- scopedharbinger
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- Noble Member
a preposterous load of banter begging a good listening to
"While lost on the internet, I found and interesting tool that threatens to put computers up for hire as singers, so as any amature writer would do, I decided to share this little tid bit of knowledge."
For a long time, the music industry has prided itself on producing exclusively human singers with computers relegated to the rather custodial tasks of producing echoes, flanging, and more notoriously, auro tuning the singer's voice. In recent years, however, computers are vecoming host to more prominent applications in the industry by taking up the task of producing melodies unobtainable by ene the most outlandish of physical instruments, and more recently still- synthesizingthe human voice. The technology concerned with the afforementioned task is known as Vocaloid; a software capable of reproducing the human oice to a much greater effect than that of iPhone's Siri, but instead of directing the usere to the nearest coffee shop, Vocaloids are incapable of doing anything other than singing.
Beginning in the year two-thousand, several Japanese companies, including Yamaha and Zero-G started working on a project to turn speech synthesis from the gimmicky computer assistant to a software program capable of reproducing the human voice with enough carity and tone differentiation to be used as an actural singer. In its fledgling stages, the software found itself as a relatively unmarketable product because much unlike actual singers, Vocaloids at the time lacked face, and and all the hype in the world could not distract from the glaring issue that Vocaloid was nothing more than a box embezzled with a massive V. This however, would soon change when the digital music company, Crypton Future Media, was given the green light to produce more marketable Vocaloids. WIth that in mind, Crypton first attempted the idea of throwing a little personality to the virtual singers through nothing more than box art for their first two Vocaloids, Meiko and Kaito. During this time, Crypton's new practice would produce healthier quarterly incomes, but the enterprise of "voice in a box" didn't truly start to flourish until the release of Vocaloid 2 in two thousand- seven. WIth the advent of Vocaloid's sequel came a more powerful synthesis engine, capable of producing sound with shining clarity and frighteningly realistic vocal effects such as breathing in before and between notes, and a slight sultriness at lower octaves. Along with vastly improved sound quality, Vocaloid 2 introduced an additional four voice banks to the cast of synthetic singers- each with unique box art and avatar, which include Sweet Anne Megurine Luka, Kagamine Len and Rin, and the flagship Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku.
Hatsune Miku is the second and by far, the most popular of the Vocaloid 2 series, due in part to her highly appealing voice, and an uncanny resmblance to a teal-haired Sailor moon, but with more massive pig tails. Topping off her familiar qualities are the typical pop culture garb of a school girl outfit, signaturely retrofitted with assorted diodes on her skirt and long black boots along with vaguely bell-shaped sleeves. The reason for being, according to Crypton Future Media is that this model would appeal to a wider demographic, breaching the gap of proffesional and independent artist, and increasing revenue. This marketing stradegy, as far as japan was concerned, was a roaring success, cuminating into the development of Hatsune Miku into the world's first digital diva.
The cyan celebrity at first found her venue of choice to be the internet with hundreds of thousands of indepent artists posting their works to Japan's YouTube; Nico Nico Douga as well as YouTube itself, leading to the formation of Karen-T which is an independent music label owned by Crypton. From there, Karen-T did what any music label would do, and sold Miku's music internationally through the infinitely famous iTunes marke, Amazon MP3, Hear Japan, and several others. As the growth of the digital diva grew so too did Crypton's promotional efforts, effectively putting Miku's face on whatever medium they could get their paws and painters on, form rally cars to pork buns and vegetable juice. Of course, such a popular face demands to be seen in the flesh by her adoring fans, as is the case with any artist, and with a dash of Sony collaboration, Hatsune Miku would dance about the stage of the Saitama Super Arena as the first holographic idol, and while touching the transluscent screen she careens and sparkle around on, or any one of the eight projectors used to force Miku into life may turn her into an unrecognizable melodious blob of pixels Miku and her equally virtual colleagues sold out every stage they ever graced. Since that first appearance, Vocaloids have had 39 live performances in many different countries, with the latest in the little socialist utopia Singapore.
With Hatsune Miku in the apparent spotlight, she' become a spearhead for almost all of Crypton Future Media's escapades, such as their social nework, MikuBook, Japanese rythm games, and "Append", which a project to give Miku and older Vocaloids a bigger sound bank, and in the five years since Hatsune Miku, she has remained at the top of the popularity charts, with her trademark pigtails blowing in the faces of Vocaloid 3 and Vocaloid's competitors, Gackpoid, and Megpoid. On the subject of trademarks, Krypton has put a massive effort in ensuring that customers can circumvent enough of them to reproduce Miku's image, and use her voice as they please.
Now then, with Vocaloid's popularity trickling into the United States and Europe, Crypton finds itself working foremost with Hatsune Miku in an effor to teach her fluent English in order to cater to English speakers, who make up Vocaloid's second largest fan base. Of course, Americans will be waiting a while yet as the current English speaking varient of Vocaloid is cursed with a heavy Japanese accent, and has extreme difficulty in annunciating the more elaborate of English words. In spit of the hurdle that is English, Crypton strives to put their bes foot forward in effort to satisfy as much of Miku's almost religious following as possible. With that in mind, we can all look forward to an era where Tupac won't be the only twelve foot hologram to make frequent visits to concerts across the nation.