Who is Hatsune Miku

Post Views: 54,119

Miku Hatsune

The question of who Hatsune Miku is can be answered in different ways.

In three words, this is a Japanese virtual singer.

In short, this is a character who personifies the voice of the “Vocaloid” program, which synthesizes singing, developed by Yamaha. (Actually, the name of the program is where the term “ Vocaloids ” came from, of which a fair number have already appeared).

If you want to know everything, sit back, the conversation will be long!

Hatsune Miku - backstory

Do you know that such a seemingly purebred Japanese woman like Miku has Spanish roots? The story begins in 2000, when at the University of Barcelona, with funding from the Yamaha Corporation, the development of the Vocaloid singing synthesis program began. The idea took root, including in Russia, where the First Vocaloid music album was released and the First live Vocaloid concert took place.

At that time, many companies began developing software based on this technology. Luckily for us, among them was the Japanese “Crypton Future Media” and an English source from the city of Sapporo. This company has been working with sound since 1995, developing applications for synthesizers, creating libraries of sound effects and background music for computer games and commercials, and collaborating with such giants as Sega, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Roland and Yamaha. She carried out orders from the Japanese Ministry of Defense, as well as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In 2004 and 2006, Crypton created the MEIKO and KAITO voice banks respectively, outfitting the software boxes with colorful illustrations of virtual singers. Since then, the combination of a voice bank and its inherent character has been called a vocaloid. More about Vocaloids Despite the progressiveness of the singing synthesis method, sales of the software were not going well. But 2007 came, Yamaha updated the Vocaloid program engine to version 2 and the president of Crypton, Ito Hiroyuki, decided to go on the offensive.

Vocaloids at concerts. Perspectives on visualization

As a matter of fact, since 2010, when we were shown the so-called “hologram” - projection, nothing fundamentally new has happened. Anti-aliasing has improved, the frame rate has increased, the screen has expanded greatly, in some places even two screens have appeared, but the principle has remained unchanged - two-dimensional projection.

The problem remained the lack of technologies that ensure the output of a holographic image in free space and the dominance of pseudo-holograms. The famous holograms in cylinders are not essentially holograms either. They simply show you a two-dimensional picture from the side from which you look at it.

But it's not all bad. Salvation comes from the same Japan. Moreover, the problem has been solved since 2006, and in 2011 a working technology for creating an image in free space without a display appeared!

The saviors were the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology - AIST, Keio University and Burton Inc. (Maybe someone knows their Kawasaki motorcycles). The essence of the method is that laser pulses in a spectrum invisible to the eye, focusing at a certain point in space, transform the nitrogen atoms of the air into an active state and they emit light.

On the screen above you can see the wing of a butterfly (the butterfly itself is not immediately drawn), which was flying at a height of 2 - 3 meters. You can watch a video of a flying butterfly with comments

(by the way, it seems to have been cited here).

Of course, the video is not very impressive, but considering that 2 years have passed since its publication and these are only the first steps, we can confidently say that the future lies in visualization using holograms in free space. And this future doesn’t have to wait that long...

Hatsune Miku - birth

The very first illustration of Hatsune Miku

Hiroyuki-san knew full well that to successfully promote any product, at least in Japan, you need to create a strong image that matches the product being offered, so he focused his efforts on creating a new virtual star. There were no small details in the birth of Hatsune Miku. Firstly, she was destined to be born as a girl, since male voice banks sold much worse than female ones. The age, 16 years old, was also not chosen by chance - such a singer’s repertoire can be both on “adult” themes and completely children’s. The determined height is 158 cm and weight is 42 kg, good indicators for Japan.

