Volks, Inc. ( ボークス ) is a Japan-based corporation that produces garage kits and mecha kits as well as the Dollfie , Super Dollfie and Dollfie Dream lines of dolls. The company's headquarters is in Kyoto , with some 30 shops worldwide, and annual sales of about $ 50 million as of 2008.
83-602: Volks began as a small hobby shop in 1972. In the late 1990s they produced the first Dollfie dolls, and in 1999 the first Super Dollfie doll was created by Akihiro Enku. In November 2005, Volks USA opened their first American Tenshi no Sumika store in Los Angeles, California . Volks is organized into three different enterprises. Volks Inc. is the main umbrella company. They operate the Tenshi-no-Sato museum in Kyoto,
166-424: A vowel . In Japanese, there are basically three patterns of diphones containing a consonant : voiceless-consonant, vowel-consonant, and consonant-vowel. On the other hand, English has many closed syllables ending in a consonant, and consonant-consonant and consonant-voiceless diphones as well. Thus, more diphones need to be recorded into an English library than into a Japanese one. Due to this linguistic difference,
249-468: A Japanese library is not suitable for singing in eloquent English. The Synthesis Engine receives score information contained in dedicated MIDI messages called Vocaloid MIDI sent by the Score Editor, adjusts pitch and timbre of the selected samples in frequency domain, and splices them to synthesize singing voices. When Vocaloid runs as VSTi accessible from DAW, the bundled VST plug-in bypasses
332-441: A Vocaloid 2 product is already installed, the user can enable another Vocaloid 2 product by adding its library. The system supports three languages, Japanese, Korean, and English, although other languages may be optional in the future. It works standalone (playback and export to WAV ) and as a ReWire application or a Virtual Studio Technology instrument (VSTi) accessible from a digital audio workstation (DAW). The Score Editor
415-608: A box" designed to act as a replacement for an actual singer. As such, they are released under a moe anthropomorphism . These avatars are also referred to as Vocaloids , and are often marketed as virtual idols ; some have gone on to perform at live concerts as an on-stage projection. The software was originally only available in English starting with the first Vocaloids Leon, Lola and Miriam by Zero-G , and Japanese with Meiko and Kaito made by Yamaha and sold by Crypton Future Media . Vocaloid 3 has added support for Spanish for
498-578: A full commercial Vocaloid was A Place in the Sun , which used Leon's voice for the vocals singing in both Russian and English. Miriam has also been featured in two albums, Light + Shade and Continua . Japanese progressive-electronic artist Susumu Hirasawa used the Lola Vocaloid in the original soundtrack of Paprika by Satoshi Kon . The software's biggest asset is its ability to see continued usage even long after its initial release date. Leon
581-619: A large variety of anime and manga, such as My-HiME , Love Hina , Neon Genesis Evangelion and Oh My Goddess! , along with video game franchises, such as Shantae . They also have their own line of figures called A-Brand. They have also created Super Dollfie dolls based on characters from anime and manga such as Chobits , Maria-sama ga Miteru and Rozen Maiden . Volks have also collaborated with Lolita fashion brands like Baby, The Stars Shine Bright , H. Naoto , Black Peace Now and Atelier-Pierrot to create Super Dollfie outfits. Dollfie Dollfie ( ドルフィー , Dorufī )
664-416: A larger range of motion and more points of articulation than a typical Western fashion doll, due to their target audience of adult collectors rather than children. Sometimes included with Dollfie dolls were customization tools such as pre-rooted hair and stick-on eye decals. Later, complete dolls were released. There are various body types, male and female, with several forms and skin tones for both as well as
747-461: A leek, and sang the Finnish song " Ievan Polkka " like the flash animation " Loituma Girl ", on Nico Nico Douga. According to Crypton, they knew that users of Nico Nico Douga had started posting videos with songs created by the software before Hatsune Miku, but the video presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation—notably the dōjin culture. As
830-597: A line of child-sized dolls. The company also produces tools and materials to customize and maintain dolls. Dollfie Dream is a line of 60 centimetre soft-bodied vinyl dolls produced by Volks, similar to the smaller Dollfie dolls. Models released include both Volks original characters and licensed characters from popular media. A wide variety of parts are also available for purchase directly from Volks, up to and including pre-assembled bodies and heads. Six different Dollfie Dream body types have been released: The original Dollfie Dream body, referred to as simply Dollfie Dream,
