What's Hatsune Miku?

[Skelletonike]

I love Vocaloid and what people do with it. I'd much rather listen to an artificial voice than listen to people like Lady Gaga and the like, just because it doesn't exist, it does not mean it isn't real, Voicaloid gives voices to people that are good with music or love music, but don't have the skill to sing it.

 

[trumpet-205]

I don't know what she is, But I do like the songs.

Hatsune Miku, and any other vocaloid, are computer programs that artificially produce singing. In other words instead of real people do the signing, computers do it instead. Here are three songs I like (Tell Your World, Melancholic, and Luka Luka Night Fever),

​

​

​

​

 

[BORTZ]

Shes also a playable mech in one of the SRW games.

 

[PolloDiablo]

Hatsune Miku is just an overglorified VST preset

 

[Bake]

I love Vocaloid and what people do with it. I'd much rather listen to an artificial voice than listen to people like Lady Gaga and the like, just because it doesn't exist, it does not mean it isn't real, Voicaloid gives voices to people that are good with music or love music, but don't have the skill to sing it.

Maybe a bit off topic but what exactly is wrong with Lady Gaga's songs?
Not that I really listen to her but from the random songs I heard from coffee bars, they're not exactly anything awful.

 

[Skelletonike]

Maybe a bit off topic but what exactly is wrong with Lady Gaga's songs?
Not that I really listen to her but from the random songs I heard from coffee bars, they're not exactly anything awful.

Nothing, I simply don't like the songs, it's all a matter of taste. xP

 

[Deleted User]

i really wish i could go to a miku hatsune concert

 

[trumpet-205]

Hatsune Miku is just an overglorified VST preset

Uh huh... tell that to these people (Still Luka Luka Night Fever, but sang and danced by real people),

 

[PolloDiablo]

Uh huh... tell that to these people (Still Luka Luka Night Fever, but sang and danced by real people)

well... I'm not lying

that synth riff sounds like Touhou maybe?

anyway... Eurobeat sounds awesome, specially when it's done by Italians.

 

[Walker D]

Um... as far as I know, this vocaloids are all octopuses...
be careful with them ..those tentacles are sticky, and you could end up with those things glued on your head..

I don't listen much of this vocaloid musics myself though ...but I like some of them.

Spoiler

I'm gonna get you sucka !

 

[Isaac]

Um... as far as I know, this vocaloids are all octopuses...
be careful with them ..those tentacles are sticky, and you could end up with those things glued on your head..

I don't listen much of this vocaloid musics myself though ...but I like some of them.

Spoiler

I'm gonna get you sucka !

Not sure if cute... or disturbing

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Based off a real voice. Also, Vocaloid doesn't take much talent to use, you just gotta program the MIDI and add in the dynamics, just takes a long time before you are good at it and can replicate a human sounding voice (I made Hatsune sing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air once).

Video/recording or it didn't happen.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Hatsune Miku is just an overglorified VST preset

You take that back!


But back on topic here. Google will get you miles on this one. Google her name and the first result is her entry on Wikipedia, which should most definitely answer your question and give you some history on the origins of Miku.

Unlike human singers which pretty much have a preset skill level that rarely changes, how well a vocaloid sounds is based mostly on the skill of the person using the Vocaloid program. Back when she was first released, it consisted of just the program that outputs her voice and the cover art that defines her physical appearance. The only back-story/description Crypton officially released about her was "Hatsune Miku is an Android from the future where song is lost". Or something to that effect.

The company never officially indicated what personality she has or anything. It has been left to the fans who created and/or listened to her music to define her. I guess you can say she is an "open source diva" so to speak with each fan putting their own spin on her.

MikuMikuDance came later on and that allowed folks to produce custom animations of Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloids. (my GIF in my signature is one prime example of something made in MikuMikuDance).

Currently my favorite music video of her is this one:



This particular artist does a really good job making her sound human which is not an easy task by any means. Show me an overglorified VST plugin that does that! That's what I thought!

By the way Crypton is going to release the "English" version of Hatsune Miku this Saturday. Unlike normal voice synthesizers. (like the one Stephen Hawking uses for example), the voice isn't 100% artificially generated.

A real life human (usually voice actresses in the case of Vocaloids) provides all the possible phonetics of the language which are recorded at a studio and compiled as a "voice bank" for the Vocaloid program to use. It then combines the requested sounds by the end user and alters their pitch and tune in a manner similar to AutoTune to create the final result.

They had the voice acter do all the English pronunciations for the English version which will allow artists to make her sing English lyrics and have it be easier to understand and sound better. There are already videos/songs out there where they manage to get her to sing English with the Japanese sound bank, but it's heavy in "Engrish" and is hard to understand in most cases.

Also note, that video I linked to above, that artist also made her sing a few verses in Spanish as well and not all of it is Japanese. The limits of a Vocaloid is constrained only on how much work the end user wants to put into it.

 

[Deleted-236924]

I love Vocaloid and what people do with it. I'd much rather listen to an artificial voice than listen to people like Lady Gaga and the like, just because it doesn't exist, it does not mean it isn't real, Voicaloid gives voices to people that are good with music or love music, but don't have the skill to sing it.

So it's just like autotune?

 

[Arras]

So it's just like autotune?

Well, it's more or less the exact opposite. AFAIK: For Autotune the general idea is that you provide a voice and the computer makes it sound good. For Vocaloid the idea is that the computer provides the voice stuff (more or less) and you make it sound good (and that's not simple by any definition of the word).

 

[Skelletonike]

So it's just like autotune?

Vocaloid is a program, there's several voices for that program, Sonica, Kaito, Hatsune Miku, Rin, Luka, etc... All of them are pretty much the same, although the later generations are better at sounding more human (for example, Kaito is a generation one Vocaloid while Miku is a generation 2 and sounds more human), of course it all depends on the person using the program, you control the voice, by making it connect several words you get it singing.

Here's a vid explaining better how it works:

 

[Sop]

Vocaloid is a program, there's several voices for that program, Sonica, Kaito, Hatsune Miku, Rin, Luka, etc... All of them are pretty much the same, although the later generations are better at sounding more human (for example, Kaito is a generation one Vocaloid while Miku is a generation 2 and sounds more human), of course it all depends on the person using the program, you control the voice, by making it connect several words you get it singing.

Here's a vid explaining better how it works:

that vid was pretty shit

also

 

[Skelletonike]

that vid was pretty shit

Well, it was the first result that showed up, it was just to show what the program was like.