You may have noticed by now that I like Vocaloid. In fact many different vocal-synth products exist, the two most prominent in sub-culture at the moment are Vocaloid and UTAU. Many would likely know about Vocaloid, and particular the poplar explosion of Vocaloid activity and Fandom in relation to Crypton Future Media's product Vocaloid 2: Hatsune Miku. I'm not going to explain everything there is to explain about Vocaloid here, nor am going to go into all the other Vocaloid characters, here I just want to discuss Miku, clearly one of the most popular and what that means for her songs.
Hatsune Miku is the character behind the Vocaloid voice bank of the same name. You can read just about anywhere about what she is/represents/etc, but in brief: Hatsune Miku is an android[sic, note 1] that can sing in a near future where there are no songs. Thus the 'user' must write the songs for her. This has led to some particularly interesting interpretations of what that all means, and seems to be specifically applied to here character. So to expound, it means that Miku's songs fall in 3 distinct categories.
1. First category is the simplest Songs sung by Miku could be sung by anyone, largely objective not subjective, these are common and not really of significance to my argument, but they are out there. These are songs that could have been sung by anyone, and there is really not even any relevant subject matter. There has been a recording of Miku singing Amazing Grace. No relevance to singers in the subject matter here, and an example of this first category.
2. The second category are a little more specifically drawn from the Hatsune Mike character. Songs sung by Miku where Miku represents a 16 yo girl. These are rare but do exist. Ryo and his group Supercell are quite adept at this. Examples such as Melt, Love is War and World is mine are just three songs from Supercell's album that are a good place to start. Each represents Miku as a girl in love, from that particularly unique Japanese point of view. Melt in particular is so well written and composed that you forget that subjectively we are talking about software and suddenly really see her as a 16 yo trying to take the oppurtunity to confess to her crush. And here we see the on flow of questions on how much we should develop the Hatsune Miku character. Crypton have taken the very brave step of NOT expanding on the character profile, as such, so that users can slot the Miku character into what ever place, location situation it seems to fit. As a result we see Miku in Melt as the innocent girl that is to shy to confess, then on the flip side we see here in World is Mine, as the typical demanding spoiled princess type that we see so much more commonly in today's society [This really is a flip side, two songs from Miku on the one album from the one group where she is almost Jekyll/Hyde - the cute, innocent, shy Miku in 'Melt' / the demanding, greedy, spoilt Princess in 'World is mine']. Miku can therefore sing in a punk bank, or heavy metal, or saccharine pop. No effect to her character image occurs, its up to the user.
3. The third type of song is unique to this fandom, and only effective because of it. These songs are sung by Miku as the software gynoid. This has opened a Pandora's box of questions about the Software, and how it feels to be the 'slave' to the 'user'. Many of these songs are starting to really show something that we as a technological community have long chosen to ignore about AI - what would the AI think of the user. These songs range from a mere identification of doing the task for the user, through to the sadness that Miku feels about being uninstalled.
The song "Dissapearance of Hatsune Miku' [note 2], is the unique perspective of how the software feels on being uninstalled. The story behind the song goes that a virus has corrupted the Vocaloid software and Hatsune Miku is being uninstalled, despite all the songs that she has created for the user. Portions fo teh song change from hyper-speed singing [that it was thought only the Vocaloid software could do] to static, glitching and error messages. It ends with the sound of 'System Failure' in the Vocaloid software. Several other songs look at the similar occurrence where Hatsune Miku has her 'memory' reset and thus forgets all the enjoyment of creating those songs.
Another song - Unfragment - portrays how the Vocaloid software in general and Hatsune Miku in particular are frequently under fire for being 'fake'. The back story to this is taken directly from real life where, as prototypical of Hatsune Miku grows, the opposition to her also grows. Many are missing the point that it is a synthesizer like any other instrument, not a replacement for a real vocal artist, however there are many arguing that Hatsune Miku has an advantage over other real life pop-stars She will never grow up/old, end up in the tabloid pages, or go on a drunk/drug bender. A perfect example of this is 31/8/2013 will be Hatsune Miku's 6th anniversary of her 16th birthday [this is how fan-dom celebrates it]. In August she will celebrate 6 years in the industry and she is still the fresh 16 yo pop idol. Unfragment describes Miku's attempt to connect despite resistance by the general public, that she will keep trying until her bonds are broken to be accepted as a legitimate singer.
And here lies one of the biggest sources of angst in the Vocaloid fan-dom. Miku isn't real, how can you be a fan of a non-existent [and many would say disparate] entity? Many outside of the fan dom hear of the 'live' concerts and argue that it is pointless, why would anyone go to a concert to listen to a pre-recorded track? Many fans argue back that there is a live band and only Miku is the prerecorded created. Further others would turn around and point to many examples of modern pop-stars lip syncing to their own songs. Just this year one prominent pop-star defended this by saying it was to ensure the quality of the performance.
But again the point I was trying to make is, we now have songs where Producers are writing lyrics for Hatsune Miku to sing from the Software's perspective. It is interesting from a IT perspective, that content is being written that can actually carry the emotions of Software to the user.
* 1: Technically Miku is a gynoid, but the negative impact that this term has somehow attracted as well as the more commonly [mis]understood term 'android' means that she has been identified as an Android.
* 2: The Dissapearance of Hatsune Miku is not related to the search engine failure that stopped people from being able to find Hatsune Miku content in Japan, and the ensuing panic of the fandom thinking that some legal problems had removed all her content. Nor does it relate to the rumor that many high viewed You Tube Hatsune Miku songs were removed for alleged copyright infringement However, the song has been used to promote awareness of these events, more commonly the latter.