913-489: A manga, six books, and two theatre works were produced by the series creator. Another theater production based on "Cantarella", a song sung by Kaito and produced by Kurousa-P, was also set to hit the stage and will run Shibuya's Space Zero theater in Tokyo from August 3 to August 7, 2011. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube , as part of
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#1732798624816996-532: A mobile phone game called Hatsune Miku Vocalo x Live was produced by Japanese mobile social gaming website Gree. TinierMe Gacha also made attire that looks like Miku for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble the Crypton Vocaloids. Two unofficial manga were also produced for the series, Maker Unofficial: Hatsune Mix being the most well known of the two, which was released by Jive in their Comic Rush magazine; this series
1079-530: A slightly smaller, shorter, and less mature frame than the Dollfie Dream. Dollfie Dream Dynamite features a more curvy build than the Dollfie Dream, with wider hips and a larger bust. In 2016, Volks released their first two male Dollfie Dream dolls, modeled after the Vocaloid mascot Len Kagamine and the character Kirito from Sword Art Online . The body type shared by all male Dollfie Dream dolls
1162-462: A song, the user must input the melody and lyrics. A piano roll type interface is used to input the melody and the lyrics can be entered on each note. The software can change the stress of the pronunciations, add effects such as vibrato, or change the dynamics and tone of the voice. Various voice banks have been released for use with the Vocaloid synthesizer technology. Each is sold as "a singer in
1245-602: A virtual idol on a projection screen during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. At the "MikuFes '09 (Summer)" event on August 31, 2009, her image was screened by rear projection on a mostly-transparent screen. Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore . On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day"
1328-567: A year in Tokyo or the neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture . The event brings producers and illustrators involved with the production of Vocaloid art and music together so they can sell their work to others. The original event was held in 2007 with 48 groups, or "circles", given permission to host stalls at the event for the selling of their goods. The event soon gained popularity and at the 14th event, nearly 500 groups had been chosen to have stalls. Additionally, Japanese companies involved with production of
1411-433: Is a piano roll style editor to input notes, lyrics, and some expressions. When entering lyrics, the editor automatically converts them into Vocaloid phonetic symbols using the built-in pronunciation dictionary. The user can directly edit the phonetic symbols of unregistered words. The Score Editor offers various parameters to add expressions to singing voices. The user is supposed to optimize these parameters that best fit
1494-490: Is a brand of vinyl doll created by the Japanese company Volks in 1997. It is a highly pose-able hybrid of fashion doll and action figure . A Dollfie doll is about the size of a Barbie doll, 1/6 or playscale, though there are variants in different heights ranging from 23–29 cm (9–11.5 in). Dollfie dolls generally come blank, with unpainted heads intended for the user to customize themselves. Dollfie dolls feature
1577-413: Is a joint collaboration between Vocalo Revolution and the school fashion line "Cecil McBee" Music x Fashion x Dance . Piapro also held a competition with famous fashion brands with the winners seeing their Lolita -based designs reproduced for sale by the company Putumayo. A radio station set up a 1-hour program containing nothing but Vocaloid-based music. The Vocaloid software had a great influence on
1660-496: Is a short, childlike model that stands at about 43 centimetres, similar in concept to Mini Super Dollfie . Dollfie Dream Pretty is the most recently released Dollfie Dream model, more mature in proportion than the Mini Dollfie Dream body, but less so than the Dollfie Dream or Dollfie Dream Sister. Its proportions are intended to be similar to that of a pre-teen or young teen girl. Dollfie Dream Sister features
