Oh Man Vocaloids

[astronomia]

UHM THIS IS FOR MEGHAN REALLY BUT UHM. I guess if anyone else wants a fast and loose primer to Vocaloids then here you go?

And it seems all my Vocaloid icons were in the ones that expired sooooo. Accept a non-related icon.

Comments

[astronomia]

Yeah I should have included that, haha. But basically Vocaloids are a music creation program. It comes with everything you'd need to make a song but obviously it's a pretty complex program. You can mess with the music and the voices and in theory write a song from it though I'm constantly amazed that people can be so good at it.

When they first started, it was pretty basic stuff and each edition had a mascot for the vocal bank, a face for the voice pretty much. But they took off most notably with Vocaloid 2's release and Miku became the face of the products and spurred on a lot of interest. Different companies actually make the programs but for the most part they all fall under the title of Vocaloids. There's UTAU too which is similar but I'm not nearly as well versed there.

As far as the AI part comes in, the characters ended up with sort of base personalities created by fandom. It's actually really fascinating because fandom and the producers of the songs gave the characters personalities that everyone sort of agreed on - more or less - and those in turn become 'canon' through the official concerts and cd releases. Sort of a self created fandom in a way. In reality, they're just programs, and some songs actually touch on that like the Disappearance series (which is about Miku's thoughts as her program is rewritten and erased again). But characters have come out of it.

And since I know you RP! RPing Vocaloids is actually a pretty fun and interesting challenge. I RP Gumi using various songs as canon, taking the general consensus of her personality and deepening it with those songs. A lot of the songs tell a story or come in a series so you can expand from there. Of course, because of that, it's a lot like a fandom OC where you can't judge one version from another and have to go on consistency.

Does that help? I know before I started to get into Vocaloids I was pretty confused and wtf at it all.

[penguinfaery]

That actually helps a lot. I have seen them so much at cons and I sorta knew what they were, but wasn't sure where to jump in to find out more, basic stuff.

So thank you! This was an awesome crash corse!

[astronomia]

Same! I always used to see art and pictures of Vocaloids and sort of got interested that way. So you're welcome. ♥ And this rec list is pretty incomplete and biased - I didn't touch on Miku and Luka, who are really popular - so if you need more help, I'm happy to toss in more. Some of it can be an acquired taste depending on your autotune tolerance but there's a lot of people who can make them sound perfectly human.

(Sort of a random example but Miku can get a lot of flack on the 'mechanical voice' thing but Glow gave her vocals a breathy sound that's pretty impressive.)

And I'll stop rambling now ds;lgk