Wiki Wednesday #83 - 印音ヒルダ / Shirushine Hilda

1/2. Okay, Kenan Thompson has basically perfect comedic timing, but you never see it because the audience at SNL laughs at everything for longer than they need to, which messes up the timing. I never liked "What's Up with That" or his David Ortiz Weekend Update things. But, when they were done for the At Home edition, they were both so hilarious. Watching him on the show where he just has to sit around and wait to get to the next line, it drags and gets boring. But oh goodness... When he dictates the timing, he is so hilarious. 

Wiki Wednesday #83 - 印音ヒルダ / Shirushine Hilda

Okay so, I was in contact with Hilda's voice provider, because I called her a sweetie when I wrote an original song for her other UTAU. I have no idea how much contact I had, though. It was a long way back, and I can't even remember... Well, I can't even remember a lot of stuff. Stuff sticks out, but mostly stuff I regret. I guess that's good that I don't remember regretting my actions during interactions with Hinano? But, that being said, I did have contact with her at one point, and I didn't completely fabricate a possible friendship.

Who is Hilda Shirushine?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

I had assumed her name was Hilda. I think I had seen it romanized that way and it stuck. However... Even if I had proof it wasn't Hilda, I was going to call her Hilda. Luckily, her name is Hilda. It was stylized as HiLDA, but I think that was just a typesetting error in the character file.

So, Hilda is twenty-five and is a mama?! Google Translate said she was a mama, so I plugged it into Jisho to read it myself, and yeah. She has a daughter that she keeps secret from everyone else. 

This isn't really about the character, but for some reason, all of the Shirashine UTAUs have two distribution pages. The older ones even have three distribution pages, due to Hinano's old blog. I have no idea what is going on with that. 

Her character is so cool, though! She was a former cabaret dancer. As a Southerner, she's a gosh danged Yankee! (okay, so, in Japanese Yankee doesn't mean one of those gosh darn carpetbaggers, it means a delinquent youth. The sentence example in Jisho involves a troubled teen shooting a police officer in the leg.) So, she's kind and nurturing, but she has a delinquent past. She's wasteful, so I think she puts all of her money in the bank immediately? And... She carries around a metal bar?

And I'll just be frank. Japanese women in the UTAU fandom seem to be really fixated on big boopers. Hilda's character biography has a mention to her bust size or something? And it's like, "Don't cha see 'em?!" So... huh.

How are Shirushine Hilda's banks?

Hilda has two banks. She has her 2014 VCV and "It's noon!" Which is a pun I am in love. The kanji is "昼だ"... which.. is Hiruda!!! That is so adorable and cute!! I would have picked up on it earlier if Japanese fonts weren't so dang tiny. I fully understand the importance of radicals, because (thank you Wanikani) I can see shrimp, sun, and ground. But, I can't even make out what it means all together because so tiny and the shrimp radical looks really misplaced and farther away than it shoud. The text on finished articles is larger than the text in the editor, so none of y'all will see what I'm talking about. 

You see, the shrimp at the top is meant to span the entire body of the sun vertically and nearly touch the ground. However, in this font, the shrimp is barely even touching the sun and is way too high up. If I didn't understand that type setting in Japanese takes liberties with radicals, I would be flabbergasted that the two kanji are the same thing.

Her first bank is her normal VCV, which is labeled 2014. It is only one pitch and was recorded in 2013, but was released in 2014. 

It is the literal opposite of what I expected from a mother who formerly danced cabaret. It is recorded in a forced... It's a weird combination, forced kawaii yet forced kakkoii, yet... Yelling? Hinano pulls off the voice perfectly, even though it's not one I know if we had a need for. There are issues with recording a bank like this, and consonants can just kind of get messed around with. "o cho" is recorded as "o jo", for example. There is vocal fry that just doesn't do well with the VCV synthesis at all. It can be edited out by converting the VV to V - V, but... That would mess with the flow. The OTOs aren't the best, so consonants can sound eaten and without hope and be slightly fixed by small edits. But, they can't be fully fixed because try to maintain this voice for forty-five minutes straight:

"It's noon!" was recorded in 2014. The OTOs are so bad in places, it hurts.

why. I can explain the logic, of course, but why did they use that logic.

So, all of the OTOs are painfully broken. Ya know what, the dice was kind to me. Let's introduce Hilda to SetParam and see what happens.

And wow, what a fixed OTO can do for a bank. When I went into this, I thought that "It's noon!" was basically a downgrade in every sense of the word... Because using it with the original OTO is bad. There are instances of vocal fry, but it's hidden better by being closer to the consonants. The biggest issue is just that her plosives are exaggerated by pausing more than usual... But, that just gives her a more unique singing style. The voice is way more forced kawaii, but despite going further in a direction I'm not the biggest fan of, it really got rid of that.. kind of, can't describe it but it's odd feeling? Yeah, "It's noon!" is dope.

If you're willing to redo the OTOs completely, it's a wonderful voice for specific types of songs.

Where can I download Hilda Shirushine?

Here's a random one of her distribution pages! I think it's the best one to share because it only has her links on it.

Honestly, if you're willing to put in the time, this is a really good UTAU that has really popular voice type. However, if you can't put in the time to fix it, you'll basically be miserable using her. So... I really like her!