1743-467: Is a stylized adult female body. The body has gone through three revisions since its first release. The first Dollfie Dream Body which was called DD Basic body was strung with elastic string. The body pieces were 'hard soft vinyl' with the hands and bust being 'flexible soft vinyl'. The second and third versions, as well as all subsequent models released, are soft vinyl dolls with a hard plastic internal skeleton that enables articulation. Mini Dollfie Dream
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#17327986248161826-491: Is drawn by Vocaloid artist Kei Garou. The series features the Crypton Vocaloids in various scenarios, a different one each week. The series focuses on the Crypton Vocaloids, although Internet Co., Ltd.'s Gackpoid Vocaloid makes a guest appearance in two chapters. The series also saw guest cameos of Vocaloid variants such as Hachune Miku, Yowane Haku, Akita Neru and the Utauloid Kasane Teto . The series comprises
1909-634: Is generally categorized into the concatenative synthesis in the frequency domain , which splices and processes the vocal fragments extracted from human singing voices, in the forms of time-frequency representation . The Vocaloid system can produce the realistic voices by adding vocal expressions like the vibrato on the score information. Initially, Vocaloid's synthesis technology was called "Frequency-domain Singing Articulation Splicing and Shaping" ( 周波数ドメイン歌唱アーティキュレーション接続法 , Shūhasū-domein kashō ātikyurēshon setsuzoku-hō ) on
1992-482: Is only available as a bundle; the standard version includes four voices and the premium version includes eight. This is the first time since Vocaloid 2 that a Vocaloid engine has been sold with vocals, as they were previously sold separately starting with Vocaloid 3. Vocaloid 6 was released on October 13, 2022, with support for previous voices from Vocaloid 3 and later, and a new line of Vocaloid voices on their own engine within Vocaloid 6 known as Vocaloid:AI. The product
2075-577: Is only sold as a bundle, and the standard version includes the 4 voices included with Vocaloid 5, as well as 4 new voices from the Vocaloid:AI line. Vocaloid 6's AI voicebanks support English and Japanese by default, though Yamaha announced they intended to add support for Chinese. Vocaloid 6 also includes a feature where a user can import audio of themselves singing and have Vocaloid:AI recreate that audio with one of its vocals. The following products are able to be purchased; Though developed by Yamaha,
2158-480: Is referred to by Volks as the Dollfie Dream Boy body. This model has yet to see a wide release, and is only available as limited character models or at Volks's Doll Point stores. This doll -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Vocaloid Vocaloid ( ボーカロイド , Bōkaroido ) is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part
2241-735: The Nokia Theater during Anime Expo ; the concert was identical to the March 9, 2010 event except for a few improvements and new songs. Another concert was held in Sapporo on August 16 and 17, 2011. Hatsune Miku also had a concert in Singapore on November 11, 2011. Since then, there have been multiple concerts every year featuring Miku in various concert series, such as Magical Mirai, and Miku Expo . The software became very popular in Japan upon
2324-557: The United States state of Nevada 's Black Rock Desert , though it did not reach outer space . In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom made Hatsune Miku aluminum plate (8 cm x 12 cm, 3.1" x 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus space probe Akatsuki . Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka that goes by chodenzi-P, this project received
2407-404: The "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". For Yamaha's VY1 Vocaloid, an album featuring VY1 was created. The album was released with the deluxe version of the program. It includes various well-known producers from Nico Nico Douga and YouTube and includes covers of various popular and well-known Vocaloid songs using
2490-470: The 2008 season, three different teams received their sponsorship under Good Smile Racing, and turned their cars to Vocaloid-related artwork: As well as involvements with the GT series, Crypton also established the website Piapro. A number of games starting from Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan made" Vocaloids. Later,
2573-550: The GT300 class of the Super GT since 2008 with the support of Good Smile Racing (a branch of Good Smile Company , mainly in charge of car-related products, especially itasha (cars featuring illustrations of anime-styled characters) stickers). Although Good Smile Company was not the first to bring the anime and manga culture to Super GT, it departs from others by featuring itasha directly rather than colorings onto vehicles. Since
