I began revisiting the Rockman DASH (Mega Man Legends) series, watching (read "listening") some playthroughs and cutscenes to refresh my memory (I don't have the games anymore), trying to finally understand the plot. (Read the full article)
This is a follow up to my previous post, "Accessibility, and How I Began Using VOCALOID". Here I'd like to share my progress, as well as a few tips for any visually impaired user that eventually decides to use VOCALOID. (Read the full article)
It's something that became quite popular in the last few years, but I had no idea of what it was until 2011. I just knew it had to do with music, and for a while I had thought it was the name of a band (hahahaha)! But no. VOCALOID is a singing synthesis software, paid and proprietary, whose engine is developed by Yamaha. The voices are provided by real people, mostly actors or singers. Each voice is represented by a character. The most popular one is Hatsune Miku (I don't like her very much) but there are many others. VOCALOID runs on Windows and Mac.
For detailed information on all VOCALOID voicebanks available, visit the VOCALOID Wiki (which explains all this much better than me :P).
Examples of songs with VOCALOID:
UTAU (meaning "to sing" in Japanese), is the name of another singing synthesis program, however it was developed by a fan. It's also proprietary, but is free (technically it's a shareware, but one of the few "advantages" of paying are just some interface improvements and maybe access to earlier test versions before the "general public", but it works for free with no problems). The voices are also provided by real people, with the difference that anyone can record his/her own voice and put it in the program without relying on contracts, studios and professional singers. So it has much more available voicebanks than VOCALOID, but the downside is that the quality varies greatly depending on the recording quality, the voicebank settings, the intonation and the pronunciation of the person who made the recording. UTAU has a version for Windows, and also one for Mac called UTAU Synth.
Examples of songs with UTAU:
To learn more about UTAU, check out the UTAU Wiki.
Soon I began wanting to use the programs to make my own covers, and that was when the problems started. (Read the full article)
I added a new Pokemon section to the site, mostly to publish my music arrangements and the fan fic based audio dramas I already mentioned.(Read the full article)
It may not seem like it, but a lot happened after my last post:
I did an arrangement of another music from Pokemon Black & White.(Read the full article)
In November 2011, I went on a trip to Read the full article)
I did an arrangement of Team Plasma's theme music, from the games Pokemon Black & White.(Read the full article)
I decided to do an arrangement of the song "Happy Birthday to You" for my music teacher's birthday and, after much struggling, Read the full article)
I've never thought that Windows errors could be so interesting.(Read the full article)
SoX (Sound eXchange) is, as the author calls it, "the Swiss Army knife of sound processing programs". It is free, open source and runs under Windows, Mac and Linux.
SoX can play, record, convert, edit, split, join and apply various effects to audio files of many different formats. (Read the full article)