If you’ve been online in the past decade, there’s a good chance that you have run across songs sung by ¨Hatsune Miku¨ or ¨Kasane Teto¨ that sound different than any other songs you have heard before. This is because these are Vocaloid’s. Vocaloid is a vocal synthesizer program where people can use voice banks to create synthesized vocals. While Vocaloid is only one of these programs, it’s kind of used as a catch-all term, like how you call any type of guitar a guitar. Many people have various questions, such as, ” Is this AI? Who´s singing? Who makes these songs? And why? Well, in this article, I hope to shine some light on the software, culture, and general landscape of Vocaloid.
Who makes these songs?
A common question of anyone unfamiliar with Vocaloid is ¨who makes these? ¨ Well the songs are created by people who use various vocal synth software’s who then publish the songs on sites like YouTube or NicoNico. Anyone can create a Vocaloid song if they have knowledge of the software and some compositional skills.
Why the Anime characters?
The companies behind the Vocaloid software created these characters to help with marketing, since a faceless voice would sell far less than one with an attributed depiction. However, over the years, these depictions have grown to have a life of their own, since there is barely any ¨canon¨ info for these character’s it allows for the community to create anything with them and have a collective ¨fanon¨ which allows for things like fanart, merch, and other avenues of creative expression.
Why not just use a real singer?
The reasons Vocaloid producers don´t use real singers is about as varied as it can be. Some prefer the software, others don´t like their voice, some prefer the anonymity, and some people just think it’s cool.
Is it AI?
No, Vocaloid is not AI; it is a program where people must manually create the lyrics, instrumentals, artwork, and a myriad of other things. While generative ai just takes a prompt and spits out a song. Think of it like the difference between a piano and a digital keyboard. Both create music and require human input; it’s just a different process.
Why is it all in Japanese?
Vocaloid was originally only popular in Japan, so they have the most producers and songs. However there has been a growing English Vocaloid scene for quite a while now.
How do I get into Vocaloid?
I would reccomend starting with some English producers such as Flavor Foley and then branch out to some of the more popular Japanese producers like DECO*27, PinnochioP, and Wowaka. After that, just listen to what sounds good! So in conclusion Vocaloid is a vocal synthesizer software that has cultivated a dedicated online community who create music using said software.