Volks - Misplaced Pages Continue
2656-466: The Japanese spaceport Tanegashima Space Center , having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku. The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter , which looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet
2739-551: The NAMM event in 2007 and Tonio having been announced at the NAMM event in 2009. A customized, Chinese version of Sonika was released at the Fancy Frontier Develop Animation Festival, as well as with promotional versions with stickers and posters. Sanrio held a booth at Comiket 78 featuring the voice of an unreleased Vocaloid. AH-Software in cooperation with Sanrio shared a booth and the event
2822-538: The Score Editor and directly sends these messages to the Synthesis Engine. Yamaha started development of Vocaloid in March 2000 and announced it for the first time at the German fair Musikmesse on March 5–9, 2003. It was created under the name "Daisy", in reference to the song " Daisy Bell ", but for copyright reasons this name was dropped in favor of "Vocaloid". Vocaloid 2 was announced in 2007. Unlike
2905-541: The VY1 product. The first press edition of Nekomura Iroha was released with a CD containing her two sample songs "Tsubasa" and "Abbey Fly", and the install disc also contained VSQ files of the two songs for use with her program. A number of Vocaloid related music, including songs starring Hatsune Miku, were featured in the arcade game Music Gun Gun! 2 . One of the rare singles with the English speaking Sonika, "Suburban Taxi",
2988-487: The Vocaloid 2 system are the Score Editor (Vocaloid 2 Editor), the Singer Library, and the Synthesis Engine. The Synthesis Engine receives score information from the Score Editor, selects appropriate samples from the Singer Library, and concatenates them to output synthesized voices. There is basically no difference in the Score Editor and the Synthesis Engine provided by Yamaha among different Vocaloid 2 products. If
3071-471: The Vocaloid compilations, Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku , debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese weekly Oricon albums chart in May 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. The album sold 23,000 copies in its first week and eventually sold 86,000 copies. The following released album, Exit Tunes Presents Vocalonexus feat. Hatsune Miku , became the second Vocaloid album to top
3154-687: The Vocaloids Bruno, Clara and Maika; Chinese for Luo Tianyi , Yuezheng Ling , Xin Hua and Yanhe ; and Korean for SeeU . The software is intended for professional musicians as well as casual computer music users. Japanese musical groups such as Livetune of Toy's Factory and Supercell of Sony Music Entertainment Japan have released their songs featuring Vocaloid as vocals. Japanese record label Exit Tunes of Quake Inc. also have released compilation albums featuring Vocaloids. Vocaloid's singing synthesis [ ja ] technology
3237-597: The Volks Showrooms in Japan, and the Tenshi-no-Sumika shops in Japan, Korea, and the United States. Zoukei-Mura is Volks' sculpting, designing, and assembly department for Super Dollfie. Virginal Art is Volks' marketing and design department with a focus on the hobby market. Hideyuki Shigeta is the president of Volks Inc. Several sculptors are working under Zoukei-Mura, most notably Akihiro Enku,
3320-588: The albums Sakura no Ame ( 桜ノ雨 ) by Absorb and Miku no Kanzume ( みくのかんづめ ) by OSTER-project. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album Prism credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". The compilation album Vocarock Collection 2 feat. Hatsune Miku was released by Farm Records on December 15, 2010, and was later featured on the Cool Japan Music iPhone app in February 2011. The record label Balloom became
3403-524: The backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The website of the petition written in Japanese was translated into other languages such as English, Russian , Chinese and Korean, and, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made on December 22, 2009. On May 21, 2010, at 06:58:22 ( JST ), Akatsuki was launched on the rocket H-IIA 202 Flight 17 from
Volks - Misplaced Pages Continue
3486-450: The car. The launch of the car also marked the start of Miku's debut in the US alongside it. Crypton had always sold Hatsune Miku as a virtual instrument, but they decided to ask their own fanbase in Japan if it was okay with them to market her to the United States as a virtual singer instead. The largest promotional event for Vocaloids is "The Voc@loid M@ster" (Vom@s) convention held four times