The surname初音could be translated as “the first sound” or “the first song of a bird”, with the name it was even more difficult, Miku未来, meant “future”, but if you read the syllables separately (and, a little later, the spelling of the name changed toミク, the same in sound, but different in meaning, essentially like “Beatles” with its changed letter in the name), the number 39 was obtained (by the way, thanks to this we got Miku Day or Day 39, which is celebrated on March 9, since in Japan it is customary to indicate first month, and then a day). And that’s not all, Mi Ku is the so-called kun (properly Japanese) reading of the numbers 39, but in the Japanese language they also use an on (based on the Chinese language) reading and 39 will be San Kyu. Reminds me of the English “Thank you”, doesn’t it? And that's all! Crypton marketers did not give any more information, rightly believing that the fans will come up with the rest for themselves and everyone will have their own Mika, unique and, naturally, the best!

The next step was to contact the famous Tokyo illustrator Kei Garou (Kei Garou Japanese source). Here Ito Hiroyuki had to slightly indicate the character of the future star for the sketch - “sweet, but with a slightly harsh character.” Kei drew two versions of the image of Hatsune Miku, with one and two ponytails, but, as he says in his interview, the second option was accepted (picture on the right), which Kei was incredibly happy about. By the way, the costume and color scheme of the Vocaloid were created not only by order of Crypton, but also of Yamaha, so almost all elements of the outfit mean something. It is worth adding that Miku’s voice was given by a little-known voice actor at the time, Saki Fujita, an English source who was 22 years old at the time. Before working with Crypton, she managed to sing a couple of opening and ending songs, as well as voice minor characters in a dozen anime. Shortly before the release of the program, Eiji Hirasawa wrote a demo song “Star Shards,” which turned out to be the first song in a series of thousands of hits for the future star. On August 31, 2007, all the components came together, the program went on sale and Hatsune Miku was born!

What is Vocaloid?

The Vocaloid program synthesizes a living human voice from vocal fragments taken from living “donor” performers (or “seiyuu” in Japanese - voice actors). Voice “donors” for Vocaloids can be both popular performers in Japan and Japanese actors known only to a narrow circle. But more often than not, “donors” prefer to remain anonymous. Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita provided her voice to Hatsune Miku .

The creators “revitalized” the pop star as much as possible, in addition to her age, even giving her weight and height. She weighs 42 kg and is 142 cm tall. A Japanese user, hiding under the nickname Negipoyoc, has developed a program (MikuMikuSoine) that allows fans to even sleep (not have sex) with Hatsune Miku. All this, of course, is conditional. The only thing that is not conventional is the crazy amount of money that Hatsune brings to the creators and at the same time he is not capricious, like living artists. Is this the future of show business? The singer’s name is deciphered: “hatsu” - “first”, “ne” - “sound”, “miku” - “future”, that is, “the first sound of the future”. After all, how convenient - I drew the artist on the computer, recorded his songs using the Vocaloid program and sent the new star on a tour of cities and towns. So what if the artist has no soul, but he sings better than any living performer.

The idea of creating a virtual artist is, of course, not new. You can recall the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), in which, along with ordinary live actors, the cartoon Roger Rabbit “played”. Or the science fiction film “Simone” (2002) with Al Pacino , where according to the plot, director Taranski uses a computer program to create a virtual actress Simone, who becomes incredibly popular. Will Vocaloids eventually supplant live artists if they become increasingly popular and bring in huge amounts of money?

First, Hatsune Miku conquered Japan, followed by the conquest of the USA, Mexico and China.

First steps

Just before sales of the program began, Crypton created a special website where an illustration of Miku appeared, a description of who Hatsune Miku was and, most importantly, where users of the program could post their creations and communicate freely. By the way, the site piapro.jp still exists and new works are constantly appearing on it. The green-haired virtual star attracted the attention of the Japanese; her new songs swept not only the Krypton website, but also the popular Japanese video hosting NicoNicoDouga, from where they spilled out onto Youtube.

