Cover of Hatsune Miku DVD

Hatsune Miku (初音ミク) is the first version of Yamaha’s Vocaloid2 Character Vocal series, an suite of advanced computer music programs that synthesize singing in Japanese.

I won’t go into much detail as to how it works but here’s the short version:

Vocaloid2 works by sampling the voice of a character voice actor/actress (seiyuu in Japanese), phoneme by phoneme, then using wavetable manipulation technology (not unlike that in wavetable MIDI systems) to turn it into a virtual “instrument”, with a piano-roll type interface for inputting the tone and lyrics.

Anyway, it’s not perfect, but very manageable, and lots of users (especially at Nico Nico Douga) have used it to create their own versions of popular songs (with varying degrees of success).

I have a copy of Hatsune Miku, but honestly I haven’t had that much time to play around with it. However, lately, I have had a bit of free time, and so I tried my hand in making my own “Miku song”.

The song is “Fly Me To The Moon”, composed by Bart Howard in the 1950′s, and popularized by Frank Sinatra (and more lately, by the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, as the show’s ending song).

For the instrumental backing track, I used a MIDI from Yoshikazu Hirai and rendered it using a Yamaha S-YXG50v4 software synth.

I then placed both the Miku rendered vocals and the instrumental backing track in SoundForge, and did some timing work.

Here is the finished work.

Cheers!

P.S. If you want to hear how good Yamaha XG MIDI sounds, try this.

It’s “Armageddon”, from Evangelion’s VOX album. The MIDI was created by a Japanese professional computer musician known as Taku-K, and edited by me (for XG compatibility, as well as some chorus and reverb tweaks).

I’d like to give more background info on my primary hobby – computers.

Right now, our family has 5 computers at home, and I work on 2 in the office.

Primary workstation: Koiishi
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Type: HP Pavilion dv6606 portable

Specifications:
-Intel Core2 Duo Mobile T7500 2.2GHz
-4GB (2x2GB) Qimonda DDR2 800MHz
-320GB 7200rpm WD Scorpio Black SATA
-nVidia GeForce 8400M GS 128MB (at 600/700MHz, 8600M GS levels)
-8x DVD+-RW LightScribe
-15.4″ WXGA ClearView+
-Altec Lansing speakers driven by Realtek ALC889A
-Windows XP SP3, Windows 2003 Server R2 SP2, Ubuntu 8.04 (triple boot)

Desktop: Wingzero
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Type: 2003-era Athlon XP 24/7 desktop

Specifications:
-AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.8ghz (at 2.2ghz)
-1GB (2x512MB) Geil DDR400
-ECS N2U400A nForce2 Ultra board
-120GB (40GB + 80GB Maxtor 7200′s)
-Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600XT OC
-20x DVD+-RW LightScribe
-17″ AOC 7VLR+
-Logitech X-530′s driven by nVidia SoundStorm audio
-Windows XP SP3

My sister’s laptop: Taeji
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Type: Toshiba Satellite 3005

Specifications:
-Intel Mobile Pentium III 1.13GHz
-640MB 133MHz SDRAM
-40GB 5400rpm IDE drive
-nVidia GeForce 2 Go 32MB
-4x DVDROM/16x CDRW
-14″ XGA TFT
-Windows XP SP3

My tita’s laptop: Laure
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Type: Asus eeePC 701 mod

Specifications:
-Intel Celeron M 353 900MHz (at 900MHz)
-1GB Kingston DDR2 533
-4GB SSD
-Intel GMA 900
-(external) Sony DRU-510A DVDRW
-7″ WVGA TFT
-Windows XP Embedded SP2

My tito’s laptop: USD
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Type: Neo Endura M360SL

Specifications:
-Intel Celeron M 1.4GHz
-512MB Transcend DDR400
-40GB 5400rpm IDE drive
-SiS Mirage2 graphics
-8x DVDROM / 24x CDRW
-14″ XGA TFT
-Windows XP SP3

Office PC: mark.bgn.server
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Type: 2007-era Workstation

Specifications:
-Intel Core2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz (at 2.4Ghz permanently)
-2GB (2x1GB) Kingston DDR2 800 (at 889MHz permanently)
-MSI 965P Neo-F board
-250GB 7200rpm SATA drive
-nVidia GeForce 7300GS 256MB
-18x LG DVD+-RW
-17″ LG 1730S Flatron LCD + Viewsonic PJ350 projector (dualview)
-Altec Lansing 220 speakers driven by Realtek ALC883
-Windows XP SP3 and Fedora Core 7 (dual boot)

Test bed: Nehalem.BGN.Server
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Type: 2008-era test bed

Specifications:
-Intel Core i7 920 Engineering Sample 2.66GHz (at 3.36GHz)
-6GB (6x1GB) Kingston DDR3 1600MHz
-Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard
-2x 640GB WD Caviar Black in SATA RAID 0
-Palit Sonic ATI Radeon HD4870 512MB
-22x LG DVD+-RW/LS
-17″ LG 1730S Flatron LCD
-Windows 2008 Server, Windows 7 Beta 2 and Fedora Core 10 (triple boot)

A little story about our machines:

Some time ago, when Globe Telecom was connecting DSL’s in our place, a customer service representative called our telephone line, and my mom answered.
Since my mom is a non-techie person, she just answered the questions simply and no-nonsensically.
During the course of their conversation, she was asked “may computer po ba kayo sa bahay?” (do you have a computer at home?), to which she answered “ahh, meron. 6 pa nga e” (oh yes, we have 6, in fact) [Back then we still had another extra PC, also at home]. The customer service representative replied “6 po? ano po ba yan, internet cafe?” (6? what is this, an internet cafe?).
Our family got a laugh out of it, but then again, now that I’ve talked to a lot more people – I realize that, despite the low cost of PCs, there are still lots of families (even in Metro Manila) that don’t have a computer. No wonder the customer service representative couldn’t believe it – it’s just not “normal”.

Side note: Mr. Naoki Wakai (our Japanese consultant), alone, has more laptops than we do.

I finally decided to start blogging (after years of saying that I would NEVER blog).

By the way, for those who don’t know, I’m Mark William Co Despi (マク　ウィリアム　コ　デスピ for our Japanese friends), a 23 year old (as of the date of posting) BS Computer Engineering graduate from UP Diliman.

I currently work as a Tech Associate at Narra Venture Capital and as the Chief Engineer at Xepto Computing (our incubated company within NarraVC).

I’m also a member of the UP Computer Networks Laboratory , and also work at times in Stratpoint Technologies.

My interests mainly lie in embedded Linux and thin client computing. Network technology, audio systems, overclocking, and hardcore computer gaming also keep me awake at night.

As for more “normal” pursuits, I am also into anime and manga (Japanese animation and comic books for the uninformed), and am a voracious reader (we have a mini-library of over one thousand books at home).

Now that I have introduced myself, please stay tuned for current updates to my blog. I’ll do my best to keep it a mixture of techie and non-techie posts, to make it appeal to a wider range of readers.

See you!