3569-510: The creativity of their user base, preferring to let their user base to have freedom to create PV's without restrictions. Initially, Crypton Future Media were the only studio that was allowed the license of figurines to be produced for their Vocaloids. A number of figurines and plush dolls were also released under license to Max Factory and the Good Smile Company of Crypton's Vocaloids. Among these figures were also Figma models of
3652-616: The creator of Super Dollfie. Artist Gentaro Araki briefly worked with Volks creating the U-noss line of dolls. There are also several designers working with the Super Dollfie line of dolls. The main designer, Mikey, is the daughter of Volks' president Shigeta. Some other notable designers are K. Mayura, Valico, Aone and Ciera. Volks regularly publish the magazine Volks News with information about new products from all of their lines. Volks have created resin kit figures of characters from
3735-669: The development of the freeware UTAU . Several products were produced for the Macne series ( Mac音シリーズ ) for intended use for the programs Reason 4 and GarageBand . These products were sold by Act2 and by converting their file format, were able to also work with the UTAU program. The program Maidloid, developed for the character Acme Iku ( 阿久女イク ) , was also developed, which works in a similar way to Vocaloid, except produces erotic sounds rather than an actual singing voice. Other than Vocaloid, AH-Software also developed Tsukuyomi Ai and Shouta for
3818-511: The entire "Character Vocal Series" mascots as well as Nendoroid figures of various Crypton Vocaloids and variants. Pullip versions of Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Len and Rin have also been produced for release in April 2011; other Vocaloid dolls have since been announced from the Pullip doll line. As part of promotions for Vocaloid Lily, license for a figurine was given to Phat Company and Lily became
3901-470: The events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , a number of Vocaloid related donation drives were produced. Crypton Future Media joined several other companies in a donation drive, with money spent on the sales of music from Crypton Future Media's KarenT label being donated to the Japanese Red Cross . In addition, a special Nendoroid of Hatsune Miku, Nendoroid Hatsune Miku: Support ver.,
3984-451: The festival. Videos of her performance are due to be released worldwide. Megpoid and Gackpoid were also featured in the 2010 King Run Anison Red and White concert. This event also used the same projector method to display Megpoid and Gackpoid on a large screen. Their appearance at the concert was done as a one-time event and both Vocaloids were featured singing a song originally sung by their respective voice provider. The next live concert
4067-404: The first engine, Vocaloid 2 based its results on vocal samples, rather than analysis of the human voice. The synthesis engine and the user interface were completely revamped, with Japanese Vocaloids possessing a Japanese interface. Vocaloid 3 launched on October 21, 2011, along with several products in Japanese, the first of its kind. Several studios updated their Vocaloid 2 products for use with
4150-399: The first label to focus solely on Vocaloid-related works and their first release was Unhappy Refrain by the Vocaloid producer Wowaka . Hatsune Miku's North American debut song "World is Mine" ranked at No. 7 in the iTunes world singles ranking in the week of its release. Singer Gackt also challenged Gackpoid users to create a song, with the prize being 10 million yen, stating if the song
4233-516: The first non-Crypton Vocaloid to receive a figurine. With regard to the English Vocaloid studios, Power FX's Sweet Ann was given her own MySpace page and Sonika her own Twitter account. In comparison to Japanese studios, Zero-G and PowerFX maintain a high level of contact with their fans. Zero-G in particular encourages fan feed back and, after adopting Sonika as a mascot for their studio, has run two competitions related to her. There
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#17327986248164316-508: The future. Crypton plans to start an electronic magazine for English readers at the end of 2010 in order to encourage the growth of the English Vocaloid fanbase. Extracts of PowerFX's Sweet Ann and Big Al were included in Soundation Studio in their Christmas loops and sound release with a competition included. Crypton and Toyota began working together to promote the launch of the 2011 Toyota Corolla using Hatsune Miku to promote