Soon the marketers' prediction came true; Miku, completely independent of the creators, had the most famous accessory, which was not even in sight when she appeared - “negi” or onion, a close Asian relative of the leek.
With this seemingly purely Japanese plant, Miku also acquired Russian-Finnish roots. It all started in 2006, when a flash video spread all over the Internet, in which the heroine of the anime “Bleach” Orihime Inoue twirls in onion in hands. Mute the sound when opening the link!!! Almost immediately after Miku appeared, on September 6, the catchy melody was covered by the newly minted star and posted on Nico and Youtube. Along with the melody, Miku also retained the leek, which somehow imperceptibly, over time, replaced the original trampoline.[video: https://youtu.be/kbbA9BhCTko
align:center]

Well, where do the Russian roots come from? The melody itself appeared in Eastern Finland at the end of the 18th century, when Sweden ceded rights to Finland to Russia and, quite often, at that time in some Finnish cities there were more Russian soldiers than local residents. The melody almost completely repeats the Russian folk dance “Smolensk Gusachok”, popular among soldiers from Western Russia. The dance took root on new soil, became popular, and in 1937 Eino Kettunen wrote a Finnish text for the polka. The funny thing is that the chorus “Yap tsup tsop...” was not in the original song, it was added by the Loituma group itself and it consists of meaningless words (like tili-tili, trali-vali). According to the group members, he was born during a tour in Moscow in the 90s at a rehearsal in the House of the Red Army. Unsuspecting representatives of Krypton rushed to see how nothing else showed the capabilities of their software for creating entertainment content.

Illustration for the song MELT

Meanwhile, less than 2 weeks after the program's release, sales revenue exceeded 57 million yen, significantly exceeding the revenue of any other software in Japan. And on Nico Nico hundreds and hundreds of new songs appeared with Miku's vocals. In the wake of the popularity of the new program, new talented musicians appeared and gained popularity.

In particular, on December 7, 2007, musician Ryo’s song “Melt” (Meruto) appeared on Nico, which instantly gained hundreds of thousands of views. But then there was a slight embarrassment. Ryo, who did not expect such popularity, used an illustration (picture on the left) by artist 119 (Hikeshi) in the video design without the latter’s permission. I had to apologize. Unexpectedly, Hikeshi became interested in Ryo's work and, at the end of December, they united into the group Supercell , which included a total of 11 musicians and illustrators. Already in February, the song “Koi wa Sensou” (Love is War) was posted on Nico, in May “World is Mine” (Worudo izu Main), in June “Black Rock Shooter” (Burakku Rokku Shutu), (by the way, the song was written by the composer under the influence of the illustration (the one below), and the anime of the same name was released 2 years later, based on the song), and in August 2008 at Comiket 74, the musicians presented their first album called “Supercell”, which reached 4- 1st place in the national hit parade.

The very first Rock Black Shooter

In December of the same year, the group posted their last song on Nico Nico Douga - “Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki” (When the first love leaves), after which Sony Music grabbed the musicians with a stranglehold. Ryo presented the last song with vocals by Miku Hatsune at the end of August 2012, it was “Odds & Ends” (14th place in the charts), after which he finally focused on working with live vocalists...

Almost immediately after the release of the program, on September 21, 2007, the song “Packaged” appeared on Nico, from the group Livetune (consisting of kz and Kajuki P, who left a year and a half later). Already at Comiket 73 in December 2007, the group presented the album “Re:package”, which reached number 5 in the national chart. The musicians soon joined another giant of the music industry, Victor Entertainment, and under his wing they released the remix album “Re:Mikus” in 2009 and the single “Yellow” in 2010. In 2012, having jumped to the Toy's Factory studio, already alone, kz presented the album “Tell Your World EP” (4th place), a year later “Re:Dial” and in the spring of 2014 “Decorator EP”. Despite working with live vocalists, it doesn't look like kz is going to leave Mika, despite the fact that his latest album, at the time of writing, only took 19th place.

It is not surprising that the popularity of albums by the “masters” of vok music is declining; new composers are appearing, such as the super productive DECO*27 interview or Mitchie M interview with his secrets of super realistic vocals..

