A Fangirl's Guide to Vocaloid
Jul. 21st, 2011 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyAlthough my squee for Vocaloids knows no bounds, I often find it hard to explain it to people - even people already familiar with the video game/anime subculture. So I thought I would write a quick and dirty (perhaps, knowing me, not so quick) Fangirl's Guide to Vocaloids.
What is Vocaloid?
Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer software developed by Yamaha. Using databanks of human voices, the software reproduces singing in that voice. Users of the software input lyrics and designate the notes to be sung in, resulting in songs sung in the computerized voice. The software is marketed toward both professional and amateur musicians as a way to substitute or reproduce a living vocalist.
What do people do with the Vocaloid software?
They produce songs. Users range from professional musicians who release albums using the synthesized voices to amateur ones who compose for fun. The internet is a huge distribution and sharing space for songs produced using Vocaloid voices. In Japan, Nico Nico Douga, a video-sharing website, is where most of the Vocaloid-related activity takes place. A typical situation might go like this: a professional or amateur songwriter (called a "producer") composes a song, uses one of the Vocaloid voice banks to sing the lyrics, and records the backing track with the help of fellow musicians. The producer then puts together a music video (called a PV) using the art of a collaborator, and another collaborator creates effects for the video. The producer then posts the PV on Nico Nico Douga and the crowd goes wild.
When you talk about Vocaloids, what do you mean?
The term "Vocaloids" in the plural is used, at least in the English-speaking fandom, to describe the various "characters" that are assigned to each voice databank. Lemme 'splain.
Even though Yamaha is the company that developed the Vocaloid software, other companies created voice banks by sampling the voices of celebrities, singers, voice actors, etc. Crypton Future Media is the most prominent, but other companies, including Yamaha itself, create and sell voice banks.
Let's take Miku as an example. "Hatsune Miku" is the name given to the voice bank made by sampling the voice of seiyuu Fujita Saki. When you buy the Hatsune Miku Vocaloid software, the box comes with Miku's picture on the front and a minimum of personal information (gender, age, height, weight, and suggested musical genre). None of the voice bank "characters" are given any more official information than this, and some are given less. VY1 and VY2, the voice banks developed by Yamaha, have no image and no specified gender, so depending on how users pitch the voice, it can sound male or female.
Because no official personality or story is established for any of the voice banks, users of the software are free to write songs about any subject without pressure to stay "in character". All we get about each voice bank character is an image and some general information.
Who are the Vocaloid voice bank "characters"?
There are several, released by different companies. There are some English-language Vocaloids (Leon, Lola, and Miriam, for example) but they're not nearly as popular as the Japanese Vocaloids, so I'm going to skip them. The first thing to know is that Yamaha has released more than one version of the Vocaloid software. Vocaloid 1 was released in 2004 and Vocaloid 2 in 2007. Vocaloid 3 is supposed to come out in September of this year. With each release, the synthesis software is upgraded, the user interface is improved, etc. As of right now, it's pretty easy to group the Vocaloid voice bank characters into two groups. I've linked their pages on the Vocaloid Wiki, which shows the official box art when they have it.
Vocaloid 1
Meiko - A female voice; her character design shows a woman with short brown hair dressed in red.
Kaito - A male voice; his character design shows a man with blue hair dressed in blue and white with a long scarf.
Vocaloid 2
Hatsune Miku - A female voice; her character design shows a teenaged girl with long turquoise hair in two ponytails.
Kagamine Rin/Len - Two voices, male and female, created from the same actress's voice bank. Their character design shows teenaged twins with blond chin-length hair, the girl with a big white bow in hers and the boy with his pulled back in a tiny ponytail.
Megurine Luka - A female voice designed to sing in English and in Japanese; her character design shows a woman with long pink hair.
All of the above characters were created by Crypton Future Media and are arguably the most popular Vocaloids. The below characters were created by other companies (such as INTERNET Co., Ltd. in the case of Gumi, Gakupo, and Lily) and enjoy varying levels of popularity.
Gumi (officially called Megpoid) - A female voice created using the voice of Nakajima Megumi, a famous voice actress. Gumi's character design has chin-length green hair and wears goggles. Gumi's popularity is, I would judge, around that of Luka's.
Kamui Gakupo (officially called Gackpoid) - A male voice created using the voice of Gackt, famous singer/actor/bish. Gakupo's character design is of a samurai with long purple hair.
Lily - A female voice; her character design shows a woman with long blonde hair.
