Wiki Wednesday #94 - サマラ / GraySlate's Samara
The collective is named zephyrutau, and I believe there are around twenty-five UTAUs belonging to it. However, I ain't making a testing UST for Italian or Korean, so some UTAUs that only have Korean or Italian banks will never be touched by me. I believe that instead of Samara - Italian append, there is an UTAU for each language, and then that UTAU's genderbend, which is recorded as a separate character. I bookmarked the page for the future, because... Well, I have a problem with collecting UTAUs. Just going through the Wiki isn't fast enough sometimes.
Who is Samara?
 |
| official icon packaged with bank |
Okay so, when people say "parody UTAU", they think La Zaminke. (I'm not even trying.) Something that is barely usable as a joke. But, Samara is a parody UTAU without being an absolute joke. She is a reference to the character in The Ring, as you can tell by the name.
So, this is adorable. Her character item is a suitcase filled with props for magic shows. The bio implies that it's real magic, but I like the idea of a little girl crawling out of the TV and just doing that two linked hoops magic trick.
Something shocking about Samara is that she never kills anyone. When people watch the video she is trapped in, she crawls out into our reality... and asks for food. She's so upbeat and adorable, that everyone who meets her becomes her friend. She's especially lovable and friendly when given food.
Actually, I misread it. She crawls into our reality and whips out a cellphone (it doesn't exist in the official bio, I'm just painting a picture) and plays really scary videos until she gets bored and then asks for food. She's an adorable character.
How is Samara's bank?
You know that feel when you got beef, but no one else realizes you have beef because you just... don't interact? Yeah, I got beef with this system of English. I could go on and on and on... And after I get my voice back, I'll probably go on and on and on... on video!
As long as you have the basis for diphone English, it doesn't matter what system you use or whatever, I just am salty because I literally can't read this phonetic system. I wrote an Arpasing to VOCALOID phonetic program previously, but I don't even with this mess. What's worse is I believe that the phonetic system Samara used doesn't perfectly line up with the current system, which all the information on is written so aaaaaaaaa.
Anyway. The OTOs are painfully wrong.
This isn't on GraySlate. If I remember correctly, this was just people were told to do it. Do you see why I have beef?!
I opened my "Amarillo by Morning" UST, but no. I am not reOTOing everything just for this. You're getting Japanese, dang it.
Samara is a beautiful, well recorded bank with very few errors that I could see beyond the OTOs just not being how OTOs worked. I genuinely would enjoy using her for English if it wasn't pulling teeth to even look halfway at a bank made with this philosophy.
Where can I download Samara?
You can download her from her UTAU Wiki page. There's almost no point of going to the main website, as the Wiki seems better updated.
I promise, I went into this with full intentions of using her for English. But, the second I saw how completely destroyed the OTOs were, I couldn't even try. Piecing together puzzle pieces to try and find the right sound AND fixing OTOs that will require every parameter to be moved? no. I think this voice provider has other UTAUs, and I am happy to try them without pulling teeth.
Hey! GraySlate here! I was alerted to this post by a friend, maybe a little late after the fact, but I'm here all the same. I appreciate that you took the time to look into one of my UTAUs, and I instantly felt your pain when I saw you were reviewing Samara. Samara is functionally abandoned, if the wiki not being updated in 245 days was any indication (I didn't even know it had almost been a year already). I also had no idea the link 404'd on the website, as I have a pattern of rushing to publish banks, demos, etc. all in the same day back to back. It's very possible I screwed something up in an update and just forgot to provide a working link. I even had a demo video from 2017 still up for Hayate even though I've reconfigured him TWICE already. That's on me, it's embarrassing as fuck but I got sloppy there.
ReplyDeleteI am with you on VCCV being just...a terrible list. Sorry CZ but I'm never touching that for any of my own again. It’s honestly telling when the official way you’re told to oto VCCV is objectively incorrect. I went back to reconfigure Samara once, didn't even do it right that time, and the last time I worked with her bank was...oh god, for the Hit or Miss cover I did 8 months ago. If I do ever come back to her bank someday, I'm scrapping the VCCV and starting over with a CVVC reclist. Spending a whole week on configuring one pitch of a bloated reclist is not how I like spending my time, so sorry to Samara but into the abyss she goes.
It actually really warmed my heart that you took the time to read her readme as well! I put a lot into every UTAU character’s backstory and personality, so much so that I sometimes forget what I wrote. Samara was one of those cases, but it was nice to revisit what I said about her. I’m big on characterization and lore so I’m glad that wasn’t overlooked here!
And...yeah, I guess I have an addiction to making UTAUs, I’m most certainly not done and that 25 number is just going to multiply the longer I live. I’ll admit I was a bit confused by the genderbend thing, because almost all of my UTAUs are separate characters. Miyuki, Mieko, Hayate, Hanae, Bolly Joel, Yuina, Seiji, Susumu, Hinaya, Souma, Masago, Jamie, Katsuo, Hareff, Ilari, René, Ilari, Paris, Lewis, Adrien, Nevio, Daryl, Hye-Ji, Ji-Hye, and Samara are all separate characters. Hanae is voiced by my mom, Hayate by my dad, and Seiji by my grandfather, but all others are voiced by me with varying degrees of pitch shifting and voice acting. Hye-Ji and Ji-Hye are twins but those are about the only ones that are close to being mirror images of each other...that are public, I have two on the way that are genderbends of each other :’)
I’m in a cycle of re-configuring (and sometimes re-recording entirely) a lot of my banks, and I’ve got my work cut out for me considering I have so many and have been doing UTAU in a much more fervent and frequent fashion since 2017. A three year backlog is a considerable amount! Right now, I’d say if there’s any you’d want to tackle, René, Bolly Joel, Mieko, Miyuki’s KIRE, Hinaya, Masago, Adrien, and Nevio are all updated and good to be tested at this moment. Everyone else is in varying stages of re-configuration, recording, or abandonment hell.
Thanks for taking a look at Samara! I’m sorry you had to put up with how bad she is, but you were a lot kinder on her than I was expecting! This was a good little Christmas present!
Thank you so much for your sweet comment :D !
DeleteIf you're into constantly recording and re-recording, I actually would love your help with something!!
My friend SRS is starting her own website as a directory for MEL (Mae's English List) USTs and banks, but she's afraid to publish it as it is because (as I don't distribute my test banks), she ONLY has her UTAUs for the directory!! She doesn't want it to look like a vanity project to show off her own banks, so she would LOVE LOVE LOVE if more people recorded it! (I would like it too :3)
If you record it, I'll take care of all of the OTOs if you want (regardless of how many you record!) It's under 70 wav files, and I have two versions read to go. The first is the standard list that uses VOCALOID phonetics. It takes under ten minutes to record! The second is a "word pattern list". It takes about twenty minutes to record, but it makes it so that you don't have to learn any phonemes!
It actually takes roughly the same amount of time for me to OTO a MEL bank as a Japanese CVVC because it's actually a similar number of aliases! (around 600!)
and Merry Christmas to you too :D Your comment was like a Christmas present too!