4399-571: The marketing of each Vocaloid is left to the respective studios. Yamaha themselves do maintain a degree of promotional efforts in the actual Vocaloid software, as seen when the humanoid robot model HRP-4C of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) was set up to react to three Vocaloids— Hatsune Miku , Megpoid and Crypton's noncommercial Vocaloid software "CV-4Cβ"—as part of promotions for both Yamaha and AIST at CEATEC in 2009. The prototype voice CV-4Cβ
4482-469: The marketing success of those particular voices. After the success of SF-A2 Miki's CD album, other Vocaloids such as VY1 and Iroha have also used promotional CDs as a marketing approach to selling their software. When Amazon MP3 in Japan opened on November 9, 2010, Vocaloid albums were featured as its free-of-charge contents. Crypton has been involved with the marketing of their Character Vocal Series, particularly Hatsune Miku, has been actively involved in
4565-522: The missing roles the software had yet to cover. The album A Place in the Sun was noted to have songs that were designed for a male voice with a rougher timbre than the Vocaloid Leon could provide; this later led to the development of Big Al to fulfill this particular role. Some of the most popular albums are on the Exit Tunes label, featuring the works of Vocaloid producers in Japan. One of
4648-520: The month prior to her release, SF-A2 Miki was featured in the album Vocaloids X'mas: Shiroi Yoru wa Seijaku o Mamotteru as part of her promotion. The album featured the Vocaloid singing Christmas songs . Miki was also featured singing the introduction of the game Hello Kitty to Issho! Block Crash 123!! . A young female prototype used for the "project if..." series was used in Sound Horizon 's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as
4731-461: The new engine with improved voice samples. In October 2014, the first product confirmed for the Vocaloid 4 engine was the English vocal Ruby, whose release was delayed so she could be released on the newer engine. In 2015, several V4 versions of Vocaloids were released. The Vocaloid 5 engine was then announced soon afterwards. Vocaloid 5 was released on July 12, 2018, with an overhauled user interface and substantial engine improvements. The product
4814-939: The original 28 chapters serialized in Comic Rush and a collection of the first 10 chapters in a single tankōbon volume. A manga was produced for Lily by Kei Garou, who also drew the mascot. An anime music video titled "Schwarzgazer", which shows the world where Lily is, was produced and it was released with the album anim.o.v.e 02 , however the song is sung by Move , not by Vocaloids. A yonkoma manga based on Hatsune Miku and drawn by Kentaro Hayashi, Shūkan Hajimete no Hatsune Miku! , began serialization in Weekly Young Jump on September 2, 2010. Hatsune Miku appeared in Weekly Playboy magazine. However, Crypton Future Media confirmed they will not be producing an anime based on their Vocaloids as it would limit
4897-468: The promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura , the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website. In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from
4980-492: The recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D , and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The software has also been used to tell stories using song and verse and the Story of Evil series has become so popular that
5063-518: The release of Vocaloid in 2004, although this name is no longer used since the release of Vocaloid 2 in 2007. " Singing Articulation " is explained as "vocal expressions" such as vibrato and vocal fragments necessary for singing. The Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 synthesis engines are designed for singing, not reading text aloud, though software such as Vocaloid-flex and Voiceroid have been developed for that. They cannot naturally replicate singing expressions like hoarse voices or shouts. The main parts of
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#17327986248165146-508: The release of Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 2 software and her success has led to the popularity of the Vocaloid software in general. Japanese video sharing website Niconico played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. A user of Hatsune Miku and an illustrator released a much-viewed video, in which "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, held a Welsh onion ( Negi in Japanese), which resembles
5229-413: The software Voiceroid , and the sale of their Vocaloids gave AH-Software the chance to promote Voiceroid at the same time. The software is aimed for speaking rather than singing. Both AH-Software's Vocaloids and Voiceroids went on sale on December 4, 2009. Crypton Future Media has been reported to openly welcome these additional software developments as it expands the market for synthesized voices. During
