Vocaloid

By: Anastasia B.

What are Vocaloids, you may ask? Well I will tell you everything you need to know about them.

Vocaloid is a singing voice synthesizer where users can put lyrics and melodies in a special software, which produces the song they are trying to make. Users can make covers of a song already sung by a Vocaloid character, but with a different character or can make their own song all together, hence there are many different songs out there that people haven’t heard before. Vocaloids in general have many different characters. From the Japanese, to English, which people like to call Engloids, to Spanish and many more. The main ones being the Japanese.

All of the different Vocaloids have voice providers and parts of their voices are used in the vocaloid programs that you can get off amazon. Vocaloid has come a long way. February 26th 2000 is when the vocaloid project was announced. November 5th 2004 was when the Vocaloid Meiko was released, June 25th 2007 was when Miku was unveiled and was released August 31st 2007. And now they have Vocaloid V4 meaning that the Vocaloids voice sound more powerful and better than version 2 or 3.

If you look around on the internet you will find many vocaloid songs, too many to count. Vocaloids have music albums, novels, manga, concerts, software, figures, has been involved with a Domino’s Pizza app and more. Vocaloid has been really popular. Some fans, like me, call the characters by their names and don’t just act like they’re just characters, but give a little bit of themselves. People believe that vocaloids are their escape from the real world and when they make songs it makes them feel better. They get as much vocaloid merchandise as they can get and a great amount of vocaloid songs with a deep meaning behind them.

Take the song Odds and Ends for example. It is close to or is an accurate representation of a vocaloid producer, Ryo (also known as Supercell.) It talks about the struggle of someone who is not recognized by people and with Hatsune Miku’s voice helps him overcome those barriers of being unknown. This is what Japanese viewer said about a certain point in the video:

“At 4:58, Miku forms from the ‘odds & ends’ laying around the room. I think that each piece of junk represents the people, such as producers and illustrators, involved in making Vocaloid music. If even one piece of junk goes missing, Miku falls apart. They may never be able to compare to professionals, but when a group of amateurs come together they can create something big like this. It’s the same with her concerts. While an ordinary person would see that and think it’s nothing more than a digital image, it is us who make that ‘digital image’ into something real by calling out and cheering her on together. What I’m trying to say is, Miku is the embodiment of our love, sweat and tears-she’s our angel!”

Vocaloid is not just a singing program, or characters to people. They are more than that. When they make songs, even if they really know how to or not, they express their feelings and thoughts and it makes the song even better; it gets more attention and makes viewers more attached to the song because of how it appeals to them, how it attracts them, or how it matches a bit of their life. When people make their songs they think of what would most appeal to the audience and to themselves and possibly listen to certain vocaloid songs they like and that how they get their inspiration.