Fridge Dweller: vocaloid

Showing posts with label vocaloid. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2012

Copyright Claims vs. Hatsune Miku Youtube Videos

As you may know, I am a member of the German pirate party. An important reason for joining was that I disapprove a system where the mere claim (without the need for providing any evidence) that certain content infringes copyright is sufficient for its takedown. Not only does this approach collide with my view that guilty until proven guilty should be a universal principle not just for penal codes, it also makes the abusive use of false claims way to easy.

In the case of YouTube’s automated system things are even worse. Not only can false claims be made – they can made by anybody, not just by persons who are authorized by the copyright holder to do so. I am a huge fan of vocaloids in general and Hatsune Miku in particular and while I have an account at nicovideo (the site where most vocaloid music is uploaded), I prefer accessing them on youtube because there you can build a virtually infinite number of playlists.

I now learned that there seems to be a concerted action to have high-ranked Hatsune Miku videos removed from youtube by making false claims of copyright infringement which not only results in those videos being removed but also in accounts being closed due to such claims and the three strikes rule.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku from YouTube

This is incident is sad in may ways including:

A means created for a just cause is abused for a hidous one (first and foremost copyright is not about making money but about empowering creators of content so that they have a say in how it is used – this is so central that German law does not even allow you to give up this right).
Damage is done to the community because many Hatsune Miku songs usually are happy ones that brighten your day.
As vocaloids allow every hobby composer to use vocals without having to paying quite a lot of money on a singer or having to find people willing to sing without payment, they allow talents that would otherwise have been lost to give a world-wide audience delight.

For more please visit Recent Copyright Claims Affecting Miku Youtube Videos at Vocaloidism. Please help spread the word about this attack on wonderful music created for what likely is the oldest reason to make music: the fun of making it and listening to it.

Fittingly, the song that you hear as BGM for the above video is The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku.

I wonder if the incident may have to do with the top position at Singers You'd Like to Perform at the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Friday, November 25, 2011

Spanish Vocaloids

After presenting to you some demo songs for the Korean vocaloid SeeU I would now like to introduce you to two Spanish voices, namely Bruno and Clara.

Bruno - Amor, amor, amor [VOCALOID3]

Clara - Tres Cosas (Salud, Dinero y Amor) [VOCALOID3]

Bruno - El Makoki [VOCALOID3]

Bruno & Clara - Juntos Tú y Yo [VOCALOID3]

Clara - Por Una Rosa [VOCALOID3]

Bruno - El manisero [VOCALOID3]

Bruno & Clara - El Trenecito [VOCALOID3]

Korean Vocaloid SeeU

The Vocaloid singing synthesizier has been around for almost 8 years now but until now there only have been voices for English and Japanese. Now you can also obtain voices for Korean and Spanish. Support for Chinese has been announced as well but to my knowledge is not yet available. In this post you find a couple of official demo videos.

Note that there are two versions of the fourth demo song that differ in the absence or presence of the breathing effect which makes the singing sound more natural.

If I am honest I must admit that I better like the version without it breathing effect. If you have a software that can sing without the need to breathe interfering with the performance, what is the point in crippling it down to sound more human when in previous centuries boys have been castrated to come closer to this ideal? If you want to know how a castrato sounds just scroll to the bottom of this post.