Virtual Vocalist Hatsune Miku On Letterman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA5pIpdQEr0

Virtual Vocalist Hatsune Miku ‘performed’ on Late night with David Letterman earlier this week – taking the show on a detour into a William Gibson world, where millions of people worship virtual popstars.

If you’re not familiar with Hatsune Miku, ‘she’ is a virtual popstar, worshipped by millions.

Her vocals are created using Yamaha’s Vocaloid vocal synthesizer, a technology that lets you create virtual vocals, based on phonemes and pitches. The original samples are from a human vocalist, but the actual vocal is completely synthesized.

As a ‘virtual idol’, Miku ‘performs’ as a projected anime character, with live accompaniment.

According to Miku’s developers, her name translates roughly to “first sound from the future”.

As Letterman notes, it’s ‘like being on Willy Nelson’s bus…”

22 thoughts on “Virtual Vocalist Hatsune Miku On Letterman

  1. “Pop Will Eat Itself” made flesh. What actually begins to bug me about this, as with the tidal wave of indistinguishable trance, is the narrow style. I think there could be some creative potential to it if only people would stop emitting ONLY forgettable, formulaic music. Even the animation is generic Sailor Poon. *YAWN* I want to hear this applied to something original or even a bit classical. The software itself is impressive, but so what? Someone like Peter Gabriel could make this really shine, but when its clear that someone TYPED IN the lyrics that are “sung,” it seems terribly removed from real creativity. Its a form of Instant Milli Vanilli. Cue the haters, but it comes across like Auto-Tune’s retarded cousin.

  2. generic pop, generic anime visuals… imposible to fell a connection with all these commercial product. Its the safe zone of hyper-commercial everything. Gorillaz is by far the best example of these virtual concept and idea with quality music and live performance.

  3. As irritating as this music is, I have to ask, why bother getting bent out of shape about it, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the styles of music and sound design this forum generally focuses on. It is pop music for the kids…….and that is all, at some point someone will subvert this technology and explore the deeper possibilities, anyway, is something like this not what Peter Christopherson used for vocals in his ultimate project, soi song or whatever…

  4. I love how after all this effort her graphics are all greenish blue and she’s *pitchy*. I mean come on girl, you’re digital, at least sing properly.

    Also, did you guys notice: This song is in *ENGLISH*. **Enunciate**, for frigs sake. SMH.

  5. The reason Hatsune Miku looks strange is because she is a motion captured 3D holographic computer-generated character being projected onto a large screen on stage. The character is controlled in real time by a dancer behind the stage and her voice is generated by the Vocaloid software. Technically she is quite advanced for a stage effect and apparently quite a big hit in Japan.

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