Idea and realization: Tom
Correction and translation into English: Sei Paradeis
A story,
a software, several lives,
a long and bearable progress that leads to all this,
that manages to get a nickname and be an icon.
VIRTUAL DIVA
Hatsune Miku.
To understand how Miku was born we need to brush up since the begginning of all.
1984, IT DIDN’T BEGIN IN JAPAN.
At the end of the 20 century,
Yves Potard and Xavier Rodet made the CHANT PROYECT
originally granted to analyze and sinthesize the singing,
but encompassing much more as it progressed.
All of this was achieved with a complex program called CHANT.
There was created focused goals in the research of involved models in the process of the musical production.
All of this carry on to a series of calculations and variations that achieves to do this…
ELVIS PROYECT.
Jordi Bonada, a researcher of MTG (Music Thechnology Group) from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona,
worked into a proyect with YAMAHA.
It’s know they studied various ranges and tones in a attempt to make a model which can reproduce any song.
This proyect was denominated ELVIS (in allusion to the Singer).
It lasted two years and it didn’t finished becoming in a product
due to the difficulties that carry them on to stablished a second proyect.
DAISY PROJECT
Despite the previous attempt,
this achievement establishes a series of instruments that helped to build a synthesizer.
YAMAHA agreed to start a new project
and it was at this point that Kenmochi Hideki,
the so-called FATHER OF VOCALOID
In the 2000 gave several ideas thanks to the research accomplished by the University of Barcelona,
that's how he started to develop libraries with YAMAHA to shape the real product,
which they didn’t plan to put on sale,
it was just research
All this led to several tests that, despite of achieve good results,
they noted that the voice sounded inhuman and computer generated,
in addition to its costs were very high.
From there they set themselves the goal of
trying to provide a fast and low-cost way to achieve voices and that producers can have control.
Originally conceived as DAISY PROJECT,
name taken from the song Daisy Bell, created in 1892 by the British Harry Dacre,
and being the first song sung by the IBM 7094 computer in 1961.
This could be achieved together with several programmers and researchers.
VOCALOID PROYECT
In March of 2002
it was step by step taking form.
It was developed a prototype which allows to researchers to be able to tranform vocal timbres in a natural way.
At the beginning of “Daisy, it can say vowels like
“AI (love),”
for four months after being able to say a word which was "Asa" which means “Tomorrow.”
Due to this YAMAHA decided to license the software and helped theirself with third-party studios,
for both English and Japanese,
where they were developing each other.
That’s how Crypton Future Media appears on scene,
which was contacted in May of 2002
principally to make a English voice bank, but they disagreed.
Then a second studio appears on scene called ZERO-G with another company called PowerFX.
After several demos and misunderstandings,
and despite continuing to have some problems,
Daisy became four voices, LEON, LOLA, HANAKO and TARO
of these only the first two were showed to the public, but the other two continued to transform.
THE PROYECT IS GETTING SHAPE
VOCALOID began to take shape,
giving it that characteristic name formed with the words VOCAL and ANDROID.
It was announced on February 26, 2003.
The original idea of the software was to try to replace a true singer,
Even so, LEON and LOLA made their debut on January 15, 2004,
made by ZERO G who a few months later launched MIRIAM.
From Japan, the first prototype called HANAKO was renamed and shaped
as MEIKO thanks to YAMAHA and Crypton who collaborated to achieve it.
A competition was also born for VOCALOID, CANTOR, which was only known in the western hemisphere.
A year and a half later, the voice called TARO was published with the name of KAITO,
which was a commercial failure.
Even so, YAMAHA due to the success it had in general,
formed a base that led to the launch of the VOCALOID 2 engine.
VOCALOID 2 AND THE BORN OF A DIVA
In January of 2007, the second version of the engine, which had a modest success called VOCALOID,
was announced with three Demo Voice Banks
which were called like Sweet ANN, BIG AL and Prima.
In July of that year we had the software on sale, with two voice baks:
Sweet ANN in English and Hatsune Miku in Japanese.
CV01
Hatsune Miku wasn’t born for its own sake.
This is the first VOCALOID made by Crypton Future Media,
who we know already that they have been working with YAMAHA.
Even though the modest success of VOCALOID,
MEIKO sold only 3 thousand copies
and KAITO was a resouding failure with only 500 copies sold.
This voice bank had to be an improvement,
being its first concept to be a bilingual voice bank
(something that we saw later with Megurine Luka).
After a marketing propose, they started to give form and a face to their software.
They had the idea of a young girl of 16 years old with 4.9 feed tall and 92.5 pounds of weight.
