Wiki Wednesday #39 - TDRloid's Lovecraft

I cannot describe how deeply I loathe the phoneme system CZ set up for her CVVC / VCCV system. I was converting a UST to use as a tester for English banks and I just felt ill. "o" means "u:" ?? "V" is "u"?? "E" is "i:"?!!?! If you speak more than one language, you probably see the main issue with all of those examples. Vowels pretty consistently follow the same rules across most non-English languages. In Spanish (and almost all romance languages), Japanese Romaji... "i" means "bee". I can't name a language where the symbol "i" doesn't mean the vowel in "bee" (Except for occasionally in Chinese). Except maybe English, but ... I'm sorry. I respect CZ for what she has done, but seriously?!!?

Wiki Wednesday #39 - TDRloid's Lovecraft

This actually was a big question of is this UTAU really Wiki Wednesday material? TDRloid was pretty popular and well known back in the day. Well, I knew he was popular and I can remember his UTAU's design and how all the Southeast Asian girls looked upon him with dreamy eyes. But I can't even remember his UTAU's full name. Takayawa Yoshi? Yawane Yoshi? Yawatane Yoshi?

It took looking it up to remember it was Kazune Yoshi. Kazune Yoshi was a big deal, and his videos involving more popular UTAUs were pretty successful. But, TDRloid has moved on. (Okay, not really. He did update Yoshi after releasing Lovecraft, but his icon is Lovecraft.) I'm shocked he only has around 600 subscribers, because I'd swear he'd have more. 

Regardless, on to the article.

Who is Lovecraft?

Official icon packaged with bank,
which is also TDR's current icon on YT

So, there was this weird racist guy a while back named H. P. Lovecraft. He was one of the most important horror writers of all time, with elements of his stories being repeated throughout popular culture consistently throughout the years. The one element that literally everyone knows of is Cthulhu, the giant guy with a cuttlefish on his face. 

This UTAU's description on the UTAU Wiki is really fun. It starts try-hard, with 'omg his eyes are the abyss' before going into a playful 'he hates bagels.' I had no idea he wasn't a normal human until he revealed he didn't like bagels. The UTAU Lovecraft is obviously a play on Mr. Cuttleface.

When I got my nerd points to distribute into nerd hobbies, I made sure none of my nerd points even touched literature.

How are his banks?

Lovecraft has two banks: a one pitch English CVVC recorded at C3, and a three pitch Japanese VCV bank with one pitch that isn't used for some reason.

I actually made a test UST for his English bank. Not even kidding. I thought, "TDR is such a cool kid. I gotta put in extra effort for him!" (He is an adult now and not a kid, but you know, words.)

And.. Oh my goodness. I don't care how good he sounds, I can't stand using this phonetic inventory. If I were to make a habit of using this UTAU, I would need to redo the aliasing entirely to get it to a system that I can handle. But, thankfully, now that I need to test a CZ style English bank, I have a UST ready to go. 

But, the bank itself divorced of the usage, is pretty cool. It feels a little off-putting in how deep it is, but... It's a Mr. Cuttleface named after a horror author. It's supposed to be.

His Japanese, on the other hand, has a pitch that doesn't show up in the prefix map. I added it to the top note he hit on my Japanese testing UST, and I still don't understand what it means. 


I much prefer the Japanese bank to the English bank, regardless of usage issues. The Japanese bank has a pitch at F3, which is much higher than C3. It sounds less booming and scary.

Where can I download Lovecraft?

You can download Lovecraft from his official website. This is a really deep voice and a monster design. If those are your things, then this is a really great and amazing UTAU!! However, the voice kind of scares me. I'm not the biggest fan because of that, and that's silly. I do hope Lovecraft gets more love, because I can tell TDR put a lot of love into him.