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AmazingStrange39
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  • I never thought Miku's place in my heart could be challenged, but lately Avanna and her gentle expression, freckled face, warm and mellow yet clear voice, and wonderfully Irish accent have (finally) made it very difficult for Miku to stay at the top. (Oh, and that lovely cape, haha!)

    :avanna_lili:

    And I'm kinda happy about it because in my little roster, Avanna lived in Miku's shadow for so long (not helped by the fact that she was kind of an impulse purchase and my heart generally lay with Miku). I'm so glad I bought her on sale and she was SO worth it!

    I think that there's something kind of refreshing about focusing on a loid that doesn't quite have the idol status Miku and her friends do (she's fairly well-known, but it's more of a quiet popularity), and a native English speaker at that (though far from the same dialect I speak, as I'm very much American, which is a unique and fun challenge).
    Update on Pocket Singer: I deleted it. I don't want any part in that company's dealings.
    pico
    pico
    Did something happen?
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    One of ACE's head devs is...kind of a creep. I don't want to get into detail.

    But even after disregarding this, I don't really feel right using Pocket Singer because the voices sound so much like regular people and don't really have quite the vocal-synth charm some other vsynths do, which to me kind of nixes the point of me using a vocal synth in the first place...okay, I don't have experience singing, but still, the reason I use vocal synths is to bring something unique to the table.
    [Sil] actually fixes a bunch of Engloids' pronunciation issues

    for example, miku v4 english pronounces "have" [h { v] like [h { r v], but [h { Sil v] will fix that

    avanna pronounces "sleep" [s l i: p] like [S l i: p], so [s Sil l0 i: p] fixes it ([s Sil l i: p] sounds more like "seep")
    Vector
    Vector
    Sil is my go-to doorstop for stopping phonemes from blending when I don't want them to.

    Pulling OPE down is a decent way to de-emphasize weird vowel sounds too. e.g. Miku always wants to pronounce "man" as "mun" and there aren't really any better phonemes to substitute, so I just lower OPE and hope it's not too noticeable lol.
    Pocket Singers, man...FINALLY a good vocal synth for Android. ("But ACE got better!" Sure it did. I think the better ACE was only for iOS though.)
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    Update: Wait, could it be that Pocket Singers IS the better ACE, repackaged for international audiences?
    To anyone wondering why my tuning is so good but my mixing is iffy, it's because before using vocal synths, I was excited to get a vocal synth so I could tune, and I didn't even really know what mixing WAS until I sent a horribly-mixed cover to a Discord server. I'm currently working on improving my mixing. I used presets + Track Assistant in Neutron 3 Elements for a while, but lately I've been working on shaping the EQ and compressing myself instead of just letting AI do it. Oh, and actually ADJUSTING the OTT compressor I always use on my Vocaloid vocals, haha.
    I got this idea from a school assignment...what do you guys think I do best when it comes to Vocaloid?
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    Ibis
    Ibis
    (I mostly looked at your originals so that’s what I’ll be talking about)

    The way you tune makes Miku sound very upbeat, like they’re happily singing along to a song in a car. You do a good job at keeping their voice from being flat; it sounds very expressive. I also really like the way you tuned Avanna in Next Best Thing. They sound a lot like a modern pop star with a lot if auto tune.

    On terms of what could be improved, I would say mixing. The vocals are slightly too loud or too quiet, and when you do try and add base, I feel like it drowns the other sounds a little bit. I also think you could try adding some variety to the instrumental when making originals (adding more instrumental tracks and/or using some different VSTs to vary the sound a little).

    You absolutely have potential, so please keep making music! We could always use more originals, and even just making covers helps with tuning and mixing. Keep up the good work! :ruko_ibis:
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    Ah, yeah...I'm trying to work on mixing in general, and I think a Japanese fan on Niconico said something along the lines of one of my songs' instrumentals being kinda bare-bones/basic? So maybe I should add more layers...except that it doesn't take much for the performance meter to peak on my Studio One

    I think one thing is that I tend to feel guilty if I leave notes flat, so I give them a little pitch-bend tweak to spice things up a little. I used to tune more simply though. Next Best Thing actually has pretty simple tuning
    • Like
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    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    I've started mastering most of my music with BandLab lately, so hopefully that helps some things.
    • Like
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    Does anyone know if I can register my Big Fish Audio-purchased (digital) Miku V4X Bundle to the Crypton website or Sonicwire? Because in the Crypton site's case I can't find the license ID, and in Sonicwire's case it doesn't accept the license keys for some reason (both for the Japanese and English VBs).
    mobius017
    mobius017
    I don't think you can register purchases from Big Fish, unfortunately. I wonder if that's the case if you buy from Zero-G/any other third party, too...I'd assume so....

