Vocaloid took the world by storm during the late 2000’s with the introduction of Crypton Future Media‘s Vocaloid2, Hatsune Miku. Today this virtual idol does concerts all over the world and not only inspired many musicians to start their journey, but jump started many careers. Back when I was in high school and early university years, I was obsessed with the songs that producers made with her voice, and still follow a few of them to this day. With the influence that this musical software has on the industry as a whole, you definitely will feel as though you were sleeping under a rock if you never heard of Vocaloid, let alone Hatsune Miku.

What is Vocaloid?
Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer program that was originally developed by Yamaha Corporation in 2000. Initially it was a voice-bank entirely created digitally to replicate a human singing voice. Using the program, Zero-G, a British company debuted 2 voices, their female voice named Lola and their male voice named Leon in 2004. The result was a fairly robotic voice, but it was successful enough that they were able to use the voices to sign various songs. Though these voice banks are no longer available, there have been efforts to preserve the demos are done by various fans.

Soon after the release of Lola and Leon, developers decided to including voice samples from various singers in order to capture more distinct sounds. The design of the software was basically to create virtual singers for musicians to direct and use in their music. This allowed for a more consistent and controllable sound and quality, on top of making vocalists more accessible to musicians, even as place holders. While in Vocaloid didn’t pick up that much in the west, it slowly peaked the interest of music producers in Japan. However it wasn’t until Vocaloid2 that things started to pick up for various developers, especially with the debut of the one and only Hatsune Miku.

Hatsune Miku
More commonly referred to as Miku, her name alone holds the Crypton’s hopes and dreams for their first solo produced voice synthesizer and she has far surpassed their expectations. Her last name directly translates into 初 – First, 音 – Sound, and her first name, ミク meaning Future. The Vocaloid2 program had greatly improved on the first generation, and using Saki Fujita‘s voice as the base, producers were greatly attracted to the vocals they could create for their songs. Since her conception she has been upgraded multiple times and even translated into different languages. Even with the voice coming up on their 20 year anniversary, there are plans to update her software to the latest version, Vocaloid6.

She has become the mascot of the entire software itself, has been the center of many concerts, multiple rhythum games, various commercial guest appearances, and much, much more. Her original concept was that she was a 16 year old girl with two extremely long twin tails, a cyber/electric music, school theme styled outfit, with a teal, grey, and black theme. However Crypton recognized that while they canonically wrote her lore, they also state on their website that Miku the character is free to for creatives to change and interpret according to their needs, as long as it doesn’t negatively hurt the image of the character. As such Miku has transformed into various different personalities and characters to perfectly mold into the person that each musician and artist needs in order to tell, or rather sing, their story. She has been featured in over 170,000 songs, produced by either indie artists and professionally signed composers. It is hard to find anyone in the Jpop scene who hasn’t at least heard of Miku or a rendition of a song that was originally a Vocaloid song. However with all this talk of digital idols you’re probably wondering..

Is Vocaloid AI?
With the fear of AI there needs to be a clear understanding that Vocaloid is not an AI software, but is looking to incorporate it with Vocaloid6. But at the heart of it, the program is more like a digital instrument. While the voices can be fairly robotic at times, human hands mix, tune, and produce the lyrics needed to create the songs that millions upon billions of fans listen to. The creativity and music that has been produced, not only with Miku, but with all the voices that were used and produced under the Vocaloid umbrella. As a result many musicians have been recognized for their skills and capabilities, some of my personal favorites being ryo of Supercell, HoneyWorks, and Deco*27. However this leads to some of my biggest frustration is that, while I can acknowledge that Miku and the other Vocaloids are a bit more than just instruments, I find that some people, often newer fans, forget to credit the creators behind many beloved songs. There was once even a song where a western band, Set It Off, collaborated with a western Vocaloid producer, CircusP to help them tune Miku for their song. Instead of attributing the collaboration within the title of the song, Set It Off instead included specifically featured Hatsune Miku. While they did properly credit CircusP in the description of the video and assumingly the other platforms it was posted on, it bothers me because I feel like the person who tuned the voice to ensure Miku sung the lyrics to perfection should be more of the focus. But on the other hand I also understand that if you’re just the average anime/Jpop fan you’re not going to really see the pull of seeing CircusP’s name versus Hatsune Miku. Regardless to me it would be the equivalent to crediting an instrument like a piano in the title. It also isn’t a huge feat to get Miku to participate in one of your songs either, because anyone can buy the software. What made the song special wasn’t that Miku was singing in it, but rather that someone took the time and effort to make sure she sounds good and was complimentary to the band. And while you could argue that Set It Off wrote the lyrics, I would still say the same thing, because even if you wrote the instrumental to the song, if you were to collaborate with an amazing guitarist you’re gonna at least mention the title.

Producers and Vocaloids
When you think of the most popular Vocaloid producers, you would think that they would stick with using her for a majority of their musical career, however that couldn’t be further from the truth. While it was a great jump start to a lot of their careers, many of them eventually find themselves collaborating with vocalists that love their sound and music. A perfect example ryo, and his journey with his music production career. Hit songs like World Is Mine, Melt, and When Love Ends for the First Time, perfectly captures different stages of love. He had also made bangers like Black Rock Shooter, arguably highlighting the artist Huke and his character Black Rock Shooter to a larger audience. But overtime he wanted to move away from just being known as a Vocaloid producer and wanted more people to take his music seriously. For the most part he works with various vocalists and musicians, and had produced for many different animes and games. But it doesn’t stop him from occasionally coming back from retirement.

ODDS&ENDS tells the tale of ryo’s story trying to find his way in the music industry. At one point of the song he describes his rejection of the software, but upon reflecting coming back and accepting it as part of his identity.
HoneyWorks have also slowly moved away from using Vocaloid vocalists, and are more likely to collaborate with talented vocalists, but are known to make Vocaloid versions from time to time. Deco*27 on the other hand has fully embraced producing music with Vocaloid vocalists, mostly Miku.

For me personally, while I enjoy the music produced by a lot of vocaloid producers, I have a strong preference for human vocalists. The portrayal that they have when they sing their versions can at times can give further depth to the song. Granted there are some songs that have truly difficult vocals to reach that can be achieved more consistently with Vocaloids compared to a human voice, but it just makes it all more impressive when a human vocalist can achieve it. I hope that if you haven’t had the chance to check out Vocaloid or the music that producers create, that you will give it a chance even if there is a bit of a language barrier.