Help Wanted! Looking for people to record for Diffsinger!

Hey there! 

I love Diffsinger. I love labeling. I love testing hypotheses.

For a lot of vocal synth users, there's an easy solution! Just record your own voice!

Someone who was probably trying to troll commented this on one of my videos: 

Of course I was happy to be told I sound like a woman! I had it made up in my mind that my high range sounded like SpongeBob SquarePants. I don't like Lois's voice, but, you know, girl. (Note: I am a cis woman. When I was younger I basically spoke just like Chris-Chan. I overcorrected really, really hard.)

I'm working on two data sets using my voice because I have the recordings and why not? 

But what I would really like is to find someone to record for me! 

Hey, where are Franz and Minha?

 So, I felt like I should address this.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Franz and Minha were never alters. I called them Tulpas, though that phrasing can be seen as problematic.

I had no access to those characters because for a good while, I've been in a relatively stable place. I thought that the personality that had access to those characters only came out during times of high stress.

Well, apparently not! I am that personality again despite life being good. However, I am doing everything I can to not access them. 

Disconnected AdSense!

I am now legally disabled and must report all earnings to the government.

I have never made enough from ads to cash out anything, but the idea of even possibly making money from my work gave me a sense of pride, even if it was eleven cents. That sense of pride isn't worth the government possibly asking me why my blog has ads.

Hopefully, disconnecting AdSense will mean that there will be no more ads going forward :)

Just a quick update!

I have added a gadget in the side bar that will take you to the first posts in the fictional stories that will be featured on this blog. I don't believe it's accessible on the mobile site, but you are able to view the desktop site via either a link below the page navigation near the bottom of the page or your browser's settings.

There isn't much to say about the majority of UTAUs, and I love writing fiction more than anything else. So, I combined my love of UTAU and my love of writing into one place!

Thank you all for nearly 30k views!

I was a big dummy - Multi-pitch CVVC banks are broken by the automatic button.

 Hi there! I'm on mobile at the moment, but I felt it was important to make this announcement.

Almost every single time I complained about a Multi-pitch CVVC bank being broken, it wasn't the bank's fault. I had left the automatic button in shareware utau on at all times as that button automatically converts CV to VCV and shows exactly what samples is playing. Really useful!

However, it breaks banks that include VC samples. In a single pitch bank, you don't notice as what it does as it just gives up and refuse to apply a suffix. With Multi-pitch, especially when every sample has a suffix, that means stuff just doesn't play.

With the number of articles on the blog, I have no idea how many places I've made this mistake. If I find an article where I messed up, I will edit it to point out the mistake. However, like I said, I have no idea what articles have the issue. Articles posted after this may have the issue, as I have articles written and scheduled until 2022.

I will try to do better in the future!

Hiatus Over!

Hey guys! I have a confession to make. I had no idea how long this hiatus had been going on for. I had been focusing on my YouTube channel so hard, I forgot to work on the blog. It was mostly because I knew I was safe until the end of November. I didn't realize that I literally had let this blog rot since mid-August.

whoops

That being said, my YouTube hiatus started just one month later.

I upped a video I made about tracing after this, but it doesn't really count

In general, I used this time to take a hiatus from life in general. I felt really frustrated in general that things weren't coming together as I had planned. I had a Patreon, I had a ko-fi. Nothing on the money front other than one friend feeling sorry for me. I had my English list and people promising to record it, but I still only had Cynpoids to play with. (And two banks that I recorded, but I'm not the biggest fan of my voice in UTAU.) As a note, one person promised to record, but got sick. I don't hold that against them, and I'm still vibrating over how happy I am that they are going to record tripitch English for me.

Why I Set Up a Patreon and What It Means

Why am I asking for donations?? Is Wiki Wednesday at risk?!

Why I Set Up a Patreon and What It Means

So, you might have noticed the little message at the top of the blog. I set up a Patreon!

Before I get started, I want to make one thing super clear: Wiki Wednesday and Forgotten Friday will go on no matter how few donations I get! I write those because if a time traveling version of me was plopped down in the present day, I would want those articles.

When I was younger, I kind of treated UTAUs like Pokemon. I wanted to fill up each Pokedex as much as possible, resulting in projects like my 100 UTAU Koe Chorus. A resource that would help me fill up my UTAdex and let me hear samples to decide if I want them on my team? YES.

