Don't turn your missiles at me, please
May 5, 2013 1:42 PM Subscribe
sasakure.UK is a Japanese songwriter/artist who often produces songs using Vocaloid, a singing voice synthesizer program (previously on Mefi).
Some examples of his works are below. WARNING: videos may contain high-fructose levels of cuteness, high pitched voices, english subtitles, retro video games, and rather depressing - even triggering - content (such death, suicide). Watch at your own risk.
sasakure.UK has two albums out, both of which are available through iTunes and Amazon.com. A third album is apparently slated to be released late this month.
Video credits: *Hello, Planet animated video by Brother-P and original 8-bit version by sasakure.UK. NegaPosi*Continues video is copyright Sega, and comes from the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F video game, the latest in a series of Project Diva rhythm games released in Japan. The Twee Box Puppet Show video is by Toga and sasakure.UK.
Extras:
- *Hello, Planet animated video | original 8-bit version: a last love song featuring a lonely robot on a journey through a post-apocalyptic world.
- NegaPosi*Continues - a girl really, really loves playing video games.
- Twee Box Puppet Show - a retro video game evolves in an unexpected way.
sasakure.UK has two albums out, both of which are available through iTunes and Amazon.com. A third album is apparently slated to be released late this month.
Video credits: *Hello, Planet animated video by Brother-P and original 8-bit version by sasakure.UK. NegaPosi*Continues video is copyright Sega, and comes from the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F video game, the latest in a series of Project Diva rhythm games released in Japan. The Twee Box Puppet Show video is by Toga and sasakure.UK.
Extras:
- *Hello, Planet live performance at Hatsune Miku Live Party 2011 in Sapporo.
- *Hello, Planet video from the Dreamy Theater Extend video game.
- One of the Project Diva psp games had a Hello Planet mini-game as DLC. Here's some footage.
- Gameplay of NegaPosi*Continues, in which a dedicated Project Diva F player aces the song on the Extreme level. (I've seen several players call this the hardest song in this game due to the unusual beat.)
I was not expecting to like these so much.
But to be fair, I'm a twenty-something computer science student so I guess that kind of makes me similar to people I've met into the whole thing, but never really gave much thought to Vocaloid other than "It's kind of neat computers can get phonemes and music theory right enough that they can sing now."
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:21 PM on May 5, 2013
But to be fair, I'm a twenty-something computer science student so I guess that kind of makes me similar to people I've met into the whole thing, but never really gave much thought to Vocaloid other than "It's kind of neat computers can get phonemes and music theory right enough that they can sing now."
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:21 PM on May 5, 2013
Also, I asked my local pizza store to deliver me a Vocaloid performance with my pizza, and they just delivered a pizza with no performance. But it wasn't Dominos pizza, so satisfactory.
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:31 PM on May 5, 2013
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:31 PM on May 5, 2013
I *heart* Vocaloid.
They take J-Pop songs that are already about as saccharine as can be imagined and dial it way, way, up.
posted by phrontist at 2:38 PM on May 5, 2013
They take J-Pop songs that are already about as saccharine as can be imagined and dial it way, way, up.
posted by phrontist at 2:38 PM on May 5, 2013
You might get the impression that the effects are covering for some form of shortcoming in Vocaloid; I recommend you check out (Mefi's own ) virt's award winning lorem ipsum to see what else can be done with it.
Personally, I'm kinda curious how much extra annotation you need to give Vocaloid; the open source text-to-speech tools never get things quite right. Or maybe it does a terrible job in Japanese, given that I don't understand the language...
posted by pwnguin at 3:02 PM on May 5, 2013
Personally, I'm kinda curious how much extra annotation you need to give Vocaloid; the open source text-to-speech tools never get things quite right. Or maybe it does a terrible job in Japanese, given that I don't understand the language...
posted by pwnguin at 3:02 PM on May 5, 2013
So the vocaloid software is akin to any DAW or synthesizer, except that each note also has a syllable attached to it, along with other parameters to make it singing-ier. It's actually a fairly labor-intensive process to get a song put together, to my understanding.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:35 PM on May 5, 2013
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:35 PM on May 5, 2013
pwnguin: it's pretty rough stuff.
> Or maybe it does a terrible job in Japanese, given that I don't understand the language...
Well, one thing you can do is listen to 'Engloids' - find songs done using either the Vocaloids specialized for English like Big Al or songs done using others which happen to have English voicebanks like Luka. My own impression is that the English versions still have a clear gap where you go 'that's not quite right' but a very good producer can get the quality high enough to briefly fool you. Of course, there's competition and Crypton is still working on new products or upgrades, so I figure it's a matter of years before the default output starts becoming passable and the finetuned output indistinguishable.
posted by gwern at 8:04 PM on May 5, 2013
> Or maybe it does a terrible job in Japanese, given that I don't understand the language...
Well, one thing you can do is listen to 'Engloids' - find songs done using either the Vocaloids specialized for English like Big Al or songs done using others which happen to have English voicebanks like Luka. My own impression is that the English versions still have a clear gap where you go 'that's not quite right' but a very good producer can get the quality high enough to briefly fool you. Of course, there's competition and Crypton is still working on new products or upgrades, so I figure it's a matter of years before the default output starts becoming passable and the finetuned output indistinguishable.
posted by gwern at 8:04 PM on May 5, 2013
« Older Embroidery That Mummifies Print Journalism | Click Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by The Whelk at 2:12 PM on May 5, 2013 [5 favorites]