She’s cute, she sings, but she’s not real. Instead, her voice is your instrument and you’re the composer/lyricist and through Hatsune Miku, you’re living through song too. Want to add vibrato? Change the pitch or warmth of the voice? You can here. Voice simulation taken on to another level. Her creator’s songs get replayed, resampled, and reborn into endless remixes, music videos, and parodies on Nico Nico and YouTube. She even had a real concert staged in Tokyo. Fujita Saki is the original voice of Hatsune Miku providing the foundation of the computer program that composers use. Hatsune Miku is the most recognized Vocaloid singer but there have been spinoffs. It brings up some interesting issues as Japanese singers have refused to contribute to Vocaloid software, saying they were afraid their careers would be endangered. Instead, the computer programmers behind Vocaloid dipped into Japan’s voice actor community to find talent. Aside from Fujita Saki, the other voices contributing to the different Vocaloid avatars can be tightly secretive – even more interesting, they sign the rights to their voices to be used in the programs. Would it be weird to hear variations of yourself singing unknown songs on the ‘Net?
Get a sampling of the different songs that people have created with Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku below.
This video is really striking because if I heard this playing on someone’s stereo, I WOUDLN’T be able to tell this was not a real person singing this AT ALL.
