Sky of Beginning

Recently, Vocaloidism uploaded a summary (link) on the article by Kenmochi Hideki, YAMAHA's Chief of VOCALOID Development at Yamaha where he talked about VOCALOID. The said article was first published on Yomiuri Shinbun (link). After reading the article, I was overwhelmed by various pent-up feelings and thoughts. Thus, I decided to write something in response.

I think it's more suitable to call myself a VOCALOID activist instead of a VOCALOID fan. After all, I love VOCALOID music, I preach about it and I get involved in activities that were related to VOCALOID. In fact, there's a local VOCALOID fan community that I'm involved in called the Malaysian Vocaloid Party (link). At times, I come to think of myself as a political party member!
/vote for me in the 13th General Election!

Collectively, I would call the people in the VOCALOID fan community as activist of the VOCALOID movement - one that includes all the forms of art related to VOCALOID such as producers, band members, cosplayers, artists, utaites, dancers and translators.

(thanks for all your effort and contribution to the VOCALOID fan community all these while!)

"Everyone, Creator" (all copyrights belong to Google Japan)

Now is the Golden Age of the VOCALOID movement. Think about it as the 2nd Renaissance period. This is a time where VOCALOID-related tools and technologies spawned countless ideas. Just to show a few examples:

• heck, who would have thought about singing about the return of the space probe Hayabusa? (with reference to Xenon-P's song) (link)
• who could have make fun about WINDOWS' latest OS while having fun in the process? (with reference to hobonichi-P's song) (link)
• who thought it was cute to make someone repetitively making the "Nyan" sound with a catchy beat in the background? (with reference to daniwell's song) (link)
• who would have wrote a trilogy of short stories about a painter and his imaginary girlfriend? (with reference to yuyoyuppe's Palette trilogy) (link)

VOCALOIDs may have its humble beginning in a product by YAMAHA - the VOCALOID voice synthesizing engine. It was supposed to be a revolutionary tool for the music industry, but it only achieve desirable fame after being marketed by Crypton as a virtual idol when it was bundled with a voicebank and a character design. Many people on this world then came to know about the first virtual idol - Hatsune Miku. Coincidently, the development of social media (eg. twitter, Facebook) and other internet tools such as NND, Youtube and also MMD helped further bring VOCALOIDs to fame.

Miku is a symbol of freedom. That is my understanding of the term "Virtual Idol". Producers, artists, cosplayers, utaites, dancers and many other fans were able to put this Miku character into various different settings. Every song that were "sung" with Miku's voice is a story that the lyrics contributor and the music producer wanted to tell to the world. And they used the tools known as "VOCALOIDs" to do so. Their stories have touched the hearts of many listeners and will be immortalized just like the many sonnets from Shakespeare.

I remembered that in an interview, the legendary producer - ryo (supercell) once mentioned that he used Miku's voicebank for the song MELT because it is more appropriate for the 15-year old virtual character to sing about the lyrics he wrote which he thought it was very embarassing for anyone else to sing it. This is the best analogy that I would tell to my friends, should they be open-minded enough to understand and/or accept the VOCALOID and its music.

It does not matter when the VOCALOID movement actually kicked off. Fanatic fans can debate for days on when the VOCALOID movement actually begun and when it reached to its popularity. But more importantly, when will this end? Like the Hippies movement or fashion trends, VOCALOID might die off quietly one day. I've always been asked, when would I stop listening to VOCALOID music? Well, I do believe that after another 5 to 10 years, I might stop listening to VOCALOID music, but I will never stop from embracing the various idealogies related to the VOCALOID movement.

Until that day comes, why don't we all just enjoy ourselves in some good VOCALOID music?

/turns on emon's Shake it (easyPOP remix)!