unhappy refrain

i got into vocaloid in my early teenage years, probably about the same way most people did: through watching the PV for world is mine on youtube. everything kind of spiralled from there.

talking about my history with vocaloid is hard to do since it's so interwoven with a lot of embarrassing teen memories and things i'd honestly rather forget. it was the first type of music i got really into, so it meant a lot as a way to explore a lot of muddled feelings. at first i was mostly into cute upbeat songs like melt but as a reflection of everything going on in my life i ended up particularly drawn towards darker songs. i was particularly fixated on love is war for a while, but it was meltdown that was my absolute favourite song, and still is one of my favourites among many others.

things were kind of statically miserable for a good while, so my next fixation was on wowaka's songs, particularly unhappy refrain. i especially recommend the rin and len cover, which i spent many an unhappy afternoon blowing out my ears with. that song has a special place in my heart, as you can tell from me theming the layout around it, and i'm grateful to have found some comfort in it during a time of unprecented teenage Angst and misery, so thanks, wowaka.

while other stops along the way included irony and ERROR, my period of unhappiness ended with an edgy phase, thanks to circusP and his song iNSaNiTY. after this i was old enough to be branching out into more suggestive and/or overtly sexual songs, and my next love was sweet devil. also, while it was much earlier that i first discovered it, magnet deserves an honourable mention here for possibly being my first exposure to the fact that lesbians exist. i was transfixed.

from this point on, my obsession kind of faded to something more lowkey, as i expanded my music taste outside vocaloid. it was weird time, and i've tried to just focus on the most influential songs to me without getting into too much unpleasant detail, but i'm glad i had the music of all these producers to turn to, whether for comfort, distraction, or for self-expression. i still listen to vocaloid music pretty regularly and have a lot of more recent faves too.

while i love all the main vocaloid characters, i've never really been able to choose a favourite! i think that's part of what makes vocaloid so interesting to be into, since every voicebank has its own distinct sound (with so much variety between producers and between appends) and in terms of thinking of them as characters, they all have so many different interpretations that come with different personalities, traits and designs.

i don't keep up that much with modern vocaloid stuff so i'm out of my depth when it comes to how many voicebanks are out there these days, but i can talk about the classic vocaloid characters. out of the main crypton vocaloids that are used in the project diva games (miku, rin, len, luka, kaito and meiko) i tend to end up listening to more songs using miku and rin than the others, though i really have no preference based on voice, just how they're used and the type of song they're in. design-wise though, i think luka has some of the best looks next to miku.

other favourites outside that include gumi, gakupo, SF-A2 miki and IA. really, most of my favourites are either fake vocaloids/derivatives like yowane haku and akita neru or UTAU characters, which i'll get into below! i love haku's looks in project diva and i'm so glad they made her, neru and teto playable. ritsu next pls

as you can tell from the layout, i love the project diva games! i didn't own any sony consoles until very recently, so the first one i ever played was project mirai DX for the 3DS. the chibi look is a little bit terrifying but i played the hell out of it, i think the highest score i ever got on hard was for senbonzakura. eventually i got around to downloading a PSP emulator to play the original project diva and project diva 2nd. trying to navigate the menus in japanese was a struggle but i love the UI of those games and all the different outfits you can choose for each module!

i was delighted when they announced project diva: mega mix for the switch, and i have so many hours in it, mostly spent playing unhappy refrain on hard mode and picking haku in her gothic outfit for every song. i even got my boyfriend into it when he last visited, he played a lot of popipo. i find the overall look of the character models kind of a let down, since for years i would watch videos of the playstation games and got really attached to the way the models looked in those games. i know the switch hardware can be pretty limiting, but i feel a little bit cheated that they rereleased the game on PC with an option to change the visual style to look like the PS4 game.

my problems with the newest game aside, now that i own a PS3, i hope to buy some of the older games and finally get to play through those! i also hope to buy a PSP at some point, partially for metal gear, but also so that i can finally play the original games on the actual hardware. maybe by the time i get one my japanese will be good enough to understand those menus a bit better lol.

i was fated to be an UTAU fan from the moment i first heard a teto song, i think. for some reason she was just cooler, both in personality and looks and in the fact that she was free, lower quality, and yet people were still making amazing covers with her! i was obviously never able to buy a copy of the vocaloid program back in the day but when i found out UTAU existed and was available for free, along with all the voicebanks i wanted, i had to download it. i was pretty clueless at first and it took me a good while to set up, but i've basically never looked back since.

it's almost been ten years since i started using it, and while i don't ever aspire to be a producer, or even a big name in making covers, it's been lots of fun for personal use (with a few things i've shared online). i have a huge directory of USTs on my PC for messing around with, and a good amount of voicebanks too. over time i've gone from using existing USTs to making some of my own for songs i couldn't find any for, as well as making voicebanks of my own - even a VCV one. i'm not amazing at either of these things but it's really fun to work on, and hopefully one day i'll finish and share the covers i've been working on with my very own USTs.

UTAU is just infinitely more fascinating to me than vocaloid, partially the simplicity and the ease of access, but also the incredibly high quality voicebanks and interesting characters all just put out there for free. the voicebanks were probably the thing that drew me to UTAU the most - like i said, it was teto at first that made me realise UTAU existed, but it was ritsu, and all the amazing covers people have made using them, that got me to download it. when i first started using it i used miko a lot, and then got drawn really hard to tei - and recently i've been using a lot of ruko!

i love that UTAU isn't just about the big name VIPPERloid voicebanks though, and that anyone can make a voicebank (and thus, a whole new character) and share it for anyone to use. the collaborative nature of UTAU means a lot to me, and even though it'll never be as advanced as the latest vocaloid release, and even if i'll be fighting with its clunkiness until the end of time, it'll always be my program of choice and keep inspiring new covers or voicebanks from me!