Vocaloids

[SpaceXray]

What do you think about vocaloids? Can they really replace human soloists? Are they better? In what way?

What do you think about the company giving them "personalities" and "characters"?

Okay, some insight into what a vocaloid is:

Vocaloid (ボーカロイド BÃ…Âkaroido

^?) is a singing voice synthesizer. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Catalonia,Spain, in 2000 (the same team that later founded Voctro Labs^[1]) and originally was not intended to be a full commercial project. Backed by the Yamaha Corporation, it developed the software into the commercial product "Vocaloid."^[2][3]

The most popular vocaloid, Miku Hatsune!

One of the more famous songs+live performance

Very good video giving you some explanation about all of this:

[Thomas988]

This is my personal opinion here and I don't mean to offend anyone, but I find vocaloids...pretty weird. I myself never see myself enjoying a singer who technically doesn't even exist. Also, I'm the kind of person who thinks that people are far superior to computers of our age, so I think that an actual person could do much more than what a digital singer can.

[Camacha]

I think this is a very interesting experiment from a social point of view. The line between recording and live act is blurring to a confusing point and apparently people are okay with that. Japanese are famously open to this kind of thing, though you are left to wonder whether the west does not also know this, though less blatant in nature. With all the styling, concerted media manipulation, vocal editing and more you could ask yourself how much of a real person you are actually seeing when you are looking at popular artists. That is also a thick layer of purposeful design on top of a small portion of actual human being. You will rarely see the real flesh and blood person underneath.

[lajoswinkler]

I don't know if that will ever become a rival to real singers, but people don't just listen to music because of the sound. Music is an art, and to watch a real artist do his thing is a matter of enjoying the performance. This lacks it completely. Personally, I don't like it at all and find all those people jumping in front of a hologram to be nutty.

The Japanese - are they open to this? Or it's just a bias? When you see Miku's concert, you see a selected population. Saying that "the Japanese really like vocaloids" is not based on actual good data. By using such logic we could say "the Norwegians are into death metal" or "Americans like Katy Perry". All of those are incorrect statements.

Edited March 31, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Camacha]

I don't know if that will ever become a rival to real singers, but people don't just listen to music because of the sound. Music is an art, and to watch a real artist do his thing is a matter of enjoying the performance. This lacks it completely. Personally, I don't like it at all and find all those people jumping in front of a hologram to be nutty.

Would this type of music not just shift the artistic merit? The performing artist is artificial, but in itself is a work of art. It has been created and shaped by someone. Saying this is fake would be denying it is a creative work. It could be viewed as an intermediate between going to the cinema and a concert, especially since concerts generally are fully rehearsed and scripted. Nothing natural about it.

The Japanese - are they open to this? Or it's just a bias? When you see Miku's concert, you see a selected population. Saying that "the Japanese really like vocaloids" is not based on actual good data. By using such logic we could say "the Norwegians are into death metal" or "Americans like Katy Perry". All of those are incorrect statements.

Statistically the Norwegians are into death metal and Americans are into Katy Perry. No need to be politically correct about that, it is something you can measure. But even if you reject that, anyone that has ever visited Japan will know Japanese in general (so not necessarily every single last one) are more technology prone and seem more eager to experiment with and accept new technologies when compared to the aforementioned Americans or Norwegians.

And yes, it is a generalisation, so it will have limitations. As goes for pretty much any and all descriptions and concepts.

[Specialist290]

I've never quite understood the mindset of those who've built the massive fanbase around the Vocaloid programs that treats them like actual pop idols themselves, but I've enjoyed a few songs other artists have created using them. If you consider that the human voice is itself something like an instrument, then it's really no different from using a synthesizer to replicate a piano or an organ.

That said, it does make me wonder if we'll ever get to the point where we'll have "virtual celebrities" that can create content with no input from a human being whatsoever (beyond creating the original programs and instruments involved, of course). Certainly food for thought.

[pxi]

I think they're a rather cool tool for musicians. Unfortunately to use a vocaloid commercially you need to get in bed contract-wise with Yamaha which really dulls my interest in them.

On the other hand, the crowd response to Hatsune Miku is interesting. On the subject of virtual celebrities, consider the idea of a virtual politician. Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror series had a story along these lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-bicKmWXY

[Pipcard]

As you can obviously tell, I love Hatsune Miku, she is my favorite singer of all time.

(I don't believe virtual singers will replace singers who physically exist, but rather coexist with them.)

[CG_Kerbin]

I think it's cool that techonolgy has got this good but it's pretty creepy!

[Pipcard]

What's so creepy about it, it doesn't feel very "uncanny valley" to me.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Pipcard

[Canopus]

What's so creepy about it, it doesn't feel very "uncanny valley" to me.

I think he's talking about how they sell her as a personality which is very strange to me. I guess its very appealing to Anime fans or "Weeabos" if i may call them that.

[Rainbowtrout]

I like vocaloid music. I wouldn't go to a concert though.

[lajoswinkler]

Would this type of music not just shift the artistic merit? The performing artist is artificial, but in itself is a work of art. It has been created and shaped by someone. Saying this is fake would be denying it is a creative work. It could be viewed as an intermediate between going to the cinema and a concert, especially since concerts generally are fully rehearsed and scripted. Nothing natural about it.

It does shift the merit, but this is not the issue. There's more. The issue is that there are people jumping and screaming and behaving like Beatles groupies towards an image. It's not even AI. In fact, it's worse than a football fan cheering for FIFA 15 characters - at least those have a level of uncertainty and a primitive AI.

