Boku no Sainou

Tadaa late
I guess it's doomed to be that way for me and this blog...

Moving on.
About the Producer: wowaka has been one of my oldest favourite producers, and an unusual one at that, since I enjoy his fast rock compositions a lot. Maybe it's because of his Miku tuning, or maybe it's the usage of other synths that are sometimes heard in his songs, or maybe it's the sound of the piano. Whatever the reason, wowaka has given me an appreciation for harder sounding stuff, in a period where I was looking for niches as I was completely over the pop and techno music of mainstream 2011-2012. It still isn't my most preferred genre, but wowaka does it well, so I appreciate his stuff.

About the song: I started off knowing all the big wowaka hits like Rolling Girl and Two Faced Lovers. I think I'd heard Boku no Sainou once before in an album cross-fade and I remember that I really enjoyed it. However I'd forgotten what it was called.
Then came my Japan trip and I eneded up spending over $100 on Vocaloid-related merchandise. The last proper Voclaoid CD I bought (excluding Piko CD that I thought was Utatane Piko) was in Kyoto, and it was wowaka's Unhappy Refrain. I decided on it due to it having more songs that I knew and liked compared to ones I didn't know at all. Boku no Sainou was one song that fell into the former category, albeit me calling it the 'unknown song that I liked'. When I returned to Australia, I put it on and was pleasantly surprised. the album included album-exclusive versions of wowaka's popular singles, some of which I liked, and some of which I didn't.
I found myself getting into Boku no Sainou, Tsumiki no Ningyou and reversible Doll; stuff I had overlooked unitl now. The single version of BnS isn't as good, as the Miku tuning is really screechy and yuck. But I thought that if I could cover this with Ritsu Kire, it might save it for me, since the instrumental is slightly better/more synthy than the album version.

Currently I'm working on an UTAU/VOCALOID cover with Sukone Tei ad Megurine Luka for a contest on VocaloidOtaku. Hope it turns it out ok, and I'll post it up here when I'm done.

SeeU for now!!

Comeback

!!!!HEEEYYY!!!!

Okay, so now I've established where I was months ago, I should probably update this again...

In Sptember I managed to get the cover of SILENCE feat. Luka finished (again) and that's been up on YT for a while now. So give the link out here today for anyone who wants to view it.

And just now, I've uploaded a cover of the wowaka song, Boku no Sainou feat. Namine Ritsu Kire. I'll post later about that, but let's get back to SILENCE.

About the song: Well, I've already given my two cents on niki before when I covered WAVE, but I have to say that I adore his EDM so much, it's a mile ahead of his rock stuff.

SILENCE was a pretty significant song when it came out, for a few reasons.
For one, it used Avanna, and was niki's first English Vocaloid/English language song.
Secondly, it was a collaboration with kyaami, which left me internally screaming. I mean, kyaami has been synonymous with niki for while now, and it was great to see her get some more recognition in the Japanese community, as well as niki acknowledging her.

But most importantly, it got on the Japanese Vocaranking. That's a huge acheivement, not just for an English song, but for an English Vocaloid.

When I heard SILENCE, I fell in love, just the vastness and echo of the sound, it was like I was in the middle of Siberia or Antarctica; cold and huge. I felt compelled to cover this with Luka English. Despite not mixing her as well as others (I really wish I knew how to use autotune), I was happy with my result.


I'll try to post about Boku no Sainou tomorrow or later this week, hopefully I can keep my promise!

また明日！！

Bad News

Hey everyone...

Well, before I begin with my bad news, I want you to have some hope left in you, so I'll put up this link to my most recent cover. 

This is another niki song; and one of my favourites at that. There are two distinct styles he has going on: either his Hard Rock, which you'll know from songs like -ERROR and +REVERSE, and then his EDM, with WAVE, GLIDE, and my latest favourite of his, SILENCE (using Avanna, no less!)

Now onto the singer, Sasara Satou. She works under a program called CeVIO, a dual voice and singing synthesis program. Kinda like if Yukari's Voiceroid and Vocaloid were put together in one program. Currently (or maybe not, I'm not entirely sure), she's got a free beta out with both functions (although the voice function doesn't work for me, only the singing one). I really liked her voice but the problem is that although she was free and had the quality of somewhere between a Vocaloid 2 VB and an UTAU, her editor is very limited and I actually ended up using the Vocalshifter program on her to get the pitch bends. Her vowel transitions are also quite bad...
Anyway, it's up, check it out and enjoy!