The number of composers working with Miku Hatsune cannot be counted, and Miku herself is the most prolific performer in the World, with at least one new album with her vocals and countless singles appearing every week. The popularity of the virtual star has captured all corners of the planet; informational fan sites have appeared, such as mikufan.com in English and www.mikupa.ru in Russian. In addition to the usual Asian region, Miku gained the greatest popularity in the United States (thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign), France, and literally swept Latin America.

Miku as Vocaloid

Miku is so different!

Today, many thematic pages and catalogs are devoted to Vocaloid Miku Hatsuna, but they consider her as part of the Vocaloid project and not separately. There were attempts (even successful ones) to release spin-off products, such as manga with her participation, but these ideas did not receive much success. Perhaps because, apart from her voice and wonderful appearance, no one needs anything?

On our Vocaloid themed site, Hatsune Miku is also treated as one of all Vocaloids, rather than as a character worthy of worship. Of course, she has a lot of fans around the world, their number is in the millions, but these are not as aggressive fans as, for example, fans of certain metal bands.

Returning to history, it is worth mentioning that Hatsune Miku was popularized in a variety of ways: her image was applied to a racing car, her image was used in one anime, a manga was released with her participation, and later she began to “participate” along with other popular Vocaloids in the games of the Project Diva series (which were no less successful than the original project), and finally, Hatsune Miku began to participate in concerts in the form of a hologram!

songs by Hatsune Miku at the concert: World is Mine, English. subtitles

Concert activities

Before Hatsune Miku showed up, this part would have definitely raised eyebrows. A computer program and suddenly concerts... However, by 2009, the popularity of the virtual star had become such that it became clear that it was time to go to the people... The Crypton team accepted a new challenge and on August 22, 2009, as part of the Animelo Summer Live festival, accompanied by live musicians, the First " live performance by Hatsune Miku, where she performed 2 songs. And just half a year later, on March 9, 2010, in the Zepp Tokyo hall, a full-size solo concert, known to all fans, took place!

After this epoch-making event, Miku traveled to all major cities of Japan, toured in Asia and the USA, gave 2 - 3 full-length concerts with live accompaniment per year (this is not counting concerts based on MMD technology, without musicians) and, finally, in In September 2015, she performed at the main concert venue in Japan, Nippon Budokan. The Beatles were the first Western group to perform in this hall, Hatsune Miku the first virtual performer. It’s simply impossible not to draw parallels! Moreover, the virtual singer has already been accepted as one of their own in the world of popular musicians - she recently performed as the opening act for Lady Gaga. In 2012, Miku became interested in the classics. At the end of the year, she performed with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra with the oratorio Ihatov, and a little later she took part in the Vocaloid opera “The End”, (the link does not work yet) which was staged in a theater in the center of Paris less than a year later. There were also classical music projects with the participation of Vocaloids, but they did not receive a serious continuation.

MikuMikuDance or simply MMD

MMD model TDA Miku

In the wake of Miku's popularity, in February 2008, Yu Higuchi introduced a 3D animation program that allows you to create a dance of a three-dimensional model of Hatsune Miku and make a video, including sound. The program is blatantly free, there are options in Japanese and English, and it’s easy to learn. The first default Miku model, Animasa Miku, was quite popular for a long time and many variants of Miku and more were released based on it. Successful models include DT Miku - extracted from the SEGA game and, unexpectedly, TDA Miku (picture on the left) - extremely popular not only for its own merits, but also for its ease of editing, variants of which in the form of not only Miku, but even guys obviously exceeded more than one thousand. But, undoubtedly, the best model was Appearance Miku (the link does not work yet) from Mamama, which is called kawaiiloid (from the Japanese “kawaii” - cute)!