With the fact that my two main series will not be held hostage out of the way, the Patreon isn't just for this blog, but it is primarily made because of the blog.

I'll break it down a bit. If I were to avoid multi-pitch banks and appends, I could probably write both the Wiki and Forgotten article in about two hours per week. That's just eight hours of work, and under $60 per month that I'd be missing out on if my time was worth $7.25. $60 is a lot when you're low income, but it's a loss I'm happy to take if it means that time traveler Mae is happy. 

The issue is when I go beyond that minimum. In the Patreon, I make clear that the work will be based on what donors ask for. It just works out that the minimum for each of those three projects (in-depth UTAU tutorials, investigations, and MMD tutorials) is five hours. (I've spent up to ten hours on investigations before - there are some collective with an insane amount of UTAUs. I've also spent up to ten hours on LearnMMD articles, and that's not including supplementary videos.)

I'm not looking to make a fortune making these videos and articles. All I need to make this venture financially viable is roughly $35 per month for one "extended" bit of content, and I have a feeling that is enough for most people. For me to produce the work weekly as opposed to monthly, it would take $145 a month.

The reason I set up the Patreon now, whereas I was just happy doing everything for free before, is simply for the same reason I stopped Investigations to begin with. When you're low income, life throws you curve-balls. Just because one month you think everything is looking up, the next month everything may fall apart. I need to spend my time on things that are practical, because the thing my family was holding out hope for ended up not happening. 

If anyone donates, I will be extremely grateful and figure out a way to shout each of you out! Even if I don't get up to that $35 mark, I'll do my best to make my donors happy.

Investigations are being suspended until I have more free time.

Hi there! I'm not going to use any of the fancy SEO stuff I learned at LearnMMD. I'm just going to jump right into it.

Thanks to the wonders of post scheduling, it has seemed like I've been consistently churning out articles. Sadly, that is quite far from the truth. A lot has happened with my physical and mental health, and money issues are on the horizon.

I really considered just giving up on the blog. But then, I got approved for AdSense! Losing AdSense on my YouTube really messed with me and caused me to just kind of stop making stuff. Believe me, in the entire time I had AdSense on my YouTube channel, I made just over $30. Because it's beneath their threshold for paying out, Google just owes me $30. It wasn't about the money - it was the idea that what I made had some monetary value, even if it was just ten cents. (As a note, I don't think any AdSense ads are showing up on my blog, regardless of if "Show Ads on my Blog" is ticked and the "gadgets" show up. No earnings yet.)

So, I didn't want to give up on my blog. However, I needed to find a way to maintain the blog with less free time. 

Less Fluff.

I like writing. I really, really like writing. I especially love the chance to tell a story. However, that's not the purpose of this blog. The purpose of this blog is to showcase obscure UTAUs, not to listen to story time. If I cut down on just trying to say something and get closer to an austere "Look. Listen. Download." aesthetic, I'll be able to pump out more articles. It hurts my creative soul to do that, but I am fully aware that if my creative soul was particularly profitable, I would actually have time to be as fluffy as possible. 

This also means using the same UST over and over again. I'll be on the lookout for something new, though.

All that being said, every really weird and bad decision I continue to make is because no one leaves comments or sends me an at on Twitter telling me to stop doing those things. 

No More Investigations (For Now)

Investigations are legitimately my favorite part of this blog. Instead of presenting one UTAU, you're presenting an entire little universe. My second favorite is another Monday feature: recovered UTAUs. Investigations are long and take a lot of time, and there are only so many UTAUs that can be recovered. As my free time gets more sparse, I can't take the time to do my favorite thing.

Of course, I will have stretches of time where I've got no pressing matters in my life. During that time, I will be able to return to investigations. Instead of displacing a Wiki Wednesday, I'll just post it up on Monday as a bonus article. If I ever win the lottery and have nothing but free time, I will for sure resume investigations at once.

Still Two Articles a Week

There will still be two articles a week, unless there are three articles. Unless I mess up the scheduling, you can always expect one article on Wednesday and one on Friday. Monday articles will just randomly pop up when time allows for an investigation or another ancient UTAU is found reuploaded. 

That's all!

I hope you guys stick around even without the investigations. I'll get right to work writing and rendering so that there will be a consistent output. 

I'm really grateful to everyone who reads my blog :) Thank you <3