Kaai Yuki - A female child's voice; her character design is of a dark-haired elementary school girl.
Hiyama Kiyoteru - A male voice; his character design is of an adult schoolteacher with glasses. He and Yuki were originally intended to be a pair by the same company.
Nekomura Iroha - A female voice; created by Sanrio, her character is designed as a Hello Kitty fan with a long orange-pink ponytail.
SF-A2 Miki - A female voice (but perhaps officially genderless?); her character design is of an orange-haired girl with a ?-shaped cowlick and a star design on her outfit. I think she's supposed to be an alien.
VY1 (called Mizki by fans) - A gender-neutral voice, but I've only ever heard songs the female range. Mizki has no character design but the internet has given her one of a traditional Japanese woman with long black hair.
Utatane Piko - A male voice; Piko was the screen name a famous Vocaloid song cover artist on Nico Nico Douga. A voice bank was made using his voice. Piko's character design is of a teenaged boy with white hair.
There are more, but as I haven't seen any songs created using their voices in my year or so in the fandom, I didn't include them. There are also several fan-made Vocaloids which have grown to prominence. I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I believe fan-made Vocaloids are created using an open source program that samples the user's own voice to make a voice bank. Among these Vocaloids are Kasane Teto (red hair in drill-shaped spiral pigtails), Akita Neru (blonde hair in a side-ponytail), and Yowane Haku (white hair in a low ponytail). They've gained so much popularity that they were included in MikuMikuDance, a video game released by SEGA.
So if there's no "canon," what's up with this giant fan base?
This is what, I feel, makes the Vocaloid fandom so remarkable. There is no canon, so everything fans are enjoying is made by other fans. The hugely popular producers are like BNFs in Western fandom, but they have to worry less about copyright angst and arguments over being true to canon. Some songs are produced by commercial composers, but many of them still use the official character designs and contribute to an ever-expanding "fanon" that's encouraged by most of the Vocaloid companies, Crypton Future Media in particular. And the fandom feeds itself. Producers make songs that are influenced by other songs, there are epic multi-part story songs, parody songs, and then outside of the song/PV creation, there's fanart galore. I learned at AX11 that one of the biggest Vocaloid fanart websites, Piapro.com, is endorsed by Crypton and the art people post there becomes free to use. People are always producing songs, so the "source material" never ends, and the fandom always has something new to create fanworks about.
For your edification, here are some of my observations about the Vocaloid fanon.
Miku
Many Vocaloids were assigned "objects" by fans (Miku's is the negi, or Welsh onion, often approximated as "leek"), and these objects have been adopted by Crypton in much official artwork/merchandise. As the most popular and widely-used Vocaloid, Miku has been given a huge range of personalities to fit each particular song/PV. In general, though, she has a tendency to be sweet, romantic, cute, and cheerful - the classic anime heroine placeholder personality. Especially when her voicebank first came out, Miku was popularly portrayed as an android who wants nothing more than to sing beautiful songs and who is indebted to the user for helping her do so. Miku being an android might be official Crypton information, or implied by things the developers have said, but I'm not sure. The idol singer thing has stuck, and is even being used by Crypton to market her to the U.S. At any rate, Miku is portrayed as a human girl just as often, and she's definitely not limited to sweet and charming. I've seen plenty of PVs in which Miku is murderous, insane, a sex kitten, a princess, a punk... the possibilities are endless. The PVs that go along with songs sung by any Vocaloid often feature characters who resemble that Vocaloid's official design, even if it's not explicitly stated to be them.
Rin and Len
Rin's fan-assigned object is an orange, I think, and Len's is a banana. Rin is often portrayed as headstrong, brash, and energetic, while Len is laid back, intelligent, and down-to-earth. Their relationship isn't stated by canon, either; officially, I gather, they're two parts of the same whole - Their name, Kagamine, means "mirror sound", and "Rin" stands for "right" while "Len" stands for "left". Many people take them to be twins (my preference), but lots interpret them as boyfriend and girlfriend, and many others see them as both. Just like with Miku, though, they've been given every personality under the sun. Sometimes Rin is sweet and shy, and sometimes Len is a super-sexy playboy (*snort*) Miku, and Rin to a lesser extent, is more commonly given the persona of an actual singer, whereas I don't think I've seen any PVs in which Len is portrayed as one. This is possibly why I found his official Mikunopolis dancing-singing-hologram self to be so jarring.
