Reed College Supplemental Essay

During Paideia, I would teach students about Vocaloids--a voice-synthesizing program that enables anyone to create a singing engine based on their voice samples.

To create a Vocaloid, the recordings of a person's voice are first taken. Creating a vocaloid is a long and arduous process, and the time taken varies based on the language the Vocaloid is recorded. For Japanese VOCALOIDs, a voicebank may be produced within four hours, while English voicebanks can take from one week to up to a month to record all their samples, due to the size of the vocal library required.

Then, the voice samples are processed through the Vocaloid software, autotuned and adjusted so that whatever data is inputted flows well and sounds like a realistic human voice.

Although the earlier versions of Vocaloid were known for sounding robotic, the quality has improved over time. With enough skill with the tuning engine one can make the sound of a Vocaloid indistinguishable from a real human voice.

At first, Vocaloids were created to preserve the voices of popular singers, retaining their sound by processing previous recordings, but now Vocaloids are popular on their own and enable anyone can write songs without requiring a singer or cover songs as they wish if they lack singing skills.

The software of Vocaloid has proven to be chiefly instrumental because it enables its users to make and synthesize the process of singing by typing their preferred melody and lyrics. Voice actors or singers who are interested in this can utilize the synthesizing technology with their vocals which are especially recorded. In the pursuit of creating a song, the voice actor or an amateur singer should first input the melody and lyrics. During this process, an interface resembling a piano roll is used to input the selected lyrics and melody. The Vocaloid software can further make changes in the stress of pronunciations, and it can also add many effects, for instance, vibration. The software is also renowned in the domain of music because it can also alter the dynamics or tone of the voice.

I will also teach the students of the Reed Community that for whom this technology of Vocaloids is intended for. Basically, this software is intended for professional musicians and singers. Light computer music users can also avail this software during their leisure time. This technology has had a significant cultural impact. Many musical groups from Japan, for example, Livetune from the Toy’s Factory and Sony Music Entertainment Japan also released their blockbuster songs and featured Vocaloid as an essential pat of their song’s vocals. For backup singer vocals and sound samples, legendary artists such as Mike Oldfield have also made use of Vocaloids.

Considering the details of vocal nuances and meticulous articulation, Vocaloid has also been updated a lot of times. There are many techniques used in this software which are also applied in the actual singing. In addition to this, Vocaloid also covers a wide range of different languages including Korean, Spanish, Japanese, English and Chinese.