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! ☺️