Luka
Luka's fan-assigned object varies; sometimes it's a tuna and sometimes it's a little octopus version of her own head (yeah, I dunno, don't ask). Luka is older than Miku (who is 16) and the twins (who are 14) and she's usually portrayed as a more mature woman. If there are any trends with Luka's portrayal, it's either as uncertain and shy or as a bit of a vamp. In my experience, she's used less often than Miku, Rin, and Len for silly nonsense songs and for epic (or even not-so-epic) fantasy PVs. Luka's stuff that I've seen has been on the mainstream side for the most part.
Gumi
Gumi is probably the most popular of the non-Crypton Vocaloids. I would say that this is because she sounds freaking awesome. I don't know if it's the quality of the voicebank or something about the nature of her voice, or if it's just that for some reason the people who use her really know what they're doing, but she sounds more like a real human that even Miku does sometimes, and certainly more than Rin, Len, and Luka normally do. I'm at a loss to describe any sort of fan-consensus about her personality, though. She's used equally for cute romantic stuff and for emo thrash. If I had to place her anywhere, I'd put her farther away from the bouncy cheerful pop star end of the spectrum and more in the ethereal/serious area, if only because of the quality of her voice. Still, she makes one badass noir detective.
As for the other Vocaloids, I haven't seen tons of PVs featuring them so it's hard to make a generalization. I've heard that Kaito is portrayed as a "cool older brother" type and Meiko as the "cool older sister" (and sometimes drunk?) but I can't say for sure. Even though Iroha is marketed as a Kittyler (a Hello Kitty fan... I had to look up the term) with a cat-eared helmet, she has a rather deep voice and the videos I've seen have all had traditional Japanese imagery. In those, she's usually portrayed as more of the grown-up, boyish swordswoman type. I have soft spot for Iroha because I would totally use her voice for my character Kiin from my Nano last year if I could XD Speaking of swordspeople, in all of the Gakupo PVs I've seen, he's portrayed as a V. V. SRS samurai (sometimes literally and sometimes tongue in cheek, i.e. downright ridiculous). The fanmade Vocaloids have more set personalities, for some reason - Haku is depressed and drunk, Neru is a grumpface - but I don't know a lot about them other than that.
Internet cookies to anyone who can guess which Vocaloid is in my icon :D
What is Vocaloid?
Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer software developed by Yamaha. Using databanks of human voices, the software reproduces singing in that voice. Users of the software input lyrics and designate the notes to be sung in, resulting in songs sung in the computerized voice. The software is marketed toward both professional and amateur musicians as a way to substitute or reproduce a living vocalist.
What do people do with the Vocaloid software?
They produce songs. Users range from professional musicians who release albums using the synthesized voices to amateur ones who compose for fun. The internet is a huge distribution and sharing space for songs produced using Vocaloid voices. In Japan, Nico Nico Douga, a video-sharing website, is where most of the Vocaloid-related activity takes place. A typical situation might go like this: a professional or amateur songwriter (called a "producer") composes a song, uses one of the Vocaloid voice banks to sing the lyrics, and records the backing track with the help of fellow musicians. The producer then puts together a music video (called a PV) using the art of a collaborator, and another collaborator creates effects for the video. The producer then posts the PV on Nico Nico Douga and the crowd goes wild.
When you talk about Vocaloids, what do you mean?
The term "Vocaloids" in the plural is used, at least in the English-speaking fandom, to describe the various "characters" that are assigned to each voice databank. Lemme 'splain.
Even though Yamaha is the company that developed the Vocaloid software, other companies created voice banks by sampling the voices of celebrities, singers, voice actors, etc. Crypton Future Media is the most prominent, but other companies, including Yamaha itself, create and sell voice banks.
Let's take Miku as an example. "Hatsune Miku" is the name given to the voice bank made by sampling the voice of seiyuu Fujita Saki. When you buy the Hatsune Miku Vocaloid software, the box comes with Miku's picture on the front and a minimum of personal information (gender, age, height, weight, and suggested musical genre). None of the voice bank "characters" are given any more official information than this, and some are given less. VY1 and VY2, the voice banks developed by Yamaha, have no image and no specified gender, so depending on how users pitch the voice, it can sound male or female.
Because no official personality or story is established for any of the voice banks, users of the software are free to write songs about any subject without pressure to stay "in character". All we get about each voice bank character is an image and some general information.
Who are the Vocaloid voice bank "characters"?
