Wiki Wednesday #3 - 栞音フミ / Shiorine Fumi

Who is Shiorine Fumi? How can I download 栞音フミ? What does Humi Shiorine sound like?

Wiki Wednesday #3 - 栞音フミ / Shiorine Fumi

Something that you may have noticed in my previous articles is that I kind of have objectively bad taste when it comes to what I consider an amazing UTAU. WHITE is a muffled mess on a sub-par microphone, but I am crazy about it. I stopped liking Ritsu the second Ritsu started getting super popular because I need my muffles!! I don't want a strong voice. I want a soft and muffled voice.

So, take it with a grain of salt when I start raving about this bank. It's a one pitch CV that's super muffled.

Note, I have no idea if the voice provider intended for the name to be written as "Fumi" or "Humi". The icon in the bank itself is named "humi", but that feels like an oversight. When you write "hu" with Japanese input, "fu" shows up. I'm sticking with "fu".

Forgotten Friday #9 - 春諷アンズ + 秋諷カエデ / Harufu Anzu and Akifu Kaede

Who is Harafu Anzu? Where can I download Akifu Kaede? Why do I keep doing this?

Forgotten Friday #9 - 春諷アンズ + 秋諷カエデ / Harufu Anzu and Akifu Kaede

Sometimes, I cheat a bit with my criteria. There is, in fact, a video of these two on YouTube from 2016.

However, a quick look at the uploader's channel shows that the uploader is, in fact, Japanese. That means that they aren't an overseas UTAU user. This blog is for opening the eyes of overseas UTAU users, so I feel okay with writing this despite the video existing.

沖編歌エビ / Okiamiuta Ebi -MAFIGGY- - Recovered!

Who is 沖編歌エビ? How can I download Okiamiuta Ebi? What does MAFIGGY mean?

沖編歌エビ / Okiamiuta Ebi -MAFIGGY- - Recovered! 

If you were an UTAU user in the early days, you probably got at least one person who had never heard of UTAU to record a CV bank for you. It was pretty easy and resulted in some varying degrees of success. (When I did it, one bank was pretty usable and the other was barely usable.) With the advent of CVVC and VCV, recording an UTAU became less of a "hide in the computer lab and do it before class starts" kind of thing.

That's how Okiamiuta Ebi was created. Ebi's voice provider, Prill, had no interest in UTAU. As far as I know, Prill has never actually touched UTAU.

Art from UTAU Wikia

As a note, this was an UTAU made by the Mae-Chii-Kim triad. Whenever something is weird, it's because we were really weird kids. The name? I typed in random words into Jisho and made a name with like five kanji. Chii cleaned it up into Okiamiuta. (And then we added Mafiggy because that was a thing we said back then.) The name Ebi? Well, Prill sounds like Krill (which I assumed were shrimp). Ebi is shrimp! The design? I did it. I make weird designs. I wanted to find the original design, but I can't. But believe me, it did not look good. 

Forgotten Friday #8 - 螢歌ストラ / Keiga Sutora

Who is Keiga Sutora? Does 螢歌ストラ have a VCV bank? Where can I download Sutora Keiga?

Forgotten Friday #8 - 螢歌ストラ / Keiga Sutora

What do you get when you mix Akita Haru (the original design with a purple crop top, of course) and Suiga Sora? Keiga Sutora!

Official Image from Distribution Site

Keiga Sutora is a relatively unknown UTAU. His most viewed solo video on any platform has just over 1,770 views at the time of writing.

Wiki Wednesday #2 - London KEI

Who is London KEI? How can I download London 圭? 

Wiki Wednesday #2 - London KEI

Alright, I'm going to be honest. I mashed the download button at light speed because the name given for the voice provider was "thelonelyneko". I've been searching for this one person for years. I think their username was "thelonelyneko", they really liked USloids, and their profile picture was a 2010 style shakily drawn black and red UTAU icon picture. (You know that one, right? The same pose every female UTAU was in unless you were a great artist?)

I'm pretty sure Ryan Fletcher / pe0pleallergy isn't the person who I was thinking of. (editor's note: it was KanashiiNoNeko I was thinking of.)

Because I was so drawn in by the name of the voice provider, I didn't stop to realize that the only image I can find of London Kei's design is a YouTube thumbnail. Thankfully, a kind stranger on Twitter was able to find their full design!

London Kei's Official Design

The little information we have on London KEI comes from their UTAU Wiki Dot page. London is apparently a faerie who wears a dress. Good to know! From the small bit I knew prior to reading that blurb, I was sure London KEI was a young boy, not a faerie who wears a dress.

Bonus Article! Tree . . . Recovered!

Who is Tree? How can I download TREE? Why was tree made?

Bonus Article! Tree . . . Recovered!

I would feel bad if someone waited all week for a brand new article and they ended up with a fluffy article about a joke UTAU . . . so I'm adding this in as a bonus article!