The program was constantly evolving, the ability to capture movements using the Kinect sensor appeared, the ability to place Miku in Reality, along with this, the number of models (not necessarily Miku and not necessarily Vocaloids), scenes where the model could perform, and objects that she could use increased. Twice a year, almost since 2008, Nico Nico hosts video competitions for the MMD Cup. However, in May 2011, the program developer announced that he was leaving his brainchild. It lasted a little more than 2 years; in the summer of 2013, Higuchi-san returned with the 8th version of the program. (By the way, the latest version of the program at the time of writing is 9.26/9.26 (64-bit) / December 2014) And in February 2013, an anime from an English source, made entirely using the MMD program, was already broadcast on Japanese television. However, we have moved a little away from the topic of our conversation.

Vocaloid concerts. Visualization

The task was not easy, to place a completely virtual singer among very real musicians. In principle, some developments have already been made - projection onto a transparent screen. But the live musicians shamelessly shone through the virtual singer, which completely killed the entire illusion of reality.

The following scheme was applied, the projector was left, but several interesting things were done with the screen...

A transparent screen was placed on the stage so that no bright or illuminated objects would fall into the field of view of the audience looking at this screen. Immediately behind him they placed a translucent spherical screen, onto which images of the virtual singer were projected.

While the lights in the hall were on, there was ordinary glass on the stage. But as soon as the lights went out, a certain dark window into the Virtual World appeared in front of the audience in which the Goddess appeared! (Well, at least the fans who were at this concert thought so. I’m sure!)

Now, thanks to thoughtful lighting, real objects did not shine through the projections, and the sphericity of the screen created a pseudo-volumetric effect. So there were never holograms on stage - there was an ordinary flat projection, embellished with some optical effects.

It should be added that at the first of the series of MikuPa concerts there was no transparent screen or projector at all. They simply used a large plasma panel that they placed between the musicians. It looked something like this:

Then the panel was either broken or filled with water, in short, for one reason or another, they switched to technology with projectors.

If we compare these technologies from the audience in the hall, then projection is definitely better for them, since they fully enjoy the effects of pseudo-volume. (To be fair, it must be said that this effect is not noticeable in the entire hall). But the audience enjoying the concert on the screen does not see these subtleties. But the rays from the projector's spotlights immediately catch the eye. Let's compare Hatsune Miku on plasma (first screen) and in the form of projection (second)

One way or another, at the time of writing, the main way to visualize virtual singers is projection.

In some cases, directors bypass the bottlenecks of this technology (almost all Magical Mirai concerts), and sometimes they get into trouble wherever possible (the disastrous Kansai Concert).

But the description of modern technologies will be incomplete without mentioning the augmented reality . The essence of the method is that the computer, processing a real video, “fits” a virtual performer into it. Actually, the method itself is far from new and has been used hundreds of times to create computer effects in films. What’s new about it is that the computer is now fast enough to do this in real time, “on the fly.”

Hatsune Miku and the Winter Festival

Miku's first illustration in winter style

Since 2010, Miku has been actively participating in the Winter Festival (link does not work yet) in the city of Sapporo. Now the festival is unthinkable without an abundance of Miku ice figures, winter concerts, exhibitions and sales, as well as a tram painted with portraits of Miku. Thanks to the Winter Festival, we were introduced to the character of Snow Miku, whose hair and eyes are a deeper blue color. Recently, competitions have been held among illustrators for the official design of Snow Miku, and the theme of the design changes every year. Now I was almost ready to say that Snow Miku inspired illustrators to create a symbol of spring - Sakura Miku, but it turned out that the first spring Miku in cherry tones (picture on the right) appeared much earlier - in December 2008. But the first winter version of Miku (picture on the left) appeared only in January 2010, apparently under the influence of the Winter Festival. The picture is not even called “Snow Miku”, but “Ice Miku”. There is also a summer version - Strawberry Miku with green hair and an autumn version with hair the color of tea with milk.

