Forgotten Friday #79 - 蛙屋フア / Kawazuya Fua

Guess who made new tester USTs! Since this is my blog, you probably answered me. And that's right! I had a lot of fun taking a break to make the new USTs. However... They were CVVC! That's not very useful for Forgotten Friday, and I can't write more Wiki Wednesday until I've got Forgotten Friday pushed out just as far. I did remake one of them to be CV, though! So that will help me out with Forgotten Friday! The UST itself is like twenty seconds, so that means that I can cut it up into different samples so that it's slightly less repetitive. So, yay! I wanted to make more, but I kind of... Don't actually know many Japanese songs from memory, and English is no help.

Forgotten Friday #79 - 蛙屋フア / Kawazuya Fua

Who is excited for Forgotten Friday?! I have Wiki Wednesday pushed to 2021, and... Well, this comes out in the sixth month of the year. Wiki Wednesday is like a box of chocolates. I know exactly what is in them, but there's nut clusters and nougat in the same box. Do I want caramels (one gigabyte banks)? I can do that! Do I want plain chocolate (one pitch CV banks)? I can do that! With Forgotten Friday... It's mostly just... Plain chocolate. Sometimes it's nice and I can find a random caramel thrown in, but it's mostly boring. When you're crunched for time, boring is good! It's fast! But when you're just like, wanting to really roll up your sleeves, it is less so.

Anyway!

Who is Fua Kawazuya?

official art from website

Wiki Wednesday #68 - ねとの冬雪 / Neto's Huyuki

Something I didn't realize when I binge downloaded the Wiki Wednesday UTAUs with the intent of getting to them... eventually... is that Wiki Wednesday UTAUs kind of... will get new banks. So, if I download a bank and wait a year, there's likely going to be a new bank, meaning I have to wait until the internet is unmetered to download the missing ones. So, I need to be more prompt in tackling what I download. Which is why I'm going to go nyoom nyoom as nyoom as I can.

Wiki Wednesday #68 - ねとの冬雪 / Neto's Huyuki

Alright. So, I'll just point out that translating Huyuki's download page that has his bio on it with Google Translate gives really, really confusing results.

On the note of the name - Huyuki feels really wrong, and I was tempted to change it for the article, but the distributor does actually use Huyuki as the romanization. Another note about the title is just that I included the distributor's name instead of just the name itself. I do that for banks with names that could be repeated. Random example that doesn't exist, but someone probably thought, "Wow! I'll name my UTAU Fuyu and use 冬 as the kanji!" Someone else may say "The perfect name for my UTAU is Fuyu! I'll use 不由 as the kanji!"

Those are different names, but Blogger deletes all of the kanji from the URL. So, Fuyu and Fuyu's URLs would be pretty much identical except for the Wiki Wednesday ## part. But, you know, it's not just about not having articles have the same URL. It's also just to help make sense of similar names. I don't know a single other UTAU named Huyuki, but the lack of the surname makes it seem like there definitely could be. 

Who is Huyuki?

Official Artwork Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #78 - 楽音ルイ / Rakune Lui

All I want to do is tune USTs! Make up Japanese lyrics and then sing classic American jams like "American Pie"! (Yes, I am aware how weirdly tone deaf translating that song into any language other than English is... Though, Weird Al making it into a Star Wars parody is kind of equally tone deaf.) But, I woke up and my voice was like "haha, loser!" and I sounded like Kermit. I have to sing to tune for it to be extra realistic and make CV banks shine like crazy diamonds. So, next best thing... I'm going to binge articles so that I don't have to worry about getting behind if life ends up happening.

Forgotten Friday #78 - 楽音ルイ / Rakune Lui

So, I accidentally downloaded eight gigabytes of UTAUs for Wiki Wednesday and was so excited to jump in! But then I saw there was something in the folder I use to test out banks. Little Lui was there! I had unpacked him and was ready to go when sleepiness got in the way and I couldn't go on and even start another article.

So, I was ready to get going on one thing, but then I had to do a different thing. Technically, I could shuffle him archive back to my downloads folder... But naw, I'm doing it. 

Who is Lui Rakune?

taken from UTAU Visual Archive

Wiki Wednesday #67 - 誠音デージー / Deiji Makotone

I started a poll on my Twitter that will be finished by the time this article goes live. I just asked at what stage people just give up on releasing banks they promised. For me, the answer was always that I just didn't record them. It was rare that I actually recorded something and didn't post it, and it was more rare for me to announce I was working on a bank period. I was the kind of person who could do an entire pitch of VCV in forty-five minutes flat, though. Even my final voicebank, I released. I was done, done, done at that point and didn't OTO it, but I released it

Wiki Wednesday #67 - 誠音デージー / Deiji Makotone

I was so worried when I searched my download folder for this kid. I only had two banks out of the several that were available. But luckily, I had no intention of making a Spanish tester UST, let alone a Finnish one, and the rest of the Japanese banks from 2017 were packaged into one archive. Lucky me! 