Now, here's the thing:
My laptop has not been turning on for a few days. This annoys me, as I've got all my Vocaloid and UTAU stuff on there. We decided to run a full system restore, which I don't really mind.

Until the next day when I find out that all my files have been deleted and it's highly risky and expensive if I want to recover them. So I'm literally left with nothing. My only functioning copy of Luka was on there, and I have no more activation codes. All my covers, finished and WIPs were too. But what annoys me the most is that the UTAU I spent ages working on and was so close to completion has gone. All the voice files, all the oto'ing, everything. 
I have to start from scratch.
But I am now more determined than ever to get a good quality VB up for everyone to use. I was doubting whether I could continue updating Shou, but now I feel like this is my final chance to get him sounding amazing for people. I'm disappointed that I probably won't have him ready until the end of the year now, plus I have no time on the holidays to work on him as I'll be in Japan. But I'm going to spend as much time as possible now fixing everything and hopefully rebuilding my stuff so I can be back on par.

がんばってね、Rivさん！

WAVE

AHA!

Told you I would get them out soon.
Okay, so I had this old thing lying around, but I thought it was one of the better ones from last year, so I re-mixed it in REAPER, and Voila!~

This awesome pic of Shou was done by someone on VO, a big thank you to them, however it isn't the art I'm using as the official artwork. 

About the song:

I first heard this song as an uttate cover by Cillia/Kyaami, but then listening to some other UTAU covers I found an amazing Ritsu one that would not look out of place of Kyaami's uploads list.

This and Glide are my two favourite niki songs, being more dance-pop and techno than his other rock-oriented ones which are just 'meh' in my opinion. I'm pretty hard to please when it come to rock, and I'm not really a fan anyway; it all just sounds the same after a while...

About the name issue; I think if I were to change it I would go for Touketsune because I think it sounds cool and the meaning fits his colour scheme and voice (kind of a buzzy, 'frozen' voice).
However now that doesn't seem to fit with 'Shou'. Shou Touketsune or Shou Touketsu. I prefer the latter, but I'd really like to know what any of you reading this think!

じゃ、また！

New Name?

So, I'm one step closer to getting Shou released! A big thank you to Razz-Pixel on VO for making this for me, I really appreciate it:) Also, thank you to Eenkin for giving me another image to use for a video, you guys are the best!

Anyway, no that that's over, I'm thinking seriously about changing Shou's last name. I was only basic in my knowledge of Japanese back when I created him, but now I feel the name is too simple, and Crypton-oriented with the whole 'ne' suffix at the end. Thanks to the exceptionally horrible power of Google Translate, I've come up with a few I would consider as potential new surnames:

• 'Rokuon', or 'Rokune' (録音); this is something like 'recorded sound', because I'm updating Shou's profile to say he's a teen that has created his own UTAU recorded bank.
• 'Gijutsu' (技術); meaning, 'technology'. I'd like to translate it as 'Technic', becasue of Shou's very robotic tone.
• 'Tōketsune' (凍結音); meaning 'frozen sound'. His colour scheme would fit this name; blue, grey, and white. 

I like the last two, but I'd love to know what you think. So please, leave a comment if you think I should change it to any of these names, or not change it at all!!  

Just as a note, I'm planning to release quite a few of my UTAU covers now, I've actually got around 5 or more I can mix quickly and release.

じゃ、また！

All That Jazz!!

And that was quick...

So, here's my next cover with Luka; a version of 'One Room, All That Jazz' by DATEKEN. 

I love Jazz. That is one thing that will always remain true about me. So when someone decided to combine Jazz with VOCALOID and called it VocaJazz, I died a little inside from sheer joy. This such sung is one of the many VocaJazz songs that I love.

