What is a Vocaloid? Simply put, it is vocal synthesizer software that uses voicebanks to create and cover songs. A vocal synth is usually software (but not always) that replicates speech and the human voice. The first vocal synth was a pipe organ that could make the vowel noises A, E, I, O, and U with surprising accuracy. It did this by forcing air through oddly shaped pipes. A, I, O, and U were made from open tubes that mimicked vocal cords, and E used a reed. It was by no means good and sounded terrifying when played in a lower or higher register, but it was a start of incorporating human vocal noises into non-human things.
Skip forward a bit to the 1930s, and a new machine came into play. It was able to talk with more noises than vowel sounds. It forced air through tubes and was played with a keyboard. If you google “Creepy Daisy Bell,” it will come up. This was the first vocal synth to ever sit in the uncanny valley, and it was certainly not the last.
That brings us to 2000 when Yahama tried to create an auto-tune of a professional singer. They then realized that the singer they used for the song would have to cover every song in existence. They then decided to record the singer making simple noises for syllables. Thus came Leon and Lola, the first Vocaloid. They were for two languages, English and Japanese. They too hit the uncanny valley and were not doing well in the market. If you listen to old recordings, it sounds human, but with the intonation and singing voice of a robot.
A few years later came Miriam, and she was by far the best ( so far) in terms of sound. Her voice sounded more like a human and less like a robot. Leon and Lola have since rebooted voicebanks with modern technology, but Miriam was lost to time. Leon, Lola, and Miriam were purchased by the British company zeroG in 2001.
Even with the groundbreaking technology, they still weren’t selling well. Even after Yahama partnered with Crypton future media and released two new models, KAITO and MIEKO who had fewer issues with pronunciation. They then decided to make the best marketing choice they could have. Give their next model an anime girl character box art. Then in 2007 came the 6th public Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku. The first “marketable” vocaloid was supposed to be Megurine Luka, but due to scheduling issues, her release was delayed by two years. This was an incredible marketing decision, and everything started moving forward from there. Miku didn’t sell well in her first year, but during her second year, she sold more than every other year and model combined. She was creating a lot of money for Crypton and Yahama and they hurried out to finish their next model, Kagamine Rin/Len.
This one was unique in the sense that they had the same voice provider, but there was a change between the masculine and feminine voicebanks. It was essentially two for the price of one. However, due to their rushed making of the product, the voicebanks were not as clear or as high quality as Miku's. After the first month, they were pulled from shelves, fixed, and re-marketed.
Then came Luka Megurine. She wasn’t too special at first until she got an English voice bank. There was no way to get other English voicebanks other than piracy or secondhand, so this was great for people who didn’t speak Japanese to get into Vocaloid.
There are only a few important developments after this, and that is Gumi receiving Voice banks in 17 different languages and having insanely realistic vocals in all of them. Gumi was probably the furthest in the uncanny valley considering that she sounds the most human while being the least human. Nowadays, there are English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese voicebanks, as well as being able to speak other languages through manipulation, such as Dasu warping them so they can speak Tagalog, or V3xman having them speak English and Chinese before those voices banks existed.
Contrary to CosMo@bousouP, Miku disappeared not for being tired out of the idol life, but for a marketing decision to have her move from V5 Vocaloid to Piapro. Piapro is a vocal synth like Vocaloid, only it is far better.
Vocaloid can often be used to talk about social issues because your face and name aren’t tied to it. You can express your discontent with society in a way that is easy to digest for others.
There are a lot of Vocaloid songs about depression, death, the wrongs of the school system, abuse, addiction, societal pressure, losing your sense of self, etc. They say music is a universal medium, and it is. These songs can reach other people in similar places and show they're not alone.
In a note about how it isn’t tied to your face, how do you express identity through music besides putting in explicit information? You put yourself into it( metaphorically). There are ways to show who you are in your music, for example, Pinocchio's mascots, Azari’s songs having no title (and Azari themself not having a name on youtube as a platform), and Dasu’s songs having insanely long titles.
Works Cited
Junferno. “To Become Vocaloid.” YouTube, 29 January 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQzk2BQxH_U. Accessed 3 April 2023.
Minami. “(un)helpful guide to vocaloid.” YouTube, 8 June 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHwCydEdDR4. Accessed 3 April 2023.
“Vocaloid Database.” Vocaloid Database, 1 April 2023, https://vocadb.net/. Accessed 3 April 2023.
“VOCALOID - the modern singing synthesizer -.” VOCALOID - the modern singing synthesizer -, https://www.vocaloid.com/en/. Accessed 3 April 2023.