different, defined.: February 2014

Another essay I wrote for my English class, this time about the Vocaloid program. I already tried writing an in-depth article about this topic in a blog post a while ago, but I feel this one is much better.

Ones, Zeroes and A-Flats

On August 31, 2007, a 16-year-old girl was born. Her birth began the most curious age of pop culture revolution in multiple countries. She entered into multiple homes and recording studios to give people the voice they never had. The girl, Hatsune Miku, came to life. Her music has topped music charts. She has performed multiple concerts in Japan and America to thousands of people. Her popularity and talent have all been thanks to one simple tool: a computer program called Vocaloid. Hatsune Miku exists as a musical computer program that artists can use to insert vocal tracks into instrumental compositions to create a pop song, or any other genre of music. Her popularity as a program and an idol has exploded since her creation over six years ago and continues to grow, along with other voice styles that sing and dance alongside her. Fans of this vocal innovation quickly assume that the fad of a virtual pop star began with Miku herself. The concept and ideas behind the Vocaloid computer program, however, have been evolving some years before Miku’s introduction into pop culture.

The idea of a virtual singing artist has been around since the 1960s. Many bands were practicing with synthesizers in their studio work. The band ELO became popular from their computer-sounding vocals. HAL, the space station computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey sang Daisy Bell. Many technicians have mixed digital and vocal sounds together to make new sounds; however, the result has always sounded more robotic than real. Making a computer reproduce the sound of an orchestra instrument has been accomplished, with fine-tuning upgrades being made constantly. The most elusive sound to digitally recreate has been and probably always will be the human voice.

The first fruitful attempt to find the bridge between human and robot sound came from Pompeu Fabra University in Spain (Werde). The way the program works is by capturing a singer’s voice by having the singer repeat a large list of lingual expressions, and then using the program to give musical pitch to those expressions. Articulations such as vibrato and pitch-bending can then be inserted into the lyrics to add more human-like qualities. This operation, backed by the Yamaha Corporation, unveiled its fruits at the German Musikmesse music fair in 2003. The demonstrations of this new Vocaloid program stirred every music producer and mixer at the fair. What they heard from the Vocaloid program was the first step toward real human sounds produced by an electric machine. A Vocaloid-sung version of “Amazing Grace” flew around the Internet. Musicians eagerly awaited the release of the program for public use in January of 2004.

The birth of the Vocaloid program was highly anticipated, but wasn’t as popular as its creators had hoped. The first two Vocaloid programs were produced by a British-based company called Zero Limited and were named Leon and Lola (Oppenneer). The programs were considered “Virtual Soul Vocalists” since their original purpose, their programmers thought, would be as back-up singers to the big names that the public already listened to (Werde). Producers for bands such as the Gorillaz and The Automaters agreed to experiment with the program in their music. The Vocaloid program won Electronic Musician magazine’s Editor’s Choice award in 2005 for Most Innovative Product (“Vocaloid”). In 2006, Lola’s voice was used in the soundtrack for the popular Japanese movie Paprika. The idea of a computer singing like a human was an attractive one, to say the least.

One independent company, Crypton Future Media (CFM), jumped into the Vocaloid scene. Their first program, named MEIKO, was released in November 2004. Before, the Vocaloids had simply been voices to insert into a song; but with the release of the MEIKO program, an anime-style girl in a red dress donned the cover. The voice had been given a mascot. Initially, the character and the voice were meant to be by themselves. However, the fans of the program enjoyed the concept of the voice having a character behind it, and MEIKO saw a lot of success on the market. Two years later, CFM released another program similar to MEIKO called KAITO, being a male voice (and mascot) to balance the female one. KAITO did not see as much success as MEIKO did.

With the fans fueling the flames of Vocaloid’s popularity, CFM decided to take another step in the industry. They wanted to produce another Vocaloid program to build on the hype that MEIKO and KAITO had created. As CFM held auditions for new voices to capture for their next Vocaloid program, they ran into the problem that singers were afraid the program would be merely copies of their own singing style and ultimately replace the real singer (Yuhana). The company decided to shift their focus from trying to capture the voice of real, professional singers and instead focused on Japanese voice actors. These actors were in the habit of changing their voices every day for their different roles, so creating a unique voice was a perfect job for the voice actors to fill. Saki Fujita rose to the occasion, and recorded her voice for the next upgrade to the Vocaloid program.

Hatsune Miku. 16 years old. 158 centimeters tall and weighs 42 kilograms. Her singing genre is Idol Pop and Dance music. Her suggested tempo is at 70 to 150 beats per minute, and her musical range is from A3 to E5. Her “character item” is a leek (Oppenneer). On August 31, 2007, a program, this time under the new series name of Vocaloid 2, was born with physical and emotional attributes. The emotion, technique and realism of the program’s “voice” were astounding to those that first heard it. Miku’s fan-made music quickly flooded the Internet on Nico Nico Douga (Japan’s video-sharing website) and YouTube. Behind her followed more Vocaloid personalities such as Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len and Megurine Luka. MEIKO and KAITO were resurrected from their mediocre sales run and ascended to join their fellow mascots.

Many bands attribute their popularity to the voice of this digital pop diva. Ryo was an illustrator and amateur synthesizer that began posting his songs starring Miku to Nico Nico Douga. As his songs gained more views, he joined himself to other illustrators and musicians that had the same love for using Vocaloids in their work. The band supercell was formed (Santos). “Vocaloid technology doesn’t require one to worry about the range and the key for the person singing,” Ryo explains. “It may be a difficult thing to understand for those who just listen, but I sense unlimited possibilities with the Vocaloid technology” (qtd. in Santos). In another interview, Ryo tells how Vocaloid changed his outlook on music. “I always remember the uplifting feeling I got when I discovered Vocaloid and the new ways it allowed me to create music. That may be the reason and it’s what I can never forget” (qtd. in Jessieface).

Bridging the gap between the digital and the real has been a goal since the birth of the computer. Voice, the most difficult sound style to replicate digitally, had always been so elusive until now. The Vocaloid program has taken its steps from back-up singing to “performing” on stage as a pop diva through a process of approaches from many angles. Ultimately, it was the fans of the program and the Vocaloid’s new purpose as a singer with its own personality and style that changed the way the program has been developed since 2007. It has also changed the way people create music, implementing a voice with flawless characteristics and pitch. The age of the virtual pop diva has begun.

Works Cited

Jessieface, Kay. “Interview with Ryo from Supercell.” JaME World. JaME World. 9

Nov. 2011. Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://www.jame-world.com/us/articles-80560-

interview-with-ryo-from-supercell.html>

Oppenneer, Mark. “Seeking Hatsune Miku.” Seeking Hatsune Miku. N.p., 19 Jan. 2011.

Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://seekingmiku.wordpress.com/>

Santos, Carlos. “Interview: Ryo from Supercell.” Anime News Network. Anime News

Network. 21 June 2011. Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2011-06-21/interview-ryo-from-

supercell>

“Vocaloid.” Yamaha. Yamaha. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.

<http://www.yamaha.com/about_yamaha/research/vocaloid/>

Werde, Bill. “Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?” The New York Times. The New