Also they gave her a name alluding to the Crypton’s idea,
named like “The first sound of the future.”
[This is the first DEMO song of Hatsune Miku]
THE VOCALOID 2's SUCCESS
Thanks to all this, VOCALOID 2 was an immediate success in Japan,
reporting more than 3,000 presales just with Hatsune Miku,
a milestone that the English version of the software wasn’t achieving.
Many Japanese studios joined in the production of more voice banks.
Internet Co. is an example of this,
and Crypton Future Media realized that they didn't have to sound realistic,
but that success was based on giving a face to the voice bank.
This can be seen in the fact that despite the fact that their voices continue to be successful,
many other companies created much more realistic voice banks, such as GUMI or Gackupo,
which enjoyed great popularity and are still preferred by many people today.
This strategy to Crypton and others was a path to follow to others companies,
giving a mascot or an avatar that represents their software worked on customers
and it generated a unique customization that was noticeable in the songs that each user made.
MIKU, WHAT SHE ENTAILS
As we have seen,
what led to Miku being created was a long process with many tests and information.
From ELVIS to DAISY, from DAISY to HANAKO and TARO,
 
who despite hadn’t sold well before, they had a buoyancy thanks to their successor.
Even with this, Miku was never intended to be a success.
The idea was to keep it niche, and for music producers,
but it ended up encompassing amateurs and anime lovers.
Moreover,
the greatest possibility of marketing was born after it was published and had the boom
in response to everything that was happening.
It is estimated that over 3,000 copies were purchased in the first 12 days of sales.
Amazon stated that in September 2007, Hatsune Miku reached a total of 51,500,001 yen.
In its first year it sold more than 40 thousand units,
an average of 300 per week.
Normally it was considered a good business to only sell 1000 copies of a voice synthesizer.
From here, it began to attract more interested companies who could contribute their own.
WHEN WAS BORN THE POPULARITY WORLWIDE?
If we think about it,
it’s hard to find an exact date for the begining of the popularity of Hatsune Miku exponentially speaking.
We know that it was like a wave that was increasing,
but I consider that there is a point of inflection in all of this.
Google was a fundamental len to the DIVA to be well-known worldwide,
we could say that thanks to the advertising the popularity increased to her
and it carried on to positive things happens from here to go on.
To Crypton it was important.
Having the face of your software with an world-famous company had to work.
But it wasn’t the only one.
Toyota, a Japanese company,
also contributed with Miku in order to Miku could launch beyond Japan,
promoting their cars with her and helping as a sponsor to Miku to visit the United States in 2011.
In just 4 years, Miku had accomplished a lot and with so little,
because although it was being recognized worldwide,
it was thanks to a few producers, who are now legends in this world.
In Japan it was becoming well-known thankfully to Nico Nico Douga,
which was very helpful to little producers who just began in this,
so they could have a place to release their productions.
The discovery of what could be achieved,
and all these possibilities that technology gave us feel and seem to have come later.
THE EXPLOITATION OF POSSIBILITIES
Hatsune Miku is a voice bank,
a small part of what a song is,
and if this is the same songs feel without their own vocal style.
The question is
When Miku stopped being a voice that accompanies your song to be a part of your identity as a producer?
Giving that part to make it easily recognized.
Here we could perhaps name a precursor to this, Mitchie M.
If anyone ever associated him as "The producer who makes Miku look more human"
it is because he accomplished his mission.
Having a very characteristic tuning,
little by little he generated a wave of authors
who tried to find their own label at the cost of making Miku sound different.
And now there is more and more knowledge of what you can do with it.
It isn’t everything together and it works.
Because it also makes each VOCALOID fanatic identify with this seal.
And many hate it,
for the simple fact of "IT DOESN'T SOUND LIKE MIKU".
In the beginning, the diva came to have an identity for her voice,
and leave it as standard.
When experimenting producers began to appear in recent years,
this problem was generated,
and perhaps some annoyances
We can say that it is what the diva is and what the producer wants her to be,
also with her voice.
SEGA AND WHAT THEY WERE FOR CRYPTON
If we can name a father of another company,
it’s SEGA,
who are almost since the begining supporting al lof this movement.
They appeared in 2009 and they were a sustenance of the Hatsune Miku’s success.
Basically, they gave more life and personality to the DIVA,
who left to be an promotional art and started to be a character.
Who doesn’t know this important Japanese company,
hasn’t played videogames in his life.
They boosted all the characteristics of the DIVA
and made a saga with more of ten years in the industry,
Project DIVA.
What this generated was that little by little all this began to be mainstream, that it left its niche.