5312-662: The software also have stalls at the events. The very first live concert related to Vocaloid was held in 2004 with the Vocaloid Miriam in Russia. Vocaloids have also been promoted at events such as the NAMM show and the Musikmesse fair. In fact, it was the promotion of Zero-G's Lola and Leon at the NAMM trade show that would later introduce PowerFX to the Vocaloid program. These events have also become an opportunity for announcing new Vocaloids with Prima being announced at
5395-814: The start of the San Francisco tour where the first Hatsune Miku concert was hosted in North America on September 18, 2010, featuring songs provided by the Miku software voice. A second screening of the concert was on October 11, 2010, in the San Francisco Viz Cinema. A screening of the concert was also shown in New York City in the city's anime festival . Hiroyuki Ito, and planner/producer, Wataru Sasaki, who were responsible for Miku's creation, attended an event on October 8, 2010, at
5478-562: The synthesized tune when creating voices. This editor supports ReWire and can be synchronized with DAW. Real-time "playback" of songs with predefined lyrics using a MIDI keyboard is also supported. Each Vocaloid license develops the Singer Library, or a database of vocal fragments sampled from real people. The database must have all possible combinations of phonemes of the target language, including diphones (a chain of two different phonemes) and sustained vowels, as well as polyphones with more than two phonemes if necessary. For example,
5561-592: The voice corresponding to the word "sing" ([sIN]) can be synthesized by concatenating the sequence of diphones "#-s, s-I, I-N, N-#" (# indicating a voiceless phoneme) with the sustained vowel ī. The Vocaloid system changes the pitch of these fragments so that it fits the melody. In order to get more natural sounds, three or four different pitch ranges are required to be stored into the library. Japanese requires 500 diphones per pitch, whereas English requires 2,500. Japanese has fewer diphones because it has fewer phonemes and most syllabic sounds are open syllables ending in
5644-423: The voice of deceased rock musician hide , who died in 1998, to complete and release his song " Co Gal " in 2014. The musician's actual voice, breathing sounds and other cues were extracted from previously released songs and a demo and combined with the synthesized voice. Kenji Arakawa, a spokesman for Yamaha, said he believes this to be the first time a work by a deceased artist is commercially available and includes
5727-597: The weekly charts in January 2011. Another album, Supercell , by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Upon its release in North America, it became ranked as the second highest album on Amazon's bestselling MP3 album in the international category in the United States and topped the store's bestselling chart for world music on iTunes. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's First Sound Story and Livetune 's Re:Repackage , and Re:Mikus also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include
5810-488: Was also featured on an event as a part of the 62nd Sapporo Snow Festival in February 2011. A Vocaloid-themed TV show on the Japanese Vocaloids called Vocalo Revolution began airing on Kyoto Broadcasting System on January 3, 2011. The show is part of a bid to make the Vocaloid culture more widely accepted and features a mascot known as "Cul", also mascot of the "Cul Project". The show's first success story
5893-474: Was also talk from PowerFX of redoing their Sweet Ann box art and a competition would be included as part of the redesign. The Vocaloid Lily also had a competition held during her trial period. English Vocaloids have not sold enough to warrant extras, such as seen with Crypton's Miku Append. However, it has been confirmed if the English Vocaloids become more popular, then Appends would be an option in
5976-589: Was announced with a donation of 1,000 yen per sale to the Japanese Red Cross. In addition to the donation drives held by Crypton Future Media, AH-Software created the Voiceroid voicebank Tohoku Zunko to promote the recovery of the Tōhoku region and its culture. In 2012, Vocaloid was quoted as one of the contributors to a 10% increase in cosplay related services. In 2013, the Vocaloid 3 software Oliver
6059-478: Was created by sampling a Japanese voice actress, Eriko Nakamura. Japanese magazines such as DTM magazine are responsible for the promotion and introduction for many of the Japanese Vocaloids to Japanese Vocaloid fans. It has featured Vocaloids such as Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len , and Megurine Luka , printing some sketches by artist Kei Garou and reporting the latest Vocaloid news. Thirty-day trial versions of Miriam, Lily and Iroha have also contributed to
