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[SimonM7]

Just Be Friends in English was only done for Miku Expo 2014 LA and NY (four shows in two weekends) as far as I know. Mikunopolis before it used the Japanese version. It might have been a one-time license since the lyrics were licensed from another creator.

Ah, I see. Yeah that makes sense. I was actually a little worried that global/US success would have them translating more of the songs, but if it requires a bit of untangling rights, I guess it's unlikely to become a problem.

That said I do think new English Miku songs sound a great deal more natural than previously, I just would hate to go to one of these things eventually and they play a jerky, awkward English version of an older Japanese song I love.

 

[SimonM7]

- snip! -

Here's the work in progress so far. Her "whispering" sounds like she has some serious health issues, but I hope I can clear that up.

edit: old link/removed

 

[raidergale]

Great job! Yeah, unfortunately whispery voices are quite hard to replicate unless the voice you're working with already has a "Whisper" append, but what you achieved isn't that bad.
There's a way to force a whisper-like sound by manually changing the phonemes and adding a "_0" at the end of it (for example "The [D V]" would become "The [D_0 V_0]"), but it's a very robotic sound with a lot of engine noise, so I doubt it'd help a lot here unless you edit it a lot in a DAW or something.

 

[SimonM7]

Great job! Yeah, unfortunately whispery voices are quite hard to replicate unless the voice you're working with already has a "Whisper" append, but what you achieved isn't that bad.
There's a way to force a whisper-like sound by manually changing the phonemes and adding a "_0" at the end of it (for example "The [D V]" would become "The [D_0 V_0]"), but it's a very robotic sound with a lot of engine noise, so I doubt it'd help a lot here unless you edit it a lot in a DAW or something.

Thanks!

And yeah, when I'm done tuning this and finalising the lyrics I'll prolly do some nipping and tucking on the vocaloid track in Audacity. I'm not sure why I'm so reluctant to do that, honestly. It's like I'm "cheating", but literally nobody would care.

 

[raidergale]

A demo song of the new V4 Miku English was released today, I'd say it's an improvement over her V3 voicebank but it's a Circus demo, who usually edits voices a lot in order to make them sound better... not really a good indication of what the basic voice sounds like, but it's an improvement nonetheless

Our Broken Anthem

 

[SimonM7]

A demo song of the new V4 Miku English was released today, I'd say it's an improvement over her V3 voicebank but it's a Circus demo, who usually edits voices a lot in order to make them sound better... not really a good indication of what the basic voice sounds like, but it's an improvement nonetheless

Our Broken Anthem

That is a considerable improvement for sure, but if I don't read the lyrics I have no idea what she's singing. I can never tell if it's the inflection and sort of the odd rhythm of the words, though. A lot of good tuners still kinda break up the words in a weird way that make them sound unnatural regardless.

 

[raidergale]

That is a considerable improvement for sure, but if I don't read the lyrics I have no idea what she's singing.

Oh yeah, I wasn't expecting to understand anything because... well, it's English Miku.

 

[SimonM7]

Fair point!


Here's my new song It's Not / It's Just The End Of The World on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/simonm7/its-not-its-just-the-end-of-the-world-ft-megurine-luka


I'm still learning the basics of every aspect of this stuff, so I'm kinda planning to learn a bunch from making songs, and then go back and tweak all of these eventually. Anyhoo! It's a lot of fun.

 

[raidergale]

Anyhoo! It's a lot of fun.

It can definitely be once you get in the groove of things! I can't speak from a music making perspective since I have no idea how to do that, but even making covers is quite fun

Some more V4 English Miku demos popped up, pronunciation is still meh but at least she doesn't have the cotton mouth syndrome she had on V3.

Melody
Side Chara(cter)
Party Junkie

As a side note, Miku V4 is out now so I guess there's going to be more examples soon.

 

[SimonM7]

Some more V4 English Miku demos popped up, pronunciation is still meh but at least she doesn't have the cotton mouth syndrome she had on V3.

I'm really curious how much you could fix by doing some inventive word replacement. Like for instance in the song I just uploaded there's a bit where Luka goes "unexist". I put unexist in there at first, but I didn't like the way it sounded, so I put "un-eck-ceased" instead, which worked great.

I had a Miku V3 demo for two weeks before I knew to try that sort of stuff. I wonder if "sharing the world" would sound less like "shiering the woe-oh-oh" if one were to do some word frankensteining.

 

[SimonM7]

In Piapro Studio, are the portamento and vibratio settings all presets for things that you can alter manually? I'm just now getting around to messing with the pitch bend and stuff.

 

[raidergale]

In Piapro Studio, are the portamento and vibratio settings all presets for things that you can alter manually? I'm just now getting around to messing with the pitch bend and stuff.

I don't use Piapro so I wouldn't know how it works there, but in the standard editor both Portamento and Vibrato can be edited manually. Vibrato by either selecting a preset and changing the rate/depth/length or by manually creating a vibrato effect using the PIT + DYN tabs, while Portamento has its own POR tab (which I honestly never used so I wouldn't know how to actually do something useful with it)

 

[SimonM7]

I don't use Piapro so I wouldn't know how it works there, but in the standard editor both Portamento and Vibrato can be edited manually. Vibrato by either selecting a preset and changing the rate/depth/length or by manually creating a vibrato effect using the PIT + DYN tabs, while Portamento has its own POR tab (which I honestly never used so I wouldn't know how to actually do something useful with it)

Ah! Gotcha. When you split up words it's a pain to create a consistent vibrato effect with the presets, so I'll give those tabs a whirl instead.

