Vocaloid

[blkmage]

I haven't found a thread about Nico Nico Douga or Vocaloids yet, so I thought I'd introduce them, since I hope that for at least those of you who are into J-pop, this interests you.

I'd signed up for a Nico Nico Douga ( http://www.nicovideo.jp ) account a while ago. Nico Nico Douga is a Japanese video sharing site, much like YouTube. Something that's unique to it is the scrolling comments, overlaid right on top of the video, which leads to some interesting stuff.

Nico Nico Douga is home to numerous video game playthroughs, amateur musicians, and anime mashups. But, the most important thing you'll find on Nico are the Vocaloid songs.

Vocaloid is a program created by Yamaha that allows users to generate songs. Currently, there are six different Vocaloids, and of course, in the Japanese tradition of creating characters out of everything, each Vocaloid has a character and personality. They are:

MEIKO, the older sister
KAITO, the older brother
Hatsune Miku (初音ミク), the middle child
Kagamine Rin (鏡音リン), the little twin sister
Kagamine Len (鏡音レン), the little twin brother
Kagumi Gakupo (神威がくぽ), Gackt (yeah, lolwut).

Together, they are the Vocaloid family. The most popular of these is Hatsune Miku, who's already appeared in two anime you may have heard of: Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and the Lucky Star OVA.

Currently, there are hundreds of original songs on Nico, many of them really impressive, with some excellent PVs to go with them. There's a user-created weekly ranking that comes out, highlighting each week's top Vocaloid songs, based on some crazy formula that takes views, comments, and favourites into account. Some artists have even been releasing albums, the most successful of these being Re:package by livetune, which made it onto Oricon, placing fifth during its first week.

A lot of the good ones are starting to show up on YouTube, so I'll link those instead of the Nico versions, since there's no English for Nico, and registration is required. So, on to Vocaloid songs that I really, really like:

ココロ (Kokoro) by travolta feat. 鏡音リン (Kagamine Rin)
Last Night, Good Night by livetune feat. 初音ミク (Hatsune Miku)
初音ミクの消失 (Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu -DEAD END-) by cosMo feat. 初音ミク (Hatsune Miku)
メルト (Melt) by ryo feat. 初音ミク (Hatsune Miku)

[Midori]

I agree, vocaloid is very interesting. I had a favorite song by Hatsune Miku, but I don't know where it is anymore. I even had an MP3 of it, but my laptop died and I can't salvage my hard drive yet. Ah...

Hatsune Miku sings a rather nice Ave Maria, too. The Japanese vowels match rather nicely to Latin.

[blkmage]

So, in the last few weeks, a new Vocaloid was introduced, Megurine Luka (巡音ルカ). Her vocal range is pretty similar to MEIKO's but she's a second generation Vocaloid, so she sounds as good as Miku. She also has a second voice bank for English, since previously, the only way to use English was with katakana. She pretty much took over the Weekly Vocaloid Rankings on Nico Nico Douga the week she was released.

[Fantasy Dreamer]

Very interesting. I must listen to some of these songs some time.

[Benn]

So glad another person knows about Vocaloid. ^^

I've got two cd's of Hatsune Miku from Akiba when I visited. One is Miracle Trax and the other is Wind In Her Hair. You can listen to samples from Miracle Trax at http://chomkoubou.com/25_miracle.html

It's very addicting in small doses... can never get myself to put the cd on repeat tho, because the "artificial" voice gets to me after awhile.

[RandomBurrito]

I'm wanting to buy a vocaloid program. I believe they run from $250, so I guess it's not too bad. My fave character probably has to be Len.

[blkmage]

It's time to resurrect this thread. This week saw the release of another new Vocaloid, Megpoid/GUMI. She's voiced by Megumi Nakajima, the newbie voice actress and singer who made her debut as Macross F's Ranka Lee. Megpoid's character design is pretty Ranka-ish. Her voice range sounds about the same as Luka's. Anyway, I expect that the following week of rankings will be mostly Megpoid stuff, but I'm not so sure it'll swamp the charts like Luka's first week did.

