The first time I saw Miku was through this video I saw