinoffs? Because I can’t. UTAU is one of those spinoffs, the most successful one in my opinion. You can download the program for free, and it already comes with a default voice, called Defoko, which in Japanese literally means default “girl/child.” Other UTAUs can be downloaded from a link, again for free. You can even import .wav files to make your own! As a result, there are literally thousands of UTAUloids. However, the UTAUs really cannot compare in inherent quality to the Vocaloids, sadly. Some of the most well-known UTAUs were created as April Fools jokes for the Vocaloid fandom, such as Kasane Teto. You also get UTAUloids like Missy .. Overall, I like the program, because it allows even more fan participation, and in the right hands, it can sound awesome. Examples: Monochrome , Retrospectre , ...

     Some of my favorite artists are GuitarHeroPianoZero , Jade S , DoNotCrossP , Kyaami and Ady S .       I Won't Let You Cry  is just my favorite Vocaloid song ever. Period.      Some realistic, chill Vocaloid songs to start out with:  I Think I Just Died ,  Dream With You ,  Sunflowers In Your Eyes ,  LUMi Song ,  I Only Wait For You ,  A happy ending that nobody knows , and  quiet room .      Don't worry if you don't recognize any of the singers now, I'll begin to identify them a few posts from now.      After you've listened to those, here are some that purposefully depart from a realistic voice for the purpose of the song:  The World Tonight ,  Dance Machine ,  Pretending ,  Fade Away ,  Breaking Point ,  Mr. Taxi . It's another style of Vocaloid music that I can't afford to leave out. Also, some Vocaloids aren't very inherently ...

     This is a list of... well, the title pretty much says it all for this one. I was lazy and just pasted this in from Drive, because I saw this little, useful button called Remove Formatting, with which I also fixed my earlier post. Let's get started then:      #1: Vocaloid voices do not change. This one is pretty obvious, but it has a number of advantages not initially seen. For example, take Oliver. His voice donor was 12-13 years old during recording, and his voice had not changed yet, however he is now 20 years old. Even though the voice donor’s voice has changed, Oliver’s remains exactly the same.      #2: Vocaloid presents an introduction to music making for amateurs, as well as an encouraging community. Hmm.. Yeah, that about says it all. *gives self pat on back for conciseness*      #3: Everything in the Vocaloid community is fan-created, except for the Vocaloids themselves. This gives fans many opportunities to contr...

     No, I'm not talking about Blogger, although the incident with the last post was kind of weird. I think it was because I pasted it in from Docs... Oh well. What I meant was, how do Vocaloids work? I hinted in the previous post that it was not entirely machine-synthesized, but what does that mean? Do they take samples from real people? Yes, they do.      But wait, you say. How big can the samples be? They can't record every single word in basically any language, that's for sure. Maybe they could record all the syllables? No, still too many. If only there were very small "building blocks" for language, which comprised all possible sounds for that language... If only...      Oh.      Yes, actually, there are. They're called phonemes. Yay, now we know what we have to record! We record all the 44 basic phonemes for the English language, maybe in several different keys (so that we can autotune them more realistically), and de...

     Ah, actual content! Yay!      Ever since their invention, computers have been made to do amazing things, so much that they do some things better than humans. Computers surpassed the entire human race in raw computing power in 1977* and since have bested us us in chess, GO, and other games. But computers do have a definite advantage in those kinds of things, they are made to input, store, and use concrete information, which, compared to them at least, humans are inherently not as good at. How about we give them a real challenge, an unfair one, one that is the most biased towards humans’ skills as possible, so we can feel good about ourselves for at least a decade or so… How about singing? The human vocal cords are just so weird and so unique that anything other than humans singing will be a real challenge. I mean, they’ve been able to do that since 1961, but that certainly doesn’t mean they sounded human. The IBM 7094 sounded like a cross between a ro...