Wiki Wednesday #123 - 豆田いふく / Mameda Ifuku
This UTAU is a plushie! The manager made a human design also, but like, plushie!
I'm not sure how much there is to say on this UTAU without cracking open the readme file. I can't do that because I'm on my phone.
Anyway, on to the article.
Who is Ifuku Mameda?
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| Official Icon from Site |
So, Ifuku is a stuffed animal, but also a human. You decide! Obviously, they are meant to be a stuffed animal, but the manager didn't want to cut off an entire market for the UTAU by putting their foot down.
Ifuku is a… Kitty raccoon? A Japanese river otter! Google translate was saying that it looked like it was from a fairy tale on the translated page, but brought up otters when translated in the app. I pasted it into my dictionary.
Well, the fairy-tale part isn't too far off. This specific breed of otter is extinct. Unless it's just talking about otters in general.
So, there's not much to say about the UTAU, so let's talk about otters! Well, we'll take a detour. You can't fully say if humans hunted woolly mammoths to extinction. Even if they left an entire colony hanging out in what's now New Orleans… Can you even imagine? Southerners always have this sense of "the weather is especially bad here." Especially all the way down in Louisiana. It's just so muggy. The air is soup. You think night will fall and you will be safe, but it just stays that hot. I'm sure people from other countries can chime in and say it's exactly the same where they are, but still. The air is hot soup. Could a woolly mammoth survive living in hot soup with all of that fur? Elephants live in worse climates. But they're specifically adapted for that.
But we can for sure say that humans almost hunted buffalo to extinction. Bison were just the most American mammal, but they were pretty good at being more useful dead than alive. So, we made that happen. The same thing happened to the Japanese river otter. Their pelt was more valuable than their life. Whereas the bison were able to bounce back because there were still pristine, wide open plains, pollution and habitat loss got the Japanese river otters all messed up. There's legitimate efforts to prove they're not gone for good, but it doesn't really seem like they're out there.
My thought was to just grab a similar Asian otter and throw it into a Japanese river, but Japanese river otters have had their genomes sequenced. My plan wouldn't work at all!
But reading more, it's crazy. The government called on people to skin the otters for pelts in 1929. I was going to see how the numbers on when conservation of buffalos started in America, but then I got distracted. Large bovids have the best names. There's bison, buffalo, guar, zebu, and yak. Then there's the most common bovid, Bos taurus. And guess what? Their common name is just cattle. Cows are any female bovid. Bulls are any intact male bovid. Oh? And what's the scientific name of oxen? Literally any beast of burden pulling things around.
Seriously, the only commonly accepted gender neutral, non-age
specific singular term for cattle is "a head of cattle". But, if you're in a field with a head of cattle, you'll know which term to use instantly… as long as the farmer isn't too hung up on terms like heifer and weaners. (Yes! That's a legitimate term to refer to calves who are no longer nursing!)
But, everyone calls cattle cows anyway. No one stops and thinks, "Wait, this is the term for female bovids of any species!" Naw, all Bos taurus are just cows. Wikipedia says it's really not a big deal because most male Bos taurus are slaughtered before age three, so the person calling them cows will usually be right.
Anyway, animals. There sure are a lot of interesting things about animals.
How are Mameda Ifuku's banks?
nine. There are nine. An UTAU that's literally a sapient stuffed animal doesn't seem like one that would have nine banks, but... Yep! Ifuku has nine banks.
Let's go in order of the website. The first is the Whisper Rentan. The OTOs are very bad. They do this really, really gross thing that I have only seen with one other UTAU. It's random if it happens, so I think it was mistakes and not intentional.
With the default resampler, it's just straight up not good.
Next is temporary CVVC. I think that just means that they will make a better version later. The OTOs are actually pretty good?! There's five pitches! That's a lot! I had edited it to make all the pitches play, but A4 wasn't very good. I excluded it, but I think that's okay. It's a really nice bank that sounds unique without being grating.
I was incorrect about being nine banks, as one of the archives was just OTOs with suffixes to use each of the next banks as one big happy family. That's tempting! But I know what my job is here.
Next is Stuffed Animal form! It is a one pitch lite VCV bank. I haven't seen one of those in forever! And it was recorded in 2012?! So strange.
The voice is very clear, but the pronunciation is weird. It sounded really off, so I checked all the OTOs. Bad, but not enough to break synthesis. The issue was just that everything is pronounced so strangely.
Next, we have "通常連続音", or normal continuous sound. It doesn't look like a lite VCV, until the "t" line shows up. The "ty" line (ch) is fine, but... It's strange. Also, there are some errors. "o ji" is recorded as "a ji".
The voice is nice and energetic, though.
Next is 連続音暗, or dark VCV. It sounds like it would be a good lower pitch for the normal VCV. It's nice and sounds less forced in some ways, but more forced in others. Still, it has the weird lite VCV, but not really OTO file.
かすれ means faint according to Google Translate, because I'm too lazy to open a tab for Jisho. This one... The CV for the "t" line don't play unless you manually add the "- " to the front. I do not know why. This is the kind of thing that would keep me up at night on a less stable day.
I mean, the voice is calm and sweet or whatever, but why did that happen? Why didn't it happen with the other banks?
Now, there's normal rentan. It is voice acted to be a high pitch "character vocal". The pitch isn't that high, but you can tell the intention with the way the voice became more of a head voice.
I don't understand why the name for this one is rentan 加工 on the site, when the folder has a down arrow. It's okay. I don't really have complaints after being so confused with everything else.
Where can I download Mameda Ifuku?
Finally! I am finished with all of the samples! You can find all of the downloads on the distribution page. If you like this voice, you'll find workarounds to any issues and create beautiful things. If you're not the biggest fan, just walk away slowly. It's just frustrating. Even things that just needed a simple fix, I didn't understand why it was needed and my brain was so sad it was a little painful.
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