There are several, released by different companies. There are some English-language Vocaloids (Leon, Lola, and Miriam, for example) but they're not nearly as popular as the Japanese Vocaloids, so I'm going to skip them. The first thing to know is that Yamaha has released more than one version of the Vocaloid software. Vocaloid 1 was released in 2004 and Vocaloid 2 in 2007. Vocaloid 3 is supposed to come out in September of this year. With each release, the synthesis software is upgraded, the user interface is improved, etc. As of right now, it's pretty easy to group the Vocaloid voice bank characters into two groups. I've linked their pages on the Vocaloid Wiki, which shows the official box art when they have it.
Vocaloid 1
Meiko - A female voice; her character design shows a woman with short brown hair dressed in red.
Kaito - A male voice; his character design shows a man with blue hair dressed in blue and white with a long scarf.
Vocaloid 2
Hatsune Miku - A female voice; her character design shows a teenaged girl with long turquoise hair in two ponytails.
Kagamine Rin/Len - Two voices, male and female, created from the same actress's voice bank. Their character design shows teenaged twins with blond chin-length hair, the girl with a big white bow in hers and the boy with his pulled back in a tiny ponytail.
Megurine Luka - A female voice designed to sing in English and in Japanese; her character design shows a woman with long pink hair.
All of the above characters were created by Crypton Future Media and are arguably the most popular Vocaloids. The below characters were created by other companies (such as INTERNET Co., Ltd. in the case of Gumi, Gakupo, and Lily) and enjoy varying levels of popularity.
Gumi (officially called Megpoid) - A female voice created using the voice of Nakajima Megumi, a famous voice actress. Gumi's character design has chin-length green hair and wears goggles. Gumi's popularity is, I would judge, around that of Luka's.
Kamui Gakupo (officially called Gackpoid) - A male voice created using the voice of Gackt, famous singer/actor/bish. Gakupo's character design is of a samurai with long purple hair.
Lily - A female voice; her character design shows a woman with long blonde hair.
Kaai Yuki - A female child's voice; her character design is of a dark-haired elementary school girl.
Hiyama Kiyoteru - A male voice; his character design is of an adult schoolteacher with glasses. He and Yuki were originally intended to be a pair by the same company.
Nekomura Iroha - A female voice; created by Sanrio, her character is designed as a Hello Kitty fan with a long orange-pink ponytail.
SF-A2 Miki - A female voice (but perhaps officially genderless?); her character design is of an orange-haired girl with a ?-shaped cowlick and a star design on her outfit. I think she's supposed to be an alien.
VY1 (called Mizki by fans) - A gender-neutral voice, but I've only ever heard songs the female range. Mizki has no character design but the internet has given her one of a traditional Japanese woman with long black hair.
Utatane Piko - A male voice; Piko was the screen name a famous Vocaloid song cover artist on Nico Nico Douga. A voice bank was made using his voice. Piko's character design is of a teenaged boy with white hair.
There are more, but as I haven't seen any songs created using their voices in my year or so in the fandom, I didn't include them. There are also several fan-made Vocaloids which have grown to prominence. I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I believe fan-made Vocaloids are created using an open source program that samples the user's own voice to make a voice bank. Among these Vocaloids are Kasane Teto (red hair in drill-shaped spiral pigtails), Akita Neru (blonde hair in a side-ponytail), and Yowane Haku (white hair in a low ponytail). They've gained so much popularity that they were included in MikuMikuDance, a video game released by SEGA.
So if there's no "canon," what's up with this giant fan base?
This is what, I feel, makes the Vocaloid fandom so remarkable. There is no canon, so everything fans are enjoying is made by other fans. The hugely popular producers are like BNFs in Western fandom, but they have to worry less about copyright angst and arguments over being true to canon. Some songs are produced by commercial composers, but many of them still use the official character designs and contribute to an ever-expanding "fanon" that's encouraged by most of the Vocaloid companies, Crypton Future Media in particular. And the fandom feeds itself. Producers make songs that are influenced by other songs, there are epic multi-part story songs, parody songs, and then outside of the song/PV creation, there's fanart galore. I learned at AX11 that one of the biggest Vocaloid fanart websites, Piapro.com, is endorsed by Crypton and the art people post there becomes free to use. People are always producing songs, so the "source material" never ends, and the fandom always has something new to create fanworks about.
For your edification, here are some of my observations about the Vocaloid fanon.
