mozaikmage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mozaikmage) wrote2021-07-01 06:10 pm
mozaikmage) wrote2021-07-01 06:10 pm
Entry tags:
"Are you listening to the Japanese Chipmunks Again?": Some thoughts on Vocaloid Tuning
My mom thinks Vocaloids sound like chipmunks singing.
I don't remember when I first showed her a Vocaloid video, but it must've been pretty early on, between 2010 and 2012, because I needed her to buy me a Teto cosplay for my first anime convention in 2012 (when I was in 8th grade). I don't remember what I showed her either (probably Romeo and Cinderella live? I liked that one a lot back then. Or maybe Matryoshka) but my mom saw it and decided it sounds like Alvin and the fucking Chipmunks. When I went to Miku Expo in 2018, she asked me "how was the Chipmunk concert?" afterwards. It's a Whole Thing.
What's stuck with me about this pronouncement, after listening to hundreds of songs from hundreds of producers, is that Hatsune Miku and her virtual friends can sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks-- if you tune them that way.
(Disclaimer: I am not a musician and don't know anything about music these are just my opinions.)
Tuning is the process of adjusting the vocal quality of a digital vocal synthesizer. A Vocaloid producer's tuning style is often one of their defining features-- it's how a producer decides whether their Vocaloid should sound more like a realistic person, or like a robot, or like someone trying to sing after crying for three hours, or like an angry punk rocker. Some members of the Vocaloid and UTAU producer community are known specifically for their tuning, rather than producing original music.
A Vocaloid is a digital vocal synthesizer. It's a tool for making music, or, in other words: a musical instrument. Hatsune Miku is basically a complicated pencil. And you can make that pencil sound like almost anything you want.
I like watching videos like this where one producer tries to tune a Vocaloid to sound like other, more famous producers, because it shows how that producer hears and interprets other people's tuning decisions. This specific video stuck with me because the creator's imitation of Nayutalien sounds a lot closer to Alvin and the Chipmunks than I believe Nayutalien's own songs do. Nayutalien's tuning is extremely unique and difficult to imitate without getting chipmunky. When he uses Miku at a high pitch, she sounds ethereal and otherworldly, like the alien she declares herself to be. His high-pitched Miku is clear with a slight vibrato that makes her sound less digital, but still inhuman. And none of the many, many covers of Alien Alien come close to imitating this voice. Not that they're necessarily trying to imitate it! But it shows just how difficult it is to get an effect like this.
Speaking of high-pitched Mikus, singer-songwriter Eve started out in Vocaloid, writing and composing his own songs but having other people do the Vocaloid parts. The Miku version of Dramaturgy sounds almost like she's singing in falsetto, straining herself to sing at the upper end of her range. There's more breathiness in Una and KaiseiP's Miku than in Nayutalien's Miku. It honestly kind of hurts my ears? I don't like it very much, but there's people in the bullet comments complimenting the tuning so it is clearly a matter of opinion. Eve's self-cover is one of my favorite songs ever, though, so. (Also he just dropped a live performance video of him singing it! Yay!)
When I think of chipmunk-sounding Vocaloid producers, Harumaki Gohan is the producer I think comes closest. His Miku is high-pitched and slightly squeaky the way the sped-up voices of the Chipmunks are. But the artificial quality of his Miku and the echo he adds to his vocal lines in songs like Melty Land Nightmare make it possible to listen to it. His instrumentation also perfectly complements the vocals, creating a surrealistic, futuristic pop song that isn't painful to my delicate sensibilities. (Also he makes his own MVs! Himself! From scratch! Absolute mad lad!)
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mitchie M is a producer lauded for making his version of Miku sound just like a real person, utlizing breath phonemes realistically and carefully tweaking each syllable to add just enough inflection to make Miku and Luka sound like human idols. This is super impressive but I am not, personally, into this kind of sound. It is simply not my vibe.
Realistically tuned Vocaloids are nothing new, though. I remember the first time I noticed a breath phoneme in a Vocaloid song: When the First Love Ends by ryo of supercell, first released in 2009. Chills went down my back, and every time I've heard that song since. He uses the breaths again in his last Vocaloid song, Odds & Ends, and there they make Miku sound desperate and passionate to create a moving song about the producer's own time and reflection on the scene he helped shape so many years before.
To get back to the "tuning [song] like [X] different producers" videos, both the video I linked above and this one that popped up in my recommendeds when I clicked on it decided the hallmark of Pinocchio-P's style is using his own voice to back up Miku. Which is interesting to me, known Pinocchio-P fan, because that's a technique he uses occasionally but not all the time, or even in every song. Maybe more often than most producers, but Pinocchio-P changes up his tuning style often.
In his most recent song, he only appears in parts of the chorus and prechorus, while Miku sounds breathy and robotic at once, occasionally muffled and distorted. This Miku sounds a little raspy, a little rough, a little glitchy. Not like a perfect virtual idol at all. However, in his older and most famous song SLoWMoTIoN from 2014, Miku sounds bold, clear and fierce, without any backing vocals. Neither of the videos trying to imitate Pinocchio-P's tuning style managed to capture it because he changes his approach to Miku from song to song. In Common World Domination from 2012, for example, he didn't even use regular Miku but Miku Dark append (an add-on voice bank pitched lower than standard Miku). And again no backing vocals, which is why I'm so confused as to why multiple people decided that's the hallmark of his style. He exploits both the human-like and computerized qualities of her voice, and it's quirky and weird and I love it so much.
What drew me to Vocaloid in middle school, and what's kept me interested in it to this day, is the limitless creativity and freedom the medium allows, and how different producers can change the voices they're using to accomplish different goals or create different effects. And tuning is one of the ways they do. It's neat!
