MUSIC, IDEAS, ART, LIFE

MIKU, THE INHUMAN POP STAR

or what to make of the Vocaloid takeover

By Michelle Marshall

Who's that hologram?

Part One, Ambience

Thousands flood into a concert venue of Miku Expo, many in fully-fleshed out cosplays and outfits, bright wigs and glowsticks, all cheering and screaming. The lights dim, the teal glow sticks brighten the whole area, and the fans are screaming. Finally, the first beat of the drum drops and a holographic projection of an anime girl appears on a huge yet nearly invisible screen. Larger than life, she starts singing in her autotune-esque voice. The fans go crazy and and they sing along to Japanese lyrics regardless of their nationality or mother tongue.

Somehow a 3-D Japanese anime girl is able to move the hearts of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, not billions, but millions is still a lot. She hosts concerts and exhibitions everywhere. I’m talking Asia, the Americas, North and South, Europe, literally the world! She sells out concerts wherever her hologram goes. The impact is huge, piquing the interest of famous people and celebrities, such as George Clooney, Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johannson, David Letterman, and many others. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

A new type of musical guest

Vocaloid, short for Vocal-Android, is a voice synthesizing software that allows a software to create vocals from a real person’s text input. There are several Vocaloids that exist today. Each voicebank created for each Vocaloid has its own distinct voice, look, and feel. The one that made bank for Crypton Inc. though, was by far Hatsune Miku, iconic blue hair and eyes, long pigtails. Survey states that almost all of Japanese millennials recognize her.

Part Two, History

So, how exactly did a simple software program suddenly amass such a large number of fans who pay a hefty amount of money only to come to a live venue, and watch a holographic projection perform? Well, this goes way back to the year 2000, where researcher Kenmochi Hideki led a joint research project in Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He was able to create a software program that would essentially remove the need for real people to sing to create music. His software allowed anyone to input text, such as syllables or vowels, and the software would just generate that sound, and later adjust pitch, tone, and other modifiers, similar to real life singing.

The man who gave birth to the inhuman star

Eventually the big Japanese electronics company, Yamaha, took over the project. Yamaha commercialized the software that Hideki created, and sold it to various Entertainment companies, both big and small. At this point many hobbyists were also playing with it and seeing how they could create a pop music star without having to find a real person.

Yamaha further refined the software and launched their first mascot vocaloid in 2004, a woman called MEIKO. In her box-art, she dons a red crop top and skirt, and holds a microphone just like a real singer. The demand for Vocaloid-made music rose, and it the response was bigger than Yamaha ever imagined. Two years later, they released their first male vocaloid, named KAITO. His sales weren’t as impressive as Meiko’s, and they decided that the public liked female Vocaloids better.

In 2007, Yamaha passed the development of Vocaloid to a company called Crypton Future Media Inc. and Crypton knew exactly what to do. They decided that just having an appealing voice wasn’t enough. The voice needed an image, a personality, and to really sell it needed a touch of cute. Crypton Future hired Manga artist Kei Garo. Kei to design Miku with the only order being “make her turquoise”. And so he did exactly that and boom, Hatsune Miku was born, a 16 year-old android who might be the most appealing person in the world, if she were a person. This is a prime example of open-source culture, her image, voice, and everything can be modified: she’s everything but at the same time, nothing.

In an open source there's always more than one

Yamaha and Crypton Vocaloid initially thought of the program as a tool for professional producers, but its popularity skyrocketed. Hobbyists and amateurs jumped into the game and Miku’s popularity skyrocketed. Her voice, or Soundbank, was mixed with a Finnish song as if she were the latest dancehall star to emerge from the clubs. In the video, she is singing, dancing, and twirling a green onion stick and as you might guess the whole thing went viral on Nico Nico Douga, a free online Japanese video-sharing platform. Of course, this inspired even more content creators to create Vocaloid-based content which was not limited to just music. As mentioned earlier, Miku isn’t a property own by a music company, but an ‘open-source’ cultural icon.

Miku became a star in which the world, professionals and hobbyist, produced her work. People collaborated to create Vocaloid based animation software, illustrations, Fanarts, and much more. Crypton took this opportunity and continued to create even more Vocaloids, expanding to other languages, including but not limited to Chinese, Korean, and English. Not everything Miku is successful, but that’s not point; she is a phenom of the world and by the world.

Part Three, Philosophy

Edouard-Leon Scott, the first recorder of recorded sound

This evokes the question of why? Traditionally, the creation of music has always been an organic process: real people, real vocals, real instruments. In the 1860’s a French bookseller recorded sound for the first time and since then we have been heading inevitably towards Miku and her 2008 hit with the Japanese pop band Supercell, which has received over 73 million view on YouTube and hit number seven on the US charts. music has always been a form of social communication, instruments that go back and forth, music is part of how humans are able to interconnect, it's a way to communicate a story in a different way.

We as humans are psychologically wired to enjoy pleasant sounds, but how we define pleasant is another issue and often changes in musical styles cause both controversy and interest. Similarly, Vocaloid is an acquired taste. The robotic vocals paired with strong instrumentals are exciting to hear because they’re so different, we haven’t heard anything like this before, we are curious, and we want to know more.

Despite the fact that Vocaloid is a music program, a good deal of its popularity rests on the Japanese animation industry. By assigning a cartoon or an Anime character to the software Vocaloid is able to give the music a virtual identity. Anime goes way back to 1917s. The earliest form of Anime was used in anti-propaganda posters and films, and eventually led to the creation of Anime as entertainment. Since then Anime has developed and globalized at a rapid pace, Anime offering a known platform for Vocaloid, the music takes on a kind of already understood character that has its own voice, story, likes and dislikes. This is why it seems to real and that fans, real people feel an emotional connection to what is essentially a computer program.

The Living and the Dead together again!

Putting aside our very human prejudices against computers taking on traditionally human endeavors, Vocaloid has been a resounding success. In 2012, Snoop Dogg performed with 2pac’s hologram at Coachella. The performance blew the audience away. It felt as if the very dead 2pac was right there. This will change not only music, but also the way we interact with each other. The day might come and it might already be here] that the aura or presence of somebody and the energy they create will be more valuable than who or what they are. So, Miku’s just the first of many to come and there will be many more after her.

©Michelle Marshall and the CCA Arts Review