Vocaloid concerts are bunch of people cheering and being in ecstasy for what is essentially a music video. That's the uncanny part and I simply can not get over it. I'd feel pretty stupid on such concert.

It reminds me of old people during the 60's and early 70's when television sets started to spread. They would get all pumped up over watching the news, trying to establish an interaction with the news host as if there's even a remote chance of dialogue. From the observer's point of view, it's good as a recorded video even if it's live, but their personal experience was that there was a tiny man/woman in the box that was talking to them. The same reason that makes me facepalm over that makes me facepalm for vocaloid concert goers.

Statistically the Norwegians are into death metal and Americans are into Katy Perry. No need to be politically correct about that, it is something you can measure. But even if you reject that, anyone that has ever visited Japan will know Japanese in general (so not necessarily every single last one) are more technology prone and seem more eager to experiment with and accept new technologies when compared to the aforementioned Americans or Norwegians.

And yes, it is a generalisation, so it will have limitations. As goes for pretty much any and all descriptions and concepts.

Statistically perhaps, but not nearly enough to make any more meaningful conclusions. Those generalizations have been blow out of every proportion in the last 15 years with the spread of the Internet. A meme has been generated.

[RainDreamer]

Hmmm...I like them as they are a bridge between songwriters and audiences. A way to vocalize (pun intended) their songs without having to get a singer, approach a producer, and all that stuff. People can write song, compose music, and have a character represent them. The vocaloids are characters with infinite faces, all of them with personalities created by people based on their songs, telling stories. In a way, it is not so far away from virtual bands like Gorillaz.

[Pipcard]

I think he's talking about how they sell her as a personality which is very strange to me. I guess its very appealing to Anime fans or "Weeabos" if i may call them that.

Although Vocaloids do not have "official" personalities, their personalities are "blank slates" that can be interpreted by fans in almost any way.

and an anime fan is not the same as a weeaboo

Edited April 2, 2015 by Pipcard

[JumpsterG]

I attended the recent performance in New York. It's just as fun as any concert you might go to, and it is very much a "live" performance; the vocals have been recorded in advance using the vocaloid software, but the instrumentals are played on stage by musicians.

Using a projection system, they're able to have 3d models dance and perform on stage, which is not much different from watching an animated music video, with the added effect that the model can work the crowd to some degree. Throw in an obligatory lights/lasers/pyrotechnics show and you have a pretty cool event.

The songs themselves range in genre; you can find pop, rock, r&b, and other styles rendered with the vocaloid voices. I think that this flexibility is really why the whole vocaloid thing has taken off: the vocaloids themselves are better thought of as instruments, rather than as "personalities", and the enormous body of music now available shows how interested artists are in the technology. The fact that vocaloids have different capabilities from singers opens up new avenues for artists as well. Unnaturally high or low notes, high tempo singing without loss of diction, the ability to generate the exact same sound repeatedly and reliably, never needing to stop for a breath. It's cool to see what composers are doing with these tools.

Applying a "character" to the voice is just very good marketing. It's easier, more recognizable, and more fun to stamp Miku's image as a pop star on an album cover, rather than try to market a generic synthesized album created by sound engineers.

Finally, I don't think there's anyone who expects vocaloids in their current form to replace traditional singers. There may come a time when synthetic voices are easy enough to work with, and widely accepted enough that studios will be able to replace singers with software for automation reasons (reducing payroll, reducing time requirements, etc.) but I have a hard time believing society at large would prefer vocaloid music in their top 40 charts any time soon.

And now that I've already outed myself as a vocaloid fan... Any Civ5 players should try the vocaloid faction mod. There's an enormous soundtrack to go with it (see description for soundtrack mod) and the gameplay style for the faction will amuse you (replaces all great musicians with special vocaloid units; spring onion farm tile improvement; lots more space for great works of music).

[SpaceXray]

Pros of Vocaloids:

Can live forever(since they themselves are not real, only their image is)

Very flexible and are more like instruments which can play almost any music genre.

Can be animated and given a face so fans can relate to them more.

Never engage in any bad behavior, their image can never be corrupted.

Fans can create a huge amount of their own songs, and even make their own PV's(music videos, animated dramas etc.) using MikuMikuDance.

And about a live concert not being live:

Technically, they use the most polished songs and animations made by professionals, and also have an accompaniment consisting of living musicians. That makes a nice blend and makes the impression of a real concert. Also, the use of a projection and not just a flat screen makes them appear more alive, as they can also interact with the crowd to a certain extent(it's more like guess work since the ones making the animation have to know how the crowd will behave to what the model does).

In the end, the Vocaloid programs are made by people, and the voice samples come from a real person. A vocaloid is created by creative and hard-working people, and calling their creation soulless and stupid would be unfair.

[RainDreamer]

Found something related to topic:

[Camacha]

Vocaloid concerts are bunch of people cheering and being in ecstasy for what is essentially a music video. That's the uncanny part and I simply can not get over it. I'd feel pretty stupid on such concert.

Do you feel stupid for feeling emotions when watching a movie too? I certainly know those projections are just manipulated photons, yet the feelings are real when watching their story unfold. You feel sorry when they get hurt, feel victorious when they win and tear up when they finally get that hard earned thing they wanted. Vocaloid concerts are not quite the same in every way, but in a lot of relevant ways they are.

Statistically perhaps, but not nearly enough to make any more meaningful conclusions.

It's plenty. If you want to get all politically correct about it, there is no discussion to be had any more, because everyone turns into an individual that cannot in any way, shape or form be reduced to a more abstract group, concept or movement. Nobody thinks every Norwegian dresses in black and plays death metal during the morning commute, or even half of them.