 

[raidergale]

Ah! Gotcha. When you split up words it's a pain to create a consistent vibrato effect with the presets, so I'll give those tabs a whirl instead.

I find it harder to do manually since you need to draw something like sinewaves to imitate the vibrato effect, but it can also be more realistic and give you more control so that's a win. I think there are some .lua plugins to automatically add sinewaves to the pitch tab, but you'd be limiting yourself to presets again...

 

[OMG Aero]

In Europe the 3DS got another bunch of vocaloid themes today: Melancholic, 1 2 Fanclub, The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku, Lost One's Weeping, and Brain Fluid Explosion Girl

 

[ChrisD]

...NoA, you awake? I'd buy all of them..

 

[raidergale]

If anybody's interested, a new male English Vocaloid was just released, it's called "Cyber Songman". Unfortunately it doesn't have a trial version, but there are two demos.

Demo 1
Demo 2

Store page

As a non-native English speaker I think it sounds nice? Apparently his higher range isn't great though.

 

[SimonM7]

If anybody's interested, a new male English Vocaloid was just released, it's called "Cyber Songman". Unfortunately it doesn't have a trial version, but there are two demos.

Demo 1
Demo 2

Store page

As a non-native English speaker I think it sounds nice? Apparently his higher range isn't great though.

I did the ultimate test and closed my eyes before clicking the demo links. And yeah, it's pretty great. I thought he was a FIRE EATER and not a fighter, though. :>

I have to say, western vocaloids could really up their name game. But that's really just a selfish request because I've a thing for the whole "artist profile" aspect of Miku and the sort.

 

[raidergale]

I did the ultimate test and closed my eyes before clicking the demo links. And yeah, it's pretty great. I thought he was a FIRE EATER and not a fighter, though. :>

I have to say, western vocaloids could really up their name game. But that's really just a selfish request because I've a thing for the whole "artist profile" aspect of Miku and the sort.

Yeah, the name is quite something, alright
It's probably because Yamaha is marketing its English Vocaloids purely as a musical instrument, hence why Cyber Diva and Cyber Songman. Other companies have released better named English Vocaloids (Avanna, for example), but I'm not sure it really helped their sales since English Vocaloids are quite niche :/

 

[SimonM7]

Yeah, the name is quite something, alright
It's probably because Yamaha is marketing its English Vocaloids purely as a musical instrument, hence why Cyber Diva and Cyber Songman. Other companies have released better named English Vocaloids (Avanna, for example), but I'm not sure it really helped their sales since English Vocaloids are quite niche :/

Ah, yeah, good point. But yeah Avanna is a pretty good one. It evokes a western pop diva name for sure. I can ssssorta roll with Cyber Diva, it's just pretty dull, but Cyber Songman is super goofy. I would just crack up if I tried putting out a song featuring "Cyber Songman" - unless its just a song about how he's your best singing buddy in the whole wide world.

 

[SimonM7]

Is it unwise to purchase English Gumi right now? I'm not up on what's happening with her English V4.

I'm thinking of wishing for it for Christmas. :>

 

[raidergale]

Is it unwise to purchase English Gumi right now? I'm not up on what's happening with her English V4.

I'm thinking of wishing for it for Christmas. :>

I don't think there's been any news on that since last year so a release before the end of the year is definitely unlikely.
Unless they pull a Yamaha and release her out of nowhere, that is, but that would be unusual for Internet Co.

 

[SimonM7]

I don't think there's been any news on that since last year so a release before the end of the year is definitely unlikely.
Unless they pull a Yamaha and release her out of nowhere, that is, but that would be unusual for Internet Co.

Ah, hmm. That's sort of even worse, that it's not coming soon, but we don't even have a window for it. I've been wanting to do a duet song for a long time, and Gumi is definitely my go to after Luka, but it would really suck to get the V3 one now and then V4 hits within 6 months.

Hmmmmmm. Prolly best to hold off on it until there's concrete news.

 

[SimonM7]

Grr. I'm trying to have Luka sing "keeps you here", but the "here" sounds like "khere". I thhhink the note before is interfering, but I can't put them far enough apart without ruining how I want the phrase to sound within the song.

Any cures for the k sound in "here"?

EDIT: I went to town on it with manual dynamics adjustments and it sounds pretty okay now! False alarm!

 

[SimonM7]

New song!

Eve's Drop (ft. Megurine Luka)
https://soundcloud.com/simonm7/eves-drop-ft-megurine-luka

Some big pronunciation victories in this one for me, which ultimately don't amount to a lot overall, as usual, but even so!

 

[raidergale]

Not sure how many people might be interested in this, but Internet Co. recently opened their English website. There's also a 40% off discount for Gumi English. Unfortunately it's still her V3 bank, with no news whatsoever on a V4 version

 

[SimonM7]

Not sure how many people might be interested in this, but Internet Co. recently opened their English website. There's also a 40% off discount for Gumi English. Unfortunately it's still her V3 bank, with no news whatsoever on a V4 version

That's perfect timing! Thanks for the heads up. I'm definitely fine with picking up her V3 at almost half off. Luka/Gumi duets here I come!

 

[raidergale]

Get ready to manually fix her issues then!
I think she's quite understandable, but the choppiness can really be a problem sometimes.

 

[SimonM7]

Get ready to manually fix her issues then!
I think she's quite understandable, but the choppiness can really be a problem sometimes.

Yeah, I went on a youtube hunt for english Gumi songs, and it does seem like you can sidestep her issues quite successfully and end up with something very much on par with Luka. Making a duet should give me plenty of wiggle room to learn about/avoid problems for my first try.

The download sure isn't in a rush.