Wiki Wednesday #13 - Kami Usaka / 兔歌カミ

Where can I download Kami Usaka? Who made 兔歌カミ? What does HG mean?

Wiki Wednesday #13 - Kami Usaka / 兔歌カミ

Before I get on with it, I want to complement HG_Ginta's / Mercury's website (HG is the symbol for Mercury!). I usually save all links for the end, but I have to give it props. Aside from it being a little difficult to figure out how to get to the download page (which you can circumvent by just getting the link from the UTAU Wiki.dot), it looks really nice. 

Kami Usaka was created by Hg_Ginta / Mercury. I did some research on Ginta, but it ground to a halt when I saw that Ginta has bunny rabbits! Ginta is primarily an artist and, at the time of writing, is contributing art to fan projects. I really lost steam when I saw the rabbits. I shouldn't be shocked that there were rabbits, as this UTAU is named "Rabbit Song", though!

Moving on from her creator -

Who is Usaka Kami?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Kami Usaka is roughly 17 years old. She's bossy and hotheaded. Her readme even taught me a new word: irascible! It means that she has a hot temper and is easily provoked. She's roughly the same height as me (5'7'') and hates fashion victims.

I love the phrasing in her ReadMe. I left out the majority of the description, but every word adds a layer to her character. Of course, you can argue that "bored" and "unmotivated" are the same thing, but the slight differences in connotations make each word a new layer and not just a reiteration. 

I especially love how "fashion victims" and "stuck-up people" are both listed as things she dislikes. Honestly, I would love to write an UTAU high school AU with Kami as the misunderstood bully who only has a soft spot for bunnies.

How is her bank?

To begin, I feel the need to point out that the sample on the download page and the samples included in the bank sound wonky. The reason is that the OTOs are really, really wrong.

:(

In my youth, I had the OTOs argument over and over again. If you prefer the way this sounds, knock yourself out! Not everyone has to do what Ameya intended! That's cool and fine! These OTOs are the direct output from Moresampler. If I had been commissioned to do these OTOs, I would have actually charged $250 to make the OTOs perfect, as I'd value an hour of my time at $10. (Yes, it would take twenty five hours to do all five pitches of these OTOs by hand if you were a "pro" at it.) At this point in my life, spending over one full day on an UTAU feels really, really silly. I get not hunkering down and reading the spectrogram.

However, this is a problem for people who like things to sound the way they are supposed to. Years ago, this would be a deal breaker. I'd just delete the bank and move on. But today, I really love this character and I want everyone to hear her potential! Auto-generated OTOs aren't working, so it's time for SetParam!

Years ago, I made a video on this concept. I plan to make one that isn't complete cringe in the future. The basic idea is that, in SetParam, you set all of the values other than left blank to be uniform so that fixing the OTO from there only requires moving around the left blank and nothing else. This is why recording with a quarter note of silence at the beginning of your VCV strings is so important - it allows your OTOs to be completely uniform as it treats the silence as a vowel. 

But now we have a new problem. 

Those vertical lines are glitches. When they are played, it's a weird and static-y mess. There are two solutions - change the suffix to use a different pitch, or cut out the glitches. When you use left blank and right blank to cut out glitches, you can end up with an awkward sample as it will be stretched more than any other sample. Using a different pitch may mess with the tone of the vocal. Sadly, samples from every pitch are effected, though G3 has the least errors. Now, here's a sub-section.

How can a voice provider fix their bank when this happens?

Rerecord. Only some samples, all samples... If you are unable to rerecord for any reason, doing what Ginta did here is a great idea. Instead of having one pitch, you have five to pick and choose from. The tones are generally pretty similar, so it's easy to swap the samples out unnoticed. 

How can a user fix banks when this happens?

OTOs. OTOs out the wazoo. You need to cut the glitches out of the samples that you can cut them out of, and you need to delete the aliases of the samples that can't be saved. If you were to delete "o のA3", you can make a copy of "o のD4" in the OTO screen and rename it to "o のA3". The usage of the bank will be plug and play after that adjustment. 

Was all of that worth it??

It depends. 

For me, working hard and putting together the pitches like a puzzle was very worth it, because I allowed the voice to shine without the auto-generated OTOs. Was it tiresome? Yeah. Was I ready to give up several times? Yes. But in the end, I am really proud of the result.

I am a little weirded out because she sounds a lot like the early versions of my own, discontinued UTAU. Though, it has been a long, long time since I listened to my own UTAU, so I might be hearing things.

My own experience has taught me that this is an unpopular voice type, sadly. However, the people who like this voice type really, really love it. Though most people who read this will hear the sample and not be interested, I have a feeling that there will be at least one person who falls in love.

Where can I download Usaka Kami?

Here is HG_Ginta's UTAU website. Click on UTAU, then pick Kami's face. You'll be taken to her download page. 

I hope Kami gets more love in the future. If you take the time and effort to work around all of the glitches, she can sound awesome! Maybe someday Ginta will record a new bank, but until then, Usaka Kami already has everything you need to make plenty of beautiful songs 😃