First sketch of Sakura Miku

Vocals by Miku Hatsune

Initially, the virtual star appeared with one voice bank (the bank is characterized by certain voice properties that cannot be adjusted in the program). But on April 30, 2010, an addition to the program called Hatsune Miku Append was released, consisting of six!!! additional voice banks, which significantly expanded the capabilities of the program. Now the singer's voice could have the following shades: Soft (gentle voice), Sweet (clear, childish voice), Dark (powerful, emotional voice), Vivid (bright vocals), Solid (loud, clear tone) and Light (innocent, angelic tone ).

In 2011, Crypton announced an English version of Hatsune Miku. My God! It would be better if he didn't do this. Fujita-san, the voice actor who gave Miku's voice, clearly had no talent for foreign languages. The work was very difficult, we even had to send specialists from America. Nevertheless, 2012 passed, demo recordings appeared that did not stand up to any criticism, but at the end of the year the English-language Miku appeared, accompanied by such an illustration that I cannot even imagine it in this article. The new voice bank was received very coolly. Only in September 2013, a software update was released to version 3 of Vocaloid, which included an English-language voice bank of acceptable quality. At the time of writing, in the fall of 2015, Miku Hatsune’s program was almost updated to version 4, at least the demo recordings promise that the new version will be very successful!

[edit] Actually, Miku

The canonical version of the pantsushot
Hatsune Miku belongs to the second generation of Vocaloids and appeared second in line; her hair is divided into two tails; forked at the end and her characteristic attribute is a negi (a bow-bow, since the remake of the Loituma Girl video, she twirls it in her hands every now and then), and even her pantsu are two-colored - white with cyan (light blue-green) stripes. Why did she become not the second, but the first?

Miku's voice, sadly enough, was borrowed from a not-so-famous seiyuu, who at the time of the program's creation had no significant work in voice acting or song creation at all, which, coupled with imperfect technology, led to the appearance of a rather ambiguous voice (some consider it charming , while others are terribly squeaky).

Actually, fagotria has come down to the fact that 95% of viaboos fap on her striped panties, and only a few see in Miku not only a beautiful face, body and panties, but also a voice, which with experience, the straightforwardness of the user and new patches becomes better and better .

In 2009, a message appeared on the Krypton blog that if Miku's Facebook page gets 39,390 likes (this number is due to the fact that the number 39 in Japanese sounds like "thank you" in English, and in another version it is pronounced "Miku") , then Miku’s voice base will be expanded to full English phonemes. As expected, this happened, and the Kryptonians, together with the British, agreed to record the English version of Miku by the end of 2011. For two years, Miku fans diligently cultivated the virtue of patience, and finally, on August 31, 2013, the promised English version was finally released.

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA

Sensing the smell of money, the SEGA corporation did not stand aside, developing by the summer of 2009 a rhythm game featuring Miku Hatsune and other Vocaloids. The essence of the gameplay is to press certain buttons corresponding to certain symbols that appear on the screen in the background of a particular clip.

Commercial success turned the game into a whole series... The game was originally released on PlayStation Portable, a year later Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Dreamy Theater for PS3 and Project DIVA 2nd were released. Variants of games (including for street machines) are still being developed. New songs, costumes, items appear, graphics improve, online services appear, but the essence of the gameplay does not change.

In 2012, a version with chibi forms of Miku and her friends, Project Mirai, appeared for the Nintendo 3DS platform; a year later, a sequel to this version of the game was released. In the same year 2012, Project DIVA-F was released for PS VITA, and in 2021 the X version is being prepared for release.

SEGA did not ignore the iOS platform, releasing two mobile versions of the game Miku Flick. The Android system is less fortunate; the Hatsune Miku Live Stage Producer version has only 25 songs and no updates are planned for it...

The game, despite its obvious simplicity, turned out to be extremely popular in Japan. By 2014, it had sold almost 5 million copies. Recently, the market has expanded significantly to include the United States, where adapted (with subtitles) games are supplied.