    This is from the Piapro Studio Thread, under Registration:

    Q: I bought a download version of a Crypton VOCALOID. How do I register downloads?

    A: If you bought the download from SONICWIRE or Crypton's site while logged into your account, the product should have been automatically registered. If you bought it from somewhere else (such as Big Fish Audio), unfortunately, it cannot be registered.
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    Ah, alright. I'll just be content that it's registered to my Big Fish Audio account then.
    Does anyone have any tips to make my music videos more interesting without having to go learn animation or something? Lately they've just been an image with an audio visualizer and lyrics.
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    Maybe I could try finding a cooler audio visualizer...
    Ibis
    Ibis
    Maybe you could add some special special effects or overlays? You might also want to try different filters or changing the transitions between scenes if there are any. Maybe you could try going between black and white and color, or you could try rotating the image or panning up and down without necessarily animating it.
    MagicalMiku
    MagicalMiku
    exactly ^-^ I also recommend to zoom the image slowly out (if the song is calm and quiet) ^-^
    for example, the wonderful "World Clock" by ryuryu:
    • Like
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    Coming in the future: I'm hoping to compile my first batch of songs into an album! I've made a simple album cover and I'm putting together sort of a "draft folder" with MP3s of the songs. The hope is to eventually get it onto Spotify.
    This site is only 4 years old, isn't it? Was it made as a VocaloidOtaku successor or something?
    MagicalMiku
    MagicalMiku
    I joined vocaloidotaku back in 2014, but if I remember correctly, it existed since 2009 :yuki_lili:
    maple
    maple
    See the section "Announcements and rules -> Feedback and suggestions". You can ask there.
    Blue Of Mind
    Blue Of Mind
    I joined VO waaaaay back in 2010, but I think it had existed for a year by then. VO used to be a big hub for the Western fandom, but it always had a reputation for attracting and/or causing drama (mostly within the Pocaloid Lounge, an "anything goes" subforum which was less moderated than the rest of the site), which I think ultimately caused the board to slowly fall by the wayside after around 2012/13. (But saying that, I don't think the rise of social media helped either. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter really took the wind out of traditional forums by 2013). Among a good chunk of the Western fandom, VO was a joke of a site.

    I must admit, I did enjoy the last few years VO was around because it was a lot more peaceful than before, but it probably helped that most of the drama llamas that were causing problems had left either the board or the fandom in general by 2014. The board shut down in 2018 because the owner couldn't afford to keep running it anymore, with how low engagement had become on there. And that's where VV came into the picture! :happy:
    Does anyone know what the deal on commercial use of Miku is? Like, is it that you can't use her design at all without permission and you should just draw an original character, or is it just the official art (and the stuff on piapro) that that rule applies to and if you want to draw Miku for your album cover you can? I've gotta distribute my stuff eventually, you know...
    pico
    pico
    Creative Commons is one of the greatest inventions to come to the web.
    Vector
    Vector
    It's kind of a mess, especially since the characters are dual licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC and the Piapro Character License, which are very different and translating legal documents is a fool's errand. For what it's worth, if you dig through the Japanese character guidelines (don't trust Google Translate for specifics!) there's a whole section where they outline that they essentially consider YouTube activity non-commercial doujin activity (even if you're in the YT Partner Program).

    I've noticed that a lot of western artists will use art based on Crypton characters for music videos, but when they link out to Spotify or whatever, their album art does not contain them. Kira, for example, uses original art of Miku heavily in 4Blood and Digital Girl, but the corresponding album art is just the title.

    So...YMMV, but Crypton isn't in the business of nuking the entire creative community of artists who want to buy their synths. They're not particularly articulate about their expectations on the western sphere, but they also aren't going around issuing takedowns on music videos. Album art on commercial streaming services is more likely to be an issue. They also state on the Sonicwire purchase pages that Crypton won't respond to commercial usage requests outside of corporate entities with established works (i.e. record labels).
    AmazingStrange39
    AmazingStrange39
    Ahh, alright. So I can put Miku on YT and SC but I shouldn't put her image on Spotify. Got it.
    I think I'll always be more comfortable using vocal synths in English over Japanese. Japanese may be easier to tune and require much less phoneme editing, but it's a lot easier for me to come up with/understand and tune for English lyrics. I'm not gonna stop using Japanese vocalsynths (I need to put my Japanese knowledge to use + I don't want my JP Miku banks to just sit there), I'm just saying that particularly in the case of original songs, English is easier for me as a native speaker of the language.
    You guys ever make a song that sounds pretty but you don't feel you can do much with it? Happens to me all the time. Sometimes I work on a song and the creativity just flows, but sometimes it just doesn't feel quite right.
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