Forgotten Friday #7 - Touya Imoko and Kohana / 橙屋イモコ・コハナ

Who is Touya Imoko? Where can I download Touya Kohana? What is a gender bend?

Forgotten Friday #6 - Touya Imoko and Kohana / 橙屋イモコ・コハナ

So, this was maybe different a long time ago, but right now prefix map only works with aliases when the samples are stored in separate folders. In addition to that, just typing in the file name also doesn't work. To make the sample play, you literally have to type in the entry in the OTO file.

Only the notes highlighted in pink work.

The CV bank in question has prefixes in the prefix map - that means that UTAU would look for "G3\こ↓", but the problem is that there is no alias. To use this bank, I had to open the OTO in notepad, paste it into LibreOffice Calc, split to columns, copy, paste, find and replace, then paste into Notepad++ to find and replace. Then I need to remove the prefixes from the prefix map. Bleh! The process even resulted in some broken OTOs that I had to open up Notepad to fix.

whoops

This is only an issue with Touya1.0+, the CV bank. The VCV bank and Rentan bank have to have aliases by definition. 

Anyway! About Touya Imoko and Kohana!

In Forgotten Friday, I sometimes find banks I literally can't remember anything about. Apparently, I'm not alone. The UTAU Visual Archive does not have images for neither Imoko nor Kohana. Other than video thumbnails, this seems to be the only image of them I can find:

Art by 橙屋さん

There are not two separate banks for Imoko and Kohana. They are both the same bank, only genderbent. I really never remember liking the g flag, so I won't be rendering samples for both Imoko and Kohana.

The Touya banks were created by Sotoshima. I have no idea about Sotoshima's biographic information. I wish I knew which pronouns to use, but it's not worth emailing them out of the blue to ask! Anyway, on to the banks themselves.

Touya1.00+, A Three Pitch CV

Touya1.00+, or "『橙屋』ver1.00" as it is listed on the download page is a three pitch CV bank. The rant up at the top of the article was about this bank in particular.

Other than OTO troubles, this is a really, really good CV bank.

Shockingly, this bank was recorded in February of 2009!

touya_連続音テスト+, A One Pitch VCV

Recorded in August of 2009, Touya's VCV (listed as 『橙屋連続音』テスト版 on the download page) is pretty standard. The OTOs could use work, but the recordings are really good for 2009. 

There's not really much to say about this! Pretty standard one pitch VCV.

橙屋れんたんじゅつtest, A Six Pitch Rentan / CV

I have a feeling there are quite a few people who don't know what a rentan is. It's stringed CV. That means instead of recording か、then saving it as か、you record かきくけこ with pause between each mora and then save that as one file. It makes OTOing slightly more difficult, but it makes recording a lot easier.

Saying that this bank, listed as "『橙屋れんたんじゅつ』実験版" on the download page, is six pitches isn't entirely true. There's a soft and strong version of A4. In addition, there is a D5 pitch that is only intended to be used in conjunction with the soft version of A4. The D5 pitch is not OTO'd. In CV that's not a big deal and you can listen to the bank and just know the configuration is wrong. In Rentan, you end up with this:

b'aw

It's not just D5, it's parts of other pitches also. But gosh darn it, the recordings are still really good.
The bank comes with three prefix maps - default, soft, and strong. The only one that seems to be 100% configured is the default, so that's what I used for that sample. I really prefer the soft prefix map, but I prefer not doing OTOs more!

If you're willing to redo a lot of OTOs, this bank is very much worth looking into, especially if you want a sweet and girly voice using the soft prefix map.

How do I download the banks?!

The download page is here. You need to copy and paste (or click and drag) the addresses into the address bar manually for some reason. A link to Sotoshima's OneDrive is included. That OneDrive has .exe versions of some of the Touya banks. There is likely at least one bank in the OneDrive with a broken AXFC link that I didn't download due to my fear of .exe files.

I am actually really shocked that these banks weren't more popular. Hopefully someone gets their hands on the rentan and shows off just how amazing those high notes can be! ☺️

Studio Nekoyanagi's Kagamiusagi / かがみうさぎ - Found!

Who is that cute bunny UTAU? Where can I download Kagami Usagi? What is Studio Nekoyanagi?

Studio Nekoyanagi's Kagamiusagi / かがみうさぎ - Found!

Thank goodness for the WayBack Machine. Without it, this UTAU would be lost forever! The design feels insanely familiar, but I could never remember hearing the name Kagamiusagi. 

Official Art Packaged with Bank

There is no information on what the voice is or how it was created. The only lead is that it was made by Studio Nekoyanagi. Studio Nekoyanagi is a company that mostly exists to create media for people as far as I can tell. However, when they had their foray into UTAU, they used Kagamiusagi as the singer on albums they sold online.

The album preview is really, really cute.