Miku
Many Vocaloids were assigned "objects" by fans (Miku's is the negi, or Welsh onion, often approximated as "leek"), and these objects have been adopted by Crypton in much official artwork/merchandise. As the most popular and widely-used Vocaloid, Miku has been given a huge range of personalities to fit each particular song/PV. In general, though, she has a tendency to be sweet, romantic, cute, and cheerful - the classic anime heroine placeholder personality. Especially when her voicebank first came out, Miku was popularly portrayed as an android who wants nothing more than to sing beautiful songs and who is indebted to the user for helping her do so. Miku being an android might be official Crypton information, or implied by things the developers have said, but I'm not sure. The idol singer thing has stuck, and is even being used by Crypton to market her to the U.S. At any rate, Miku is portrayed as a human girl just as often, and she's definitely not limited to sweet and charming. I've seen plenty of PVs in which Miku is murderous, insane, a sex kitten, a princess, a punk... the possibilities are endless. The PVs that go along with songs sung by any Vocaloid often feature characters who resemble that Vocaloid's official design, even if it's not explicitly stated to be them.
Rin and Len
Rin's fan-assigned object is an orange, I think, and Len's is a banana. Rin is often portrayed as headstrong, brash, and energetic, while Len is laid back, intelligent, and down-to-earth. Their relationship isn't stated by canon, either; officially, I gather, they're two parts of the same whole - Their name, Kagamine, means "mirror sound", and "Rin" stands for "right" while "Len" stands for "left". Many people take them to be twins (my preference), but lots interpret them as boyfriend and girlfriend, and many others see them as both. Just like with Miku, though, they've been given every personality under the sun. Sometimes Rin is sweet and shy, and sometimes Len is a super-sexy playboy (*snort*) Miku, and Rin to a lesser extent, is more commonly given the persona of an actual singer, whereas I don't think I've seen any PVs in which Len is portrayed as one. This is possibly why I found his official Mikunopolis dancing-singing-hologram self to be so jarring.
Luka
Luka's fan-assigned object varies; sometimes it's a tuna and sometimes it's a little octopus version of her own head (yeah, I dunno, don't ask). Luka is older than Miku (who is 16) and the twins (who are 14) and she's usually portrayed as a more mature woman. If there are any trends with Luka's portrayal, it's either as uncertain and shy or as a bit of a vamp. In my experience, she's used less often than Miku, Rin, and Len for silly nonsense songs and for epic (or even not-so-epic) fantasy PVs. Luka's stuff that I've seen has been on the mainstream side for the most part.
Gumi
Gumi is probably the most popular of the non-Crypton Vocaloids. I would say that this is because she sounds freaking awesome. I don't know if it's the quality of the voicebank or something about the nature of her voice, or if it's just that for some reason the people who use her really know what they're doing, but she sounds more like a real human that even Miku does sometimes, and certainly more than Rin, Len, and Luka normally do. I'm at a loss to describe any sort of fan-consensus about her personality, though. She's used equally for cute romantic stuff and for emo thrash. If I had to place her anywhere, I'd put her farther away from the bouncy cheerful pop star end of the spectrum and more in the ethereal/serious area, if only because of the quality of her voice. Still, she makes one badass noir detective.
As for the other Vocaloids, I haven't seen tons of PVs featuring them so it's hard to make a generalization. I've heard that Kaito is portrayed as a "cool older brother" type and Meiko as the "cool older sister" (and sometimes drunk?) but I can't say for sure. Even though Iroha is marketed as a Kittyler (a Hello Kitty fan... I had to look up the term) with a cat-eared helmet, she has a rather deep voice and the videos I've seen have all had traditional Japanese imagery. In those, she's usually portrayed as more of the grown-up, boyish swordswoman type. I have soft spot for Iroha because I would totally use her voice for my character Kiin from my Nano last year if I could XD Speaking of swordspeople, in all of the Gakupo PVs I've seen, he's portrayed as a V. V. SRS samurai (sometimes literally and sometimes tongue in cheek, i.e. downright ridiculous). The fanmade Vocaloids have more set personalities, for some reason - Haku is depressed and drunk, Neru is a grumpface - but I don't know a lot about them other than that.
Internet cookies to anyone who can guess which Vocaloid is in my icon :D
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-23 02:13 pm (UTC)The vocaloid in your icon is Gumi?
no subject
Date: 2011-07-24 02:53 pm (UTC)I was thinking of you (and how you were trying to explain Vocaloid to people) when I wrote this ^_^ It's hard to explain it in a few words, so I thought writing this would be a good idea. I'm glad you found it helpful! *snuggles*
no subject
Date: 2011-07-24 10:28 pm (UTC)I found it extremely helpful, not only for explanation purposes, but for myself as well. :)