Jumpstart with "Escape"

Hello, dear reader. If you are still here, it means that you have surpassed our expectations and we are truly happy to have you here after a hiatus of over half a year. I had personal matters to attend to and I don't even know where Toomas has been or doing in the meantime, but the matter was, that after a while of posting nothing, it is always difficult to come back - what would be important enough to break the silence? During the past months, Miku has been busy taking over the world, appearing in various parts of the world, being seen in paper articles, news broadcasts and even appearing as a tiny neondroid in an estonian IT paper magazine. If you are a fan, you have already read all about it in news channels like Sankaku and I personally did not feel a retelling would be worth posting.

So here is my idea - I shall use this blog to just share Miku's music, dozens of new songs might pop up on a daily basis, so discovering something good from 2009 is in no way rare.

Here is something different, a home-made CGI video to Miku's song "Escape". The small (or big) visual and physical glitches actually make it feel even more hand-made. The feeling is that some guy with limitless love for our electronic Diva spent ages doing this on his own, on a simple home computer. A feel, that can't be achieved by making something with dedicated graphics computers being controlled by a horde of guys on hire and no passion. The only real negative thing in the video would be Miku's eyes, which just look creepy.



If you feel that you would like to share your ideas, music and passion, please do contact us.

Going 3D

First Miku video on Youtube that uses native youtube 3D player. Put on your colored glasses or cross your eyes and enjoy the video. I don't have the glasses so I chose "Cross-eyed" from 3D menu. For those who are not familiar with this viewing technique, here are a few tips. Try to look somewhere in the air between screen and yourself. You'll see 4 instances of the video this way, probably blurred. You have to match the middle ones and it should instantly become clear. If it doesn't happen, try to choose another distance. I have found that the farther away and the smaller the video is, the better is to get the effect. Still fullscreen can be viewed too when you know the trick.

The embedded player doesn't show the 3D button so I suspect you might not see the "Cross-eyed" version by default. If that's the case, click on video and go to Youtube to see it.

Near Future


One more for your pleasure. No youtube-3D player this time.

White Letter


The brave will also look this random dot noise video with hidden Miku. I saw her there :)

And I'm finishing off with something I would like to have at home, on my TV.

A taste of classical music

Today it was my graduation ceremony. All the guys in suits and girls in beautiful dresses reminded the time when I sang in chorus. Especially vivid memories were from a trip to Finland where we performed Phantom Of The Opera on stage in multiple locations. I know it is over hyped, but I still like it very much. This lead me to a search for Vocaloid related classical songs, here is my selection of some of the best I found :)

Phantom Of The Opera performed by Miku and a human voice. Background music quality is good and the voice of Miku is touching. I think it was a fun to make piece - singing quality duet with Miku. Among with the good words I still must tell that even if it's the best Miku's performance of this song, I didn't like how the instruments fitted together towards the end. Also I'd like to hear wider dynamic range with such a song. Anyway, I love it.



Didn't like that the male voice was not synthesized? Here's a version for you with Gakupo. He is maybe even more enjoyable than the male voice in previous one. This video might play in mono, so you may want to click here for much better quality.



While Miku and other Japanese Vocaloids are struggling with English, this is not a case with Prima. She is a virtual professional female soprano singer and can sing in English. The next song Eden, originally sang by Sarah Brightman, gets a very cute and lovable twist when sang by Prima.



Here's one cracy one. An instrumental song by Liszt (one of my favorite classics) played through midi with Miku's voice. It is even hard to tell if it is Miku or not, but I think it is. Grand Galop Chromatique.



Let the last be not so classic, but close enough to fit under this theme. Enya - Orinoco Flow sang by Prima. I wanted to put it here, because this is a lovely song and Prima does a great job here too.



This is all for now. New news and songs next time, hopefully soon :)

Small update and congratulations

First of all, we have not been kidnapped by aliens and intend to keep on bringing you, dear readers more Miku delights. As far as I know, Toomas was busy getting his Master's degree and I was busy getting my Bachelor's degree, so neither of us had any time to keep up with the news or write anything interesting.

Yesterday Toomas had his birthday and I remembered it all too late. To make up for it, here is Miku with some chocolate. Congratulations.

「NIGHT FLIGHT」

Oh what lovely pure synth I'm hearing. Boarding to Lovely Night Flight with Miku starts in 5 minutes. Make sure you have all your belongings with you and don't forget the good mood :)



Originally a Pino commercial but it's more than that performed by Perfume.

Miku likes Perfume "Disco" songs?

Room Disco


... and Chocolate Disco too.

A Peek of Project Diva 2

As you might already know, Project Diva 2 will be released on the PSP on 29. July 2010 and is already up for pre-order. Little was known about it until now, some speculations being that it will be the same game with a new pack of songs. As it turns out, there have been changes in gameplay - in the first game, you usually needed two buttons, sometimes three and when the game wanted to make you howl, 4 buttons. Now it seems that instead of 20-hit rows with one button, there will be 4 buttons most of the time with surprise arrow targets to keep your left thumb busy, while in the original it was only idly gripping the PSP.



I seriously hope that they have balanced the tracks better than in the original. Some tracks with ridiculous bpm were easily completed because of the near-perfect rhythm, whereas some slow tracks seemed to have random targets in some places.

Let's just hope for the best.

AlliumProject

What would fit a Voice Synthesizer more than electronic music? Out of the vast depths of internet comes a completely unknown doujin album simply labeled "AlliumProject – Stir up Club Edition V2" The genres would be progressive electro and trance, befitting for a vocaloid, yet not that common. I was instantly hooked on it and have been listening to it ever since. Somewhat straying from the mainstream, it does not focus on the Vocaloid part, but more on the instrumental. As a listener of this type of music, I would go as far to say that this is "good electro with some vocaloid"



As it is doujin, it is legally obtainable for free from here. Can't link it directly though. It does not require registration nor does it have annoying ads.

In case the previous track was a bit too much for your taste, this is a bit more mellow, being somewhere in the dance region.


One more interesting experiment on the album was that there had been effort put into making Luka sing in english. I must say I am not a fan of her voice, it sounds atrocious in english and the track itself is not that good either. Now I only need an explanation to why I have been listening to it for 3 days.



All the info is tersely noted here and it is all in japanese. The 500 yen price tag is enough to make every vocaloid fan want to move to japan.