The little blurb at the top is in reference to the five promised voicebanks on the UTAU Wiki page that were slated for 2019. It is no longer 2019, as it is 2020. UTAU is a hobby, and it should come last in your life priority list. If you promise to spend hours and hours on something and have to back out, do it without shame. If it's not fun anymore and you don't want to finish what you started or deliver on what is slated to happen... No one is paying you. Until someone trades goods or services for your goods or services, there is no contract. Sure, saying "I promised to OTO your ten pitch English VCV, but now UTAU is lame and dumb and I won't" can be a big shock to the person you made the promise to... But, really? Are they paying you? A true friend would understand that priorities change and UTAU is just a hobby. 

So, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

(PS: if they are paying you, there's an exchange of goods and services and you need to hold up your end of the bargain.)

Who is Makotone Deiji?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #77 - 孜音シアナ / Siana Shion

So, I have no idea if technology hates me or if there's an issue, but I can't get the C# library to create UTAU plugins to work. I asked Masao if he knows of any Java libraries that do something similar, as Java was my "first language" that I seriously studied. (Even if it was like the... fifth? that I actually used to any degree and that C# was the first I released a program in.) He'll probably be like "no", but I did learn something important which is dope. Getting a plugin to run in UTAU is relatively simple if the information I read was correct. 

Forgotten Friday #77 - 孜音シアナ / Siana Shion

I'm actually kind of shocked that Siana even has a Japanese name. Don't get me wrong, Shion is very Japanese... But it was never written in anything other than English from what I remember. Even her listing in the ruto.yu page was in romaji.

Her voice provider was one of the sweetest and kindest people I've ever met. It took forever to log into dA, but I was able to comment on her voice provider's latest post... from 2020! It's 2020 now! I hope he responds because I would love Siana to get more love and new banks!!

It's insane how amazing his art has gotten since his previous last post!! I'm so happy for him! I wish I knew alternate contact info, as the Siana Shion page might be abandoned again due to it literally being a page about the UTAU, and not other stuff. But wow!! I'm so happy to see Robin is still thinking of his little baby!

Who is Shion Siana?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Credit to Ren/thefalleninfant!

Wiki Wednesday #66 - 歌手音ルル / Lulu Utatane

Oh no! I've spent so much time realistically tuning USTs for CV banks, I've ignored VCV USTs! I mean, don't get me wrong; the only thing that really changes in the conversion is envelopes. But perfect CV envelopes translate to wonky VCV envelopes. Oh well. I still have plenty of old tester USTs that are perfectly well and good for VCV. 

Wiki Wednesday #66 - 歌手音ルル / Lulu Utatane

Hello, Wiki Wednesday! It feels like it has been forever since I spent time on you. I was rushing to catch Forgotten Friday up, and I forgot how much nicer it is to write these articles.

I really hope there will be way less off topic blabbering because there's more information to go off and more banks to test out. Sometimes I'm in the mood for sharing a dissertation on roasting vegetables, but not really right now.

Who is Utatane Lulu?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #76 - 幸音ベニ / Sachine Beni

I saw this name, but I couldn't tell if it was "beni" or "peni". I was leaning towards making a Bazinga! joke. Sadly, it is Benny, not Penny.

Forgotten Friday #76 - 幸音ベニ / Sachine Beni

I read the Google Translation of the readme, and it said that you need to state that Miaow owns Beni. So, when it comes to vocal synths, I don't really think you need to credit the person who made them as long as you credit the vocal itself. Like, you say "This is Kasane Teto" as if Teto was a real person. If you Google Kasane Teto, you will see who owns her and all of that jazz.

For things like OCs, I do agree that if you use them, you should credit the person who made them. Which sounds weirdly hypocritical unless you have the hard line stance that UTAUs are people and OCs aren't.

I'm not doing the best today.

Who is Beni Sachine?

official icon packaged with bank

Wiki Wednesday #65 - 相田そーた / Souta Aida

The reason the UTAU Wiki got the name wrong is because they didn't know how to write the "o" with a hat. I still haven't bothered to learn. The hat, though it may have been the wrong hat in one place, is used on Souta's website. So, it isn't meant to be Sota. Soota is another valid pronunciation, as I have griped about whenever I bring up Genki textbooks. There's valid reasons to use either Souta or Soota over the other, but I'll stick to Souta out of aesthetics. 

Wiki Wednesday #65 - 相田そーた / Souta Aida

Souta's filename has a mistake. UTAU is misspelled as "(UATU)", which looks like a kaomoji to me for some weird reason. (UTAU) does too when you put it in parenthesis now that I think about it... 

Souta's website is the most early 2000s thing to ever early 2000s. There are literally ironic mustaches littering the page. I can see an argument that it's a 90s aesthetic, but the ironic mustaches were a 2000s thing. (There's even glasses that I think say "1995"?) With the design, I think it's possible it was meant to blend into the late 2000s because of the whole legwarmers and Hot Topic outfit thing. To which you can point out that Japanese people probably generally don't know Hot Topic exists and that the world isn't America, Mae. To which I say, I'm just trying to pin down what the aesthetic looks like! Japan had different media, and maybe that's what Japan looked like in 1995.

Who is Aida Souta?

Official Art Packaged with Bank