Anyway, to answer your question, no, they're not chipmunks, mom.
I don't remember when I first showed her a Vocaloid video, but it must've been pretty early on, between 2010 and 2012, because I needed her to buy me a Teto cosplay for my first anime convention in 2012 (when I was in 8th grade). I don't remember what I showed her either (probably Romeo and Cinderella live? I liked that one a lot back then. Or maybe Matryoshka) but my mom saw it and decided it sounds like Alvin and the fucking Chipmunks. When I went to Miku Expo in 2018, she asked me "how was the Chipmunk concert?" afterwards. It's a Whole Thing.
What's stuck with me about this pronouncement, after listening to hundreds of songs from hundreds of producers, is that Hatsune Miku and her virtual friends can sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks-- if you tune them that way.
(Disclaimer: I am not a musician and don't know anything about music these are just my opinions.)
Tuning is the process of adjusting the vocal quality of a digital vocal synthesizer. A Vocaloid producer's tuning style is often one of their defining features-- it's how a producer decides whether their Vocaloid should sound more like a realistic person, or like a robot, or like someone trying to sing after crying for three hours, or like an angry punk rocker. Some members of the Vocaloid and UTAU producer community are known specifically for their tuning, rather than producing original music.
A Vocaloid is a digital vocal synthesizer. It's a tool for making music, or, in other words: a musical instrument. Hatsune Miku is basically a complicated pencil. And you can make that pencil sound like almost anything you want.
I like watching videos like this where one producer tries to tune a Vocaloid to sound like other, more famous producers, because it shows how that producer hears and interprets other people's tuning decisions. This specific video stuck with me because the creator's imitation of Nayutalien sounds a lot closer to Alvin and the Chipmunks than I believe Nayutalien's own songs do. Nayutalien's tuning is extremely unique and difficult to imitate without getting chipmunky. When he uses Miku at a high pitch, she sounds ethereal and otherworldly, like the alien she declares herself to be. His high-pitched Miku is clear with a slight vibrato that makes her sound less digital, but still inhuman. And none of the many, many covers of Alien Alien come close to imitating this voice. Not that they're necessarily trying to imitate it! But it shows just how difficult it is to get an effect like this.
Speaking of high-pitched Mikus, singer-songwriter Eve started out in Vocaloid, writing and composing his own songs but having other people do the Vocaloid parts. The Miku version of Dramaturgy sounds almost like she's singing in falsetto, straining herself to sing at the upper end of her range. There's more breathiness in Una and KaiseiP's Miku than in Nayutalien's Miku. It honestly kind of hurts my ears? I don't like it very much, but there's people in the bullet comments complimenting the tuning so it is clearly a matter of opinion. Eve's self-cover is one of my favorite songs ever, though, so. (Also he just dropped a live performance video of him singing it! Yay!)
When I think of chipmunk-sounding Vocaloid producers, Harumaki Gohan is the producer I think comes closest. His Miku is high-pitched and slightly squeaky the way the sped-up voices of the Chipmunks are. But the artificial quality of his Miku and the echo he adds to his vocal lines in songs like Melty Land Nightmare make it possible to listen to it. His instrumentation also perfectly complements the vocals, creating a surrealistic, futuristic pop song that isn't painful to my delicate sensibilities. (Also he makes his own MVs! Himself! From scratch! Absolute mad lad!)
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mitchie M is a producer lauded for making his version of Miku sound just like a real person, utlizing breath phonemes realistically and carefully tweaking each syllable to add just enough inflection to make Miku and Luka sound like human idols. This is super impressive but I am not, personally, into this kind of sound. It is simply not my vibe.
Realistically tuned Vocaloids are nothing new, though. I remember the first time I noticed a breath phoneme in a Vocaloid song: When the First Love Ends by ryo of supercell, first released in 2009. Chills went down my back, and every time I've heard that song since. He uses the breaths again in his last Vocaloid song, Odds & Ends, and there they make Miku sound desperate and passionate to create a moving song about the producer's own time and reflection on the scene he helped shape so many years before.
To get back to the "tuning [song] like [X] different producers" videos, both the video I linked above and this one that popped up in my recommendeds when I clicked on it decided the hallmark of Pinocchio-P's style is using his own voice to back up Miku. Which is interesting to me, known Pinocchio-P fan, because that's a technique he uses occasionally but not all the time, or even in every song. Maybe more often than most producers, but Pinocchio-P changes up his tuning style often.
In his most recent song, he only appears in parts of the chorus and prechorus, while Miku sounds breathy and robotic at once, occasionally muffled and distorted. This Miku sounds a little raspy, a little rough, a little glitchy. Not like a perfect virtual idol at all. However, in his older and most famous song SLoWMoTIoN from 2014, Miku sounds bold, clear and fierce, without any backing vocals. Neither of the videos trying to imitate Pinocchio-P's tuning style managed to capture it because he changes his approach to Miku from song to song. In Common World Domination from 2012, for example, he didn't even use regular Miku but Miku Dark append (an add-on voice bank pitched lower than standard Miku). And again no backing vocals, which is why I'm so confused as to why multiple people decided that's the hallmark of his style. He exploits both the human-like and computerized qualities of her voice, and it's quirky and weird and I love it so much.
What drew me to Vocaloid in middle school, and what's kept me interested in it to this day, is the limitless creativity and freedom the medium allows, and how different producers can change the voices they're using to accomplish different goals or create different effects. And tuning is one of the ways they do. It's neat!
Anyway, to answer your question, no, they're not chipmunks, mom.