Originally sung by Hatsune Miku Append: Dark (beacause that VB is the epitome of all things VocaJazz, even I have to admit she sounds better than Luka and Yukari at times), it was covered by the always brilliant Kyaami (Cillia) using Yuzuki Yukari. Needless to say, I was amazed and thought it better than the original (now I believe they are both equally as good as each other). Soon, another cover using a UTAU VB was made, the uploader (Konane Winters) saying that she happend to bump into Canon on Skype.

For those who don't know, Canon made the original UST for this song for Kyaami to use, but more than that, she is the voicer of one of the most famous UTAU VBs of all time: Namine Ritsu. So if you happen to bump into her, it would be a pretty big deal...(imo)

So I finally found the UST on Konane's tumblr page that takes 30 mins to trawl through, and got to work on the Luka cover.

Soon after, I discovered that she was singing very flat, I now realise it was the way the UST was converted into a VSQ that stuffed her tone up. Nethertheless, I set to make her sharper (about 2000dB, actually, around 1/2 a semitone). I finally finished and needed an image. After trying for a day and getting nothing, I resorted to forum requests, which resulted in the image you'll see in the video. In fact, the picture came in the next day!!

So, I'll start on other UST/VSQ projects now, and I hope I get to share them with you guys soon!!

じゃ、また！

I have returned!!

Oh, sorry, I don't update this enough...

Well, since I last decided to update my blog (my previous post was a draft from ages ago that I never posted), a lot has happend. Namely, that I now have Megurine Luka and am making covers with her now too. 

So now you'll see both Luka and Shou in this blog!!

As a treat, here's a link to my first Luka cover:
'Video Games' by Lana Del Rey

My thoughts:

I decided to cover this song as Luka's English voice is really only good for slow ballads and such; it's just too soft. Hopefully this can be averted in her V3 update as there are appeneds being discussed/made/whatever.

I think I just happened to stumble on this song, and thought it a perfect match for Luka's voice. I began the VSQ but stopped as I got bored and restless.

Then I encountered the song again whilst I was reading a vocaloid related fanfiction. It was a collection of one-shots with different couples and different songs for the basis of each chapter. The latest one was an IA/Oliver friendship story based on 'Video Games', talking about IA's dual life being whatever her boyfriend wanted her to be, and being herself when she played on the computer. She befriends a person on an MMORPG, and eventually realises that in reality this person accepts her more for who she truly is, rather than her boyfriend where she plays whatever role he desires at the time. She arranges to meet the person (and throughout the story we are led to believe they are female) and discovers that he is  in fact a boy named Oliver. The story ends with them hugging...

At the time I was making crappy tests of SNSD VSQs with her English (which were VERY crappy, mind you). I'd obviously heard the song before and loved it already, and when having my usual discussion with the author afterwards, I felt more motivated to complete the VSQ.

And that was that.

Lana Del Rey is interesting, as I watched a YouTube clip comparing Lana to Hatsune Miku, saying both stars were fake in their own way (Lana having paid to change her artist 'image' to a more indie style, apparently). The song was always bittersweet to my ears, the lyrics just out of my grasp of understanding, but then again I guess that's why I find it so beautiful...

ANYWAY, I have another Luka cover ready (just need some art, if anyone wants help out there, leave a comment), so I will try to make an effort in updating this.

じゃ、また！！

Baby Maniacs feat. Hatsune Miku and Torine Shou

So, here I am, finally.

This is my latest attempt at creating a UST, so be nice....
Also, i couldn't get rid of Miku. SO, I did the obvious thing and kept her wonderfully annoying voice. Kidding, I love Hachiouji's style of Miku voice, as well as kz's. She's meant for roboticism.
Anyway, enjoy!!!! 

Baby Maniacs feat. Hatsune Miku and Torine Shou

 So, here's a little review concerning Hachiouji and this song:

Baby Maniacs was the first Hachiouji P song I heard. I must say I probably couldn't have picked a better one. Due to Livetune's songs, I had grown to like the more robotic Miku voice, as it suited her 'ElectroPop' genre better. Obviously I was happy with the song, and my interest in electronic Vocaloid music was rekindled. Currently, my top picks for Hachiouji are this and 'Distorted Princess'. I also have a CD with 'CRAZY GiRL' on  it, but my damn CD player doesn't work, so I have no idea what it sounds like...