[ShiroiHikari]

I know this thread has been up for a while, but thanks for posting it. I'd been wondering what a Vocaloid was and I kept forgetting to look it up because I'm a forgetful weirdo. Now I know!

*snort* I like that there's a Gackt one. What can I say, I like the guy.

That first song you linked to, Kokoro, was really nice. And Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu, while catchy and fun, kinda makes my brain want to explode when I try to keep up with what the heck she's saying. XD

Edit: Okay, I searched for some Gakupo ones, and let's just say it is really creepy to hear Gackt's "voice" sing without his trademark vibrato. @_o

[RandomBurrito]

While in the vocaloid category, it's not necessarily the same subject:

I recently got a Miku plush! I'm happy about that ^_^

[Hana Ryuuzaki]

[font="palatino Linotype"]Vocaloid~~~ <3333333
I love Vocaloid so much.
Kaito, the Kagamine's, and Gakupo are quite possibly my favourites.

AND.
A group of quite talented peoples are starting a fanime of Vocaloid on Youtube called "Project Voice".
http://www.youtube.com/user/VocaloidFanime
^__^[/font]

[blkmage]

I've noticed that some of the better Megpoid songs actually do sound like her. I've also noticed that she doesn't seem to be as popular as Luka, which I assume is because of her character design. That or the fact that she doesn't have an adorable/creepy representation of her like Takoluka.

Anyhow, I think this thread would be great if we all shared Vocaloid song PVs that we really liked, since there's always new, cool stuff each week.

I've got one of this week's chart toppers, the sort of jazz CLANNAD mix by ココアシガレットP. I've also got cosMo's hard rock remix of that famous Rin song, meltdown.

[RandomBurrito]

I've heard Rin's, Len's and Kaito's meltdown versions. The Kaito one I heard was really nicely done.

What is the meltdown thing anyways? Does anyone know what the song is really about? It's really catchy, lol.

[thisiskris89]

sorry about my thread.i didnt realize there was one already( T_T ) watashi wa BAKA!
i really have fallen in love with vocaloid.my favorite are miku,mekio, and luka.

has anyone seen the funny pv for kaito where he is singing his own version of daughter of darkness and he's a vampire?or the one where he's singin world is mine.

[Hana Ryuuzaki]

[font="palatino Linotype"]You mean "Yami no Ou!" Yes, that one is funny. ^^

And iunno what Meltdown is really about. o_o;;
Anyhow, has anyone heard of the song "Trick and Treat" by the Twins? X3 It's so amazing~[/font]

[ilikegir33]

Vocaloid is pretty cool.

My favorite Vocaloid song would probably be "GGRKS" (ググれカス or Google It) by Luka and Gakupo.

[Lady Kenshin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjZLdmaQZUY

Is win. ^_^

And Yami no Ou is cute.

[blkmage]

My favourite Vocaloid artist is still supercell. They're the ones who did the huge songs like Melt, World is Mine, Koi wa Sensou, and Black Rock Shooter. You should all check out the demos on their site for their first album.

[blkmage]

Slightly unrelated, because it's not a Vocaloid song, but a low quality version of the full version of supercell's (from above) first single, Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari (君の知らない物語) got leaked on to Nico Nico Douga to a huge response. It's currently fourth in the daily mylist rankings. The single is Bakemonogatari's ED theme and the single release will also contain the theme to Cencoroll. Instead of using Hatsune Miku, the vocalist is nagi, a famous Nico Nico Douga singer who's done covers for supercell's songs before.

君の知らない物語 (full ver.) - supercell feat. nagi
君の知らない物語 (化物語 ED) - supercell feat. nagi
メルト 3M MIX - supercell feat. gazelle/nagi
メルト - supercell feat. 初音ミク

[caramellmusic]

I'm totally obsessed with Vocaloid xD
I've read the manga, I'm trying to figure out MikuMikuDance, I love all their songs, and me and my sisters are literally obsessed with tako Luka, watching videos, sending pictures of her, claiming our names as Octopus Luka... xD

[blkmage]

This week's VOCALOID rankings have a new top three, with the creepy Miku song, 結ンデ開イテ羅刹ト骸, dropping out of the top 3 and the Luka song, Just Be Friends, still going strong at number 5. In return, we've got a new cosMo song, ANTI THE∞HOLiC, at 3, a new Miku song, SPiCa, at 2, and ボカラン詐欺 at number 1, since if you didn't MyList the video, the son wouldn't get surgery and you'd be a murderer.