6142-663: Was developed through a joint research project between Yamaha Corporation and the Music Technology Group in Universitat Pompeu Fabra , Barcelona . The software was ultimately developed into the commercial product "Vocaloid" that was released in 2004. The software enables users to synthesize "singing" by typing in lyrics and melody and also "speech" by typing in the script of the required words. It uses synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. To create
6225-494: Was featured in the album 32bit Love by Muzehack and Lola in Operator's Manual by anaROBIK; both were featured in these albums six years after they were released. Even early on in the software's history, the music making progress proved to be a valuable asset to the Vocaloid development as it not only opened up the possibilities of how the software may be applied in practice, but led to the creation of further Vocaloids to fill in
6308-626: Was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba , Tokyo. The tour was run as part of promotions for Sega's Hatsune Miku: Project Diva video game in March 2010. The success and possibility of these tours is owed to the popularity of Hatsune Miku and so far Crypton is the only studio to have established a world tour of their Vocaloids. Later, the CEO of Crypton Future Media appeared in San Francisco at
6391-416: Was originally considered as an internet underground culture , but with a decade of social change, it has become a popular musical genre. The earliest use of Vocaloid-related software used prototypes of Kaito and Meiko and were featured on the album History of Logic System by Hideki Matsutake released on July 24, 2003, and sang the song "Ano Subarashii Ai o Mō Ichido". The first album to be released using
6474-566: Was released by Alexander Stein and the German label Volume0dB on March 11, 2010. To celebrate the release of the Vocaloid 3 software, a compilation album titled The Vocaloids was released. The CD contains 18 songs sung by Vocaloids released in Japan and contains a booklet with information about the Vocaloid characters. Porter Robinson used the Vocaloid Avanna for his studio album Worlds . Yamaha utilized Vocaloid technology to mimic
6557-607: Was set for Tokyo on March 9, 2011. Other events included the Vocarock Festival 2011 on January 11, 2011, and the Vocaloid Festa which was held on February 12, 2011. The Vocaloid Festa had also hosted a competition officially endorsed by Pixiv , with the winner seeing their creation unveiled at Vocafes2 on May 29, 2011. The first Vocaloid concert in North America was held in Los Angeles on July 2, 2011, at
6640-496: Was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. The virtual idols "Meaw" have also been released aimed at the Vocaloid culture. The twin Thai virtual idols released two singles, "Meaw Left ver." and "Meaw Right ver.", sung in Japanese. A cafe for one day only was opened in Tokyo based on Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2010. A second event was arranged for all Japanese Vocaloids. "Snow Miku"
6723-520: Was to his liking he would sing and include it in his next album. The winning song " Episode 0 " and runner up song "Paranoid Doll" were later released by Gackt on July 13, 2011. In relation to the Good Smiling racing promotions that Crypton Future Media Vocaloids had played part in, the album Hatsune Miku GT Project Theme Song Collection was released in August 2011 as part of a collaboration. In
6806-583: Was used as the voice of Cartoon Hangover character PuppyCat from their web series Bee and PuppyCat . In 2023, a Pokémon collaboration was announced and released. Named Project VOLTAGE , it consists of art of Hatsune Miku as different Pokémon type trainers. The art was drawn by 6 different artists, some of which are prominent artists for the Pokémon Trading Card Game . After the release of all 18 Pokémon type artworks, songs by 18 different producers were released. Vocaloid music
6889-706: Was used to advertise both the Hello Kitty game and AH-Software's new Vocaloid. At the Nico Nico Douga Daikaigi 2010 Summer: Egao no Chikara event, Internet Co., Ltd. announced their latest Vocaloid "Gachapoid" based on popular children's character Gachapin. Originally, Hiroyuki Ito—President of Crypton Future Media—claimed that Hatsune Miku was not a virtual idol but a kind of the Virtual Studio Technology instrument. However, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert like
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