Forgotten Friday #157 - 主飼エヌ / Nushikai Enu

 This draft was written before Christmas of 2020! Hopefully when this publishes on Christmas Eve 2021, I'll be super hyped up for a wonderful Christmas with twice the cheer!! Because this Christmas was basically just watching TV and trying to forget it was Christmas because it really wasn't Christmas because of COVID.  

Forgotten Friday #157 - 主飼エヌ / Nushikai Enu

I was unsure on whether I should write on this UTAU or not because it's strange. She's a multipitch VCV with only vowels I think??

There is utility in a bank with only vowels, actually. But I haven't tried out the bank yet. So, of course, it will be useful to test out if it has utility.

But dang it. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and my mom is too sick to do anything, and I can't even be in the same room with her for too long because she's afraid I'll get sick when I already think I'm sick! I'm really lucky because my stepdad has recovered and mom is checking her oxygen levels often to make sure that she's safe… but dang it. Christmas is cancelled.

Who is Enu Nushikai?

Official Art from Bank

So, before we talk about this utau and who she is, (it's vague) let's talk about the utility of a voicebank with only vowels. Now, if it's CV and you only have six samples… you can't use that for much of anything and it sound nice. The default way utau treats standalone vowels is icky. It cross fades them so that they blend smoothly, but you end up with some weird slur that isn't either vowel in the middle. 

But what if the vowels are 連続音? That's the Japanese word for VCV, but this bank is renzokuon but not VCV because it's only VV. 

With that sorted, a VV bank should more or less sound realistic with a fraction of the recordings of a VCV bank. But it can't sing without consonants! Or can it?

The answer is yes, of course. Even if it can't sing in any language, it still sings. But what is the point? 

Backing vocals and ambient music. Or is it atmospheric? Anywhere where you want there to be the sound of vocals without anyone's brains trying to understand what is being said.

I was going to go deeper into that but… Enu refuses to tell her weight and loves cats. She was born somewhere on Earth and is probably female. She is over a hundred years old and does not like being scratched by cats. She was born on Christmas.

She has a teal Power Puff Girls outfit, but her shoes are red and she wears a sheer poncho. She has teal eyes and green hair. She has an ahoge so huge, it has its own curl and is longer than the rest of her chin length hair.

I don't know if it's because I'm sick or just because of the change in pressure due to a cold front making tomorrow 26°F colder than it was today… but my ear hurts. Only my left one. I did pop it to release pressure, and I think that's good.

Life story time! I've never been on a plane, but I knew from a young age and popping your ears to make the painful pressure go away. You see, I had to go to a place at a higher elevation with some regularity as a child, and I had a problem with the change in the atmosphere making my ears mad at me. Or maybe it was all in my head. It was only from 610 feet to 1,883 feet.

It honestly feels like my body is revolting against me and that it does not want me to be happy. I just feel so bad and sluggish but also I have too much energy but I don't feel well.

Because, at this very point, it's highly unlikely I don't have covid.

How is Nushikai Enu's bank?

Enu wasn't meant to just have vowels forever. It was planned for her to have a CVVC and a CV.  She actually has four pitches! 

So, she doesn't have VV actually, she has VCV with "n" as the C every time. I don't know how to describe this voice. It is perfect androgynous. I have no idea the gender of the voice provider. I thought really hard, and I guess the voice kind of sounds like an UTAU that shall not be named? It's not what I expected at all, but you may have utility for it. Well, I just realized her only sample is nu. That's ... less than ideal. It's a weird bank.

Where can I download Enu Nushikai?

You can download her from her distribution page. If her voice provider comes back and does a CVVC bank, it would be a perfect replacement for that UTAU I'm not saying the name of. But, will that happen? Probably not.