[blkmage]

In Vocaloid related news, Black★Rock Shooter is getting her own anime. Black★Rock Shooter started out as an original character/illustration by huke, which got turned into a Hatsune Miku song composed by ryo and became so popular that Good Smile released a figure for it. The anime is going to be directed by Yutaka Yamamoto.

[Hana Ryuuzaki]

[font="palatino Linotype"]You gotta be kidding me!!! o.o
That's so amazing!!!! XDDD
*VocaFan's dream come true~*[/font]

[blkmage]

In my latest attempt to revive this thread, I'll bring your attention to August 31st, which happened to be the 100th Weekly VOCALOID Ranking as well as Hatsune Miku's second birthday. And here, we have an animated history of VOCALOIDs. Finally, here's a more substantial trailer of the B★RS anime project.

[RandomBurrito]

[quote="blkmage (post: 1343362)"]In my latest attempt to revive this thread, I'll bring your attention to August 31st, which happened to be the 100th Weekly VOCALOID Ranking as well as Hatsune Miku's second birthday. And here, we have an animated history of VOCALOIDs. Finally, here's a more substantial trailer of the B★]

She's kinda creepy eheh..

Heard any news about a Miku anime? Or is it only for BlackRock Shooter?

[WhiteMage212]

Never heard of Vocaloid until now. How much does Vocaloid Leon Cost? I may just buy it when I get the money. I certainly would try and compose my own music to hear what it sounds like in reality instead of just in my head.

[The Banner]

I've heard some of these songs, and I thought that the voices have some potential. Len sounds like the little small boy he should be. He seems to be very popular among the fangirls.

That said, there also seems to be an application called "MikuMikuDance" that was made to make the Vocaloids dance, express emotions, and even do actions. This resulted in some humorous movies, although some decided to launch off for these interesting compositions.

[color="Blue"]Not for the faint of heart.[/color]

[url=Really random near the end]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYMueJ4ZLC4[/url]
[url=Scarier than the previous]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIrB3k_teE[/url]
(There was also this one where Miku has a nightmare where Len dies and Ronald McDonald pops out. Forgot the link, but probably too disturbing to put on here anyway.)
Anyways, I own Kagamine Rin/Len at the moment. I'm obviously going to make them sing Christian music. >=) Any suggestions?

[RandomBurrito]

I've heard some of these songs, and I thought that the voices have some potential. Len sounds like the little small boy he should be. He seems to be very popular among the fangirls.

That said, there also seems to be an application called "MikuMikuDance" that was made to make the Vocaloids dance, express emotions, and even do actions. This resulted in some humorous movies, although some decided to launch off for these interesting compositions.

[color="Blue"]Not for the faint of heart.[/color]

[url=Really random near the end]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYMueJ4ZLC4[/url]
[url=Scarier than the previous]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIrB3k_teE[/url]
(There was also this one where Miku has a nightmare where Len dies and Ronald McDonald pops out. Forgot the link, but probably too disturbing to put on here anyway.)
Anyways, I own Kagamine Rin/Len at the moment. I'm obviously going to make them sing Christian music. >=) Any suggestions?

I'm going to get Rin and Len too. I would probably have them sing songs from Ian McIntosh.

[blkmage]

Wouldn't that be sort of tricky because that'd require you transliterating everything to katakana?

[The Banner]

The trickier part is probably making them speak English without a funny accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boxUQ1O9DoA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTBJk5oXpgM

I think that to make them speak English, it will need a lot of experimenting and studying of phonetic speech, contrary to making them speak Korean. It's what I have, and it will take time, but it will be fun to do. Until then, I'll probably have to make them sing Korean Christian songs.

(I'd actually also get an English Vocaloid like Leon as well, but financial problems, hurrah!)

[blkmage]

Well, that's kinda hard considering the only Japanese Vocaloid with an English voice bank is Megurine Luka.