Now let's talk about being a VocaloidP, a "legit" one, and this is my personal statement about it.
It doesn't matter how good you are at, or what style you have, in the end you will find out that you cannot be a professional in this. You cannot be living out from working hard on composing your music, program the voices, sell the songs, because the hard part isn't to create it seems, but instead, the hardest part is to get noticed! Not just being noticed, but your works, even if distributed for free listening, are not shared at all, not spiking the curiosity of the people.
Recently I remade one of the best songs I made (being also the song that has won a contest as being the best production!) on the purpose of testing the new Vocaloid4 engine, using my favorite character's voice: Megpoid (GUMI). Both me and my partner were left speechless after hearing how it sounds now, the expressiveness and the POWER it gained made me personally loving this voice even more.
This is the DEMO:
But let's see what are the reactions: Despite of the normal expectations of seeing the view counters going up, they were all stuck below 100! No one wants to listen to this song, and I think I figured it out why: mainly because is not with Miku! This happens to almost all the good songs out there.
Also there it happens something else: by having a clean sound, as close as possible to the professional sounds mastered in home production unit it's still not good. It's not LOUD enough, it doesn't kills the listeners' ears while hearing the song on average ear buds of the phone, and of course, my works aren't getting through. I need to step on my all life knowledge, trash it, and use the ultimate over-compression method, with hard limiters, very hard clipping, tons of distortions, well... everything that is used today in EDM for example, mostly in the home made productions that would put the hardest compressed sound of an FM radio station to shame. And they are calling that "mastered" !!! Uhh-Ohh!
Also there it happens something else: by having a clean sound, as close as possible to the professional sounds mastered in home production unit it's still not good. It's not LOUD enough, it doesn't kills the listeners' ears while hearing the song on average ear buds of the phone, and of course, my works aren't getting through. I need to step on my all life knowledge, trash it, and use the ultimate over-compression method, with hard limiters, very hard clipping, tons of distortions, well... everything that is used today in EDM for example, mostly in the home made productions that would put the hardest compressed sound of an FM radio station to shame. And they are calling that "mastered" !!! Uhh-Ohh!
Ok, let me describe now the song a little.
You will hear there drums, bass, electric guitars, and some synths. Yes, the synths are there from my old Yamaha DGX505. But guess what! Everything else is also there because of the same DGX505! I wasn't using any other instrument. Just methods of recording, processing, editing and altering the sound that comes out from this keyboard. I think it sounds decent!
Then comes the voices set. The main voice especially needs a little attention. THose who have ever listened to Megumi Nakajima singing as Ranka Lee in the Macross Frontier series, will hear this voice clearly. Yes, it's my pride and joy to actually manage to program this voice in the way I desired it for so long, and being such a good quality voice (thanks to mr Murakami for capturing and preserving it this way!) when inserted in the new V4 engine of the editor, it comes out even better!
Of course, I have to learn more and more, to keep up with the development.
The way I've programmed the voice is a different story: I am not using any job plugins, everything is written by hand. The tendency in the fandom is to overdo everything: high rate of pitch bending, high rate of pitch variation on vibratos, lots of sliding that a real singer will never do, unless it's a really bad singer, and they call it "natural singing tuning".... WHAT!!!!!!!!
I will say about this "tuning" term in another blog, but now I am focusing just on this particular song.
GUMI literally sings it in here as a real rock star would do. Not excessive tremolos, nothing uncommon. Just SINGING! This is what I call "natural singing" for a VOCALOID. It's all natural by genre. And it's all natural by the song itself.
Will be back in another blog with something I have to spit out from my mind, but until then, compare the above version with the original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VggDodbFxLo
You will hear there drums, bass, electric guitars, and some synths. Yes, the synths are there from my old Yamaha DGX505. But guess what! Everything else is also there because of the same DGX505! I wasn't using any other instrument. Just methods of recording, processing, editing and altering the sound that comes out from this keyboard. I think it sounds decent!
Then comes the voices set. The main voice especially needs a little attention. THose who have ever listened to Megumi Nakajima singing as Ranka Lee in the Macross Frontier series, will hear this voice clearly. Yes, it's my pride and joy to actually manage to program this voice in the way I desired it for so long, and being such a good quality voice (thanks to mr Murakami for capturing and preserving it this way!) when inserted in the new V4 engine of the editor, it comes out even better!
Of course, I have to learn more and more, to keep up with the development.
The way I've programmed the voice is a different story: I am not using any job plugins, everything is written by hand. The tendency in the fandom is to overdo everything: high rate of pitch bending, high rate of pitch variation on vibratos, lots of sliding that a real singer will never do, unless it's a really bad singer, and they call it "natural singing tuning".... WHAT!!!!!!!!
I will say about this "tuning" term in another blog, but now I am focusing just on this particular song.
GUMI literally sings it in here as a real rock star would do. Not excessive tremolos, nothing uncommon. Just SINGING! This is what I call "natural singing" for a VOCALOID. It's all natural by genre. And it's all natural by the song itself.
Will be back in another blog with something I have to spit out from my mind, but until then, compare the above version with the original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VggDodbFxLo
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