The voice honestly sounds computer generated. However, I'm stumped on how they would make it. The things that make me think it's probably computer generated is how awkward the vowels sound. Looking really closely at the pitch line and waveform doesn't exactly confirm it. There is some obvious crossfade in some samples, but that could be a human who recorded short samples, then looped the vowels.

Regardless of all of that, this UTAU can sound amazing in the right hands. (Unless there's a new bank I have no idea about, of course.)

Let's talk about ん

Sometimes when people seemingly have no idea what they are doing, they end up doing something so smart, a learned person would wish they thought of it first. There are two versions of every required kana. The first is normal with a (very likely) looped vowel. That first set of samples is around four seconds long on average. The second set's samples are much shorter. Windows File Explorer reports their length as zero seconds, and half of that is taken up by an ん. 

UTAU with VC support is on the horizon, but this bank was recorded in June of 2009. I have no idea what they were thinking at that point. However, what they were thinking doesn't matter. What does matter is that by putting ん into the suffix broker will result in a bank with shorter, clearer samples if you cover the "n" sound with the blue part at the end in the OTOs.

For example, here is Kagamiusagi singing a UST with only the regular CV files:

Because the samples are so long, it has an effect I used to call "cheese cloth". For some reason, when you give UTAU samples that are of a certain length, it starts to sound weirdly hollow like it has been pulled through a cheese cloth. . . or was it that the voice had holes like it was cheese cloth? I forget the reason for the mental image, but it still stuck! Because of the weird looping of the vowels, it also adds a tad bit of vibrato where there isn't any in the UST. Contrast that with a sample rendered with the samples ending in ん (with the ん covered by the blank, of course). Long notes remained the "normal" samples.
Big difference, huh! Technically, you can do this with almost any bank by simply adding aliases and pulling the blue blank really close to the consonant . . . but I was really excited when I figured out this little feature!

About OTOs . . .

This bank comes with a blank OTO. Ouch. A kind soul on NicoVideo released an OTO file for Kagamiusagi. However, it doesn't take advantage of the cool trick with the ん samples and it made me sigh when I saw it. However, it is better than a blank OTO! 

How can I download KagamiUsagi?!

First off, you need to use the WayBack Machine. This UTAU voicebank is actually stored on the WayBack Machine! If that's not cool, I don't know what is!

To use the WayBack Machine, go to this address and paste the address you want to go to next to the pretty text art that says "WayBackMachine". There are two addresses that will work.

• http://studionekoyanagi.jp/kagami/
• http://studionekoyanagi.jp/ダウンロード

Once you pick a date, you will be taken to the page you pasted in. All you need to do is click the the big link. Once you do that you should have your very own copy of KagamiUsagi! I hope that someone finds this useful and plays around with this cute little rabbit ☺️

Forgotten Friday #6 - Suzune Who / 鈴音フウ - Yuuboku Strikes Again

Who is Suzune Who? Why is her bank in Romaji? Who made her?

Forgotten Friday #6 - Suzune Who / 鈴音フウ - Yuuboku Strikes Again

Previously I have spoken about Isaac E. Altermond and the man behind him, Yuuboku. If I had to sum up Yuuboku in one sentence, it would be "But why do it that way?" This is another case of that. The first thing is that Suzune Who's name is romanized as, well, Suzune Who. I spent a long time calling her Suzune Fuu, including when I used her and made an OTO file for her.


(Please don't use that OTO I have no idea how I was so bad at them back then!)

The second thing that's confusing is why is the bank encoded in romaji?? Romaji banks were pretty big back in the day because of people who wouldn't change their locale for some reason or another. Finding an old, unknown bank from this era encoded in romaji would be nothing strange. But Yuuboku is Japanese! 

The third thing is that the voice provider isn't mentioned in any of the documentation. On asking Yuuboku, he explained that he promised he wouldn't show her name. That's very respectable, but I slightly wish that the fact that the voice provider was anonymous was included in the information. (I was half convinced it was pitch shifted Yuuboku for a quick second.)

The fourth thing has nothing to do with the bank itself. Suzune Who is almost never used by herself. Almost every time she's used on NicoVideo it is in a chorus.

It's all a storm of really interesting things, honestly.

Who is Suzune Who?

Suzune Who is a standard CV voicebank encoded in romaji for some reason. The green thing hanging from her neck is actually a bell! That's where the "suzu" in her name comes from, apparently. It means "bell". 

Art from UTAU Visual Archive

That's literally all that anyone knows, other than her release date being in January of 2009. A lot of UTAUs have a ton of cute world-building to flesh them out. Birthdays, likes, dislikes . . . this UTAU has none of that. But boy howdy is her voice cute!

It's strange that it has all of the required samples!!! is a thing I have to say after so many run-ins with banks missing samples, but she has all of the required samples!

If you're interested in trying out Suzune Who, her voicebank is available in the description of her release video.

Something about Suzune Who really resonates with me, but I'm not sure what. Hopefully, someone who sees her will resonate with her also! 😃