VOCALOID 3 Tutorial – The whole interface on a basic level

VOCALOID 3 Tutorial
The whole interface on a basic level

Hello, I’m going to show you how to create wonderful songs of your own or a cover song by creating good structured lyrics in VOCALOID 3. I have been fiddling with the program and watching tutorials so now its time to summarize what I’ve learnt! Hopefully this will help you, especially for the hard of hearing if you have trouble with sounds like I did.

Creating notes and how to structure them

This is the interface of VOCALOID 3, on the left side there is a keyboard. Higher the keyboard, higher the pitch of the voice, lower the keyboard, lower the pitch. Usually, you would start in the middle to begin.
Now the pencil tool above can create vocals at a note, you can click on the keyboard notes so you can hear an “a” in Japanese or an “ooh” English sound that will determine what your vocals will sound like.

You can create vocals by clicking on the boxes and dragging them, making it as short or as long as you like. You can make them shorter by clicking on Setting(S) above at the top, and Part/Note Length(N) to make them shorter by fraction.

You can see that the bar shows its default, you can change it by writing in Japanese with your English keyboard, it will give response to you even if you have a Japanese keyboard or not. just write in Japanese characters separately in each box such as these;

a,i,u,e,o the five vowels. Sa, shi, su, se so. Na, ni, nu, ne no. and so on, there are 49 in total but there are 110 syllables in Japanese while English has 8000 so leaning the language isn’t hard as an English person. English is typed in word by word, sometimes the word may not work so you’ll have to write the words in by syllable each box.

Phonemes

What is a phoneme? In the picture below, I have typed in “like” in brackets next to it shows what the word sounds like, so if you type in the word “me”, it shows (m i) so you would change the “me” to get the “e” sound. Fiddle with the words to get the phoneme sounds you want to make your vocaloid sound better. This is how professionals use VOCALOID to create the human like voices such as Mitchie M’s Freely Tomorrow.

Sometimes if you write in a word and get this phoneme (u:), that is going to give you an “u” sound, you may have misspelt the word so get a dictionary. Or you will have to do it in syllables like I said before.

Making the software sing

Creating the notes and making the lyrics flow nicely to meet your expectations can be a bit tricky. But what I recommend is to sing the lyrics yourself to see what words go high or low to determine what note and how long that note to be. That helps a lot so practice and listen carefully to the lyrics.

The Mixer

The mixer in View(V), Mixer(X) can make the singer sound like its on a microphone or a karaoke like sound by using the gain. Also if you put in a WAV file , it will also make the music louder or softer. To put in a WAV file, click on File(F),Import(I),Wave(W) if it doesn’t play you will have to go to Settings(S), Preference(P) and change the sampling rate to match the WAV file in order to play it.

Tracks

You can add tracks by clicking on Track(T) and Add Track(A). On your second track you can make more lyrics in the background even when the first track is singing, it will sing the second one as well at the same time!You can change the singer by right clicking on the musical editor window, click on Singer(I)and select your singer.

Vibrato Property

By double clicking on the vibrato which is just under your vocal boxes, you can change the vibrato to fast, extreme, normal, slight or no vibrato at all! It will change the way the software is singing. You can also make the vibrato longer or shorter by adjusting it below the box by dragging it or when changing the vibrato, you can change it to make it higher and then halt it or then lowering it down when it sings.

VEL, BRE, OPE ETC

Down below is VEL, DYN, BRE, BRI ,CLE, OPE, GEN, POR, PIT, PBS. They mean;

Velocity – Your boxes made, you can cut the green lines down to make them softer.
Dynamic – To make the voice more dynamic.
Breath – To make your voice breathe! If you make it breathe in one gasp for too long, the singer may have trouble breathing!
Brightness – To make the voice brighter.
Clearness – To make the voice more clear.
Openness – To make the voice more open.
Gender – Higher the gender, the happier the singer is, lower the gender, the sadder (honestly makes the voice sound quite drunk!)
POR – To make the voice sound more relaxed and makes the notes flow.
Pitch – Makes it sing louder or softer.
PBS – It makes it sound more human, like the voice really is singing well with a spirit!

You can use your pencil or line tool to create bends or lines to make the singer sound good, this is really good for making the voice sound like a real human!

To learn more, you can read the VOCALOID 3 Owners Manual here: http://ja.scribd.com/doc/122127073/VOCALOID-3-Owner-s-Manual

Create, fiddle with the program, make songs, ENJOY! I hope this helped you