"Hideki Kenmochi, yamaha+ Division"

Please tell us a little about "Vocaloid 3" going on sale this year.

It's been four years since Vocaloid 2 was released. Regarding the singing voice synthesis, we've improved it to the point that at first it should be hard to tell whether it's a human voice or a synthesized voice.

Specifically, what kind of technology is it?

Regarding voice synthesis, the pronunciation is natural and smooth even with units that were hard to pronounce (vowel-consonent-vowel). In addition, in previous versions there was a noticeable change when the key changed, and this sounded unnatural. We have revised this problem to make the changes in keys sound more natural.

The software was one that sang melodies, so there was a need to have a separate DAW or other software to create the accompanying music.

That's correct. I've heard stories where people purchased Vocaloid and did not know what to do with it, so they made one nursery song and never touched it again. I've heard stories like that. As a new function, we have installed a playback function for accompanying music (audio track). Audio data for one stereo and one mono track can be played, and a song can be created while listening to the audio track and the synthesized singing at the same time. In other words, the accompanying music and synthesized singing can be listened to and adjusted at the same time, allowing the user to insert effective breaths, and effects such as reverb can be processed all on the editor.

With Vocaloid 3, there is no need for other sequencing software?

With Vocaloid 3, creation of music with the song and accompanying music can be completed. Because the "VST Host" function has been added, users don't have to export their voices to WAV files once to adjust them on DAWs, and can work within the software to produce their music more easily. For this reason, it's easy for people that have never used the software, or those who thought using it would be difficult. If users wanted to enjoy it on an individual basis, they could even use a Karaoke-version track sold on the market to enjoy Vocaloid in a whole new way by having it sing a Karaoke song.

So what are people who have been using Vocaloid going to do?

Of course they can still use it. Singer Libraries and the editor are separate, so libraries can be added with plug-in functions. It's kind of like a talent agency with a large pool of singing talent.

For many DTM music users, Apple computers are their main platform. Vocaloid was not very familiar to Mac users was it?

We have received many inquiries regarding this. We have provided iVOCALOID-VY1 for the iPad, and Vocalo Witter (former name: iVOCALOID-VY1t) for the iPhone. The synthesis engine itself has been confirmed to work on iOS, so we are hoping to provide this including the interface as soon as possible, in line with the Vocaloid 3 framework.

I heard there was going to be a Korean version of Vocaloid released.

In addition to the Japanese and English versions we have so far, we are adding Korean, Chinese and Spanish. With Singer Libraries of different languages, it becomes possible to synthesize singing in that language. In addition, the menu displays for "Vocaloid3 Editor" are localized to the languages they are used in, so we plan to add more languages in the future.

Please tell us about Vocaloid in the future.

Not only do we want to sell this product called Vocaloid, but we also want to spread the culture that has sprung out of the software. We would like to focus our efforts on spreading Vocaloid music, following up on our users and supporting music creation (seminars to develop Vocaloid Ps) including game/live show projects. In April we have established "Vocaloid Music Publishing" in response to requests from creators in order to provide a flexible management of copyrights. We hope to be able to improve the value and quality of the Vocaloid brand as a label and manager of copyrights.