Hatsune Miku was beginning to gain the recognition of the common public
and a nickname to be promoted and to try to maintain that publicity,
a revolutionary idea came out.
THE CONCERTS
What a singer needs to become successful with her audience are concerts,
tours or presentations,
these enhance the artist's face and can promote her songs.
Well,
with this understood and knowing that concerts can not be held to present songs
because so many are published per day,
what Crypton and SEGA initially thought was to promote the games.
These were published in Japan from 2009 onwards, aiming to sell them,
It was a good move to give them a space at concerts.
Shows, where almost all his songs were in those games presented for PSP.
From Giving Day, MikuPa, MikuNoPolis and until the beginning of Magical Mirai,
they gave a space to those songs and empowered Hatsune Miku everywhere...
If you saw this in your country is because they did a master play.
Presenting a "hologram" that interacts with the public, greets the band and, above all, singing and dancing,
was what catapulted news and newspapers from around the world in 2010 to be talking about this VIRTUAL DIVA,
we could even say that much from that nickname she also earned thanks to this,
from one day to the next a gigantic repercussion was generated about the Hatsune Miku circle,
so much so that the following year she was already singing in the United States.
In just one year,
she did what is sure to many Japanese bands would take much longer,
and not because they are bad,
but because Crypton and SEGA hit the nail on the head,
the way of presenting was what woke up in the fans and the not so fans
that need to know what it was that seemed to be there,
but it was done by computer.
And that ambition that they continued to have led him to stop thinking about games
and make concerts something more unitary,
that can work without promoting anything except itself.
From here creativity flourished and Magical Mirai and Miku EXPO were born,
in addition to Miku x KODO, MIKU WITH YOU, SNOW MIKU LIVE, etc…
So much so that it became an icon and a need to see if it approaches your country,
and not for the fact of being a fan,
but for knowing what it is that generates so much euphoria and meeting the scope of technology
This that they created was replicated so many times later in other artists
that we could say that step by atep this is becoming a standard to achieve wonders.
Seeing what lies ahead.
THE PRODUCERS
Wowaka had somethig in mind before retairing from VOCALOID.
He knew that this community isn’t a place to gain appreciation.
You can not live from this and being a visible face,
you always have to be behind Hatsune Miku or another voice bank.
The main problem of this is that the attention is focused on that image or face.
The songs in general need of someone to make it,
and I don’t speak just about the Diva,
but each artist in the musical field.
The producer usually meet a part of that rol,
and while every international artist has a personality and a face due he is a human being,
with Hatsune Miku it doesn’t work like this,
and if by gaining popularity you lose those who really produce the song, then we are in trouble.
At the beginning of this wave,
making songs for VOCALOID required much more effort,
there were few who were encouraged and came to stand out,
they ended up having some knowledge and allied with the company that created the voice bank.
This is how Crypton was armed with a base that helped to generate a more noticeable image to Miku.
KZ, ryo, OSTER Project, etc.
they really did all the work,
and they were very helpful in shaping all of this.
Even so, if we realize,
the only one who continues to work with Crypton side by side is KZ,
who was given a space and helped constantly.
Ryo for his part left the VOCALOID world
and focused on making music for other content like anime.
And while OSTER Project continues nowadays,
other producers occupied that place that she once had.
This wave grew up and perhaps the isolated critics
or that the producers took a part of this voice
and the fact that they made it their own made that every time they get more credit,
so Miku ceased to be the center of attention.
She was the perfect tool to the amateur producers who just began to have a voice in their songs,
basically, the main idea which this software was created in the beginning of 2000’s.
Who will say that would have to past 10 and maybe 20 years for this to be potency.
Hatsune Miku isn’t a person,
neither a drawing,
she’s a software
which helps to the people’s ideas who begin in this world.
And if we start to isolate step by step a voice of a real artist,
we will find outstanding producers who have a lot to tell.
I believe in all this “documentary video” I never thought that I would say this, but
Hatsune Miku, as such, is an incredible experience.
Knowing her history and how she was created
made me realize the amount of people behind this.
How all this is encompassed in a image that can makes you forget of every face,
every name,
every human being who was taking over to enhance this,
every company which contributed its part to something that didn’t sell well,
come to be the image of Japan.
Hatsune Miku isn’t just a girl of 16 years,
Hatsune Miku is all the people who contibute everyday to make it bigger,
people who make songs for the world,
people who watch her concerts,
people who buy her videogames,
people who are just making related content with her.
Hatsune Miku is the live face of an amazing job,
and it’s fascinating how something virtual comes to consider a DIVA.
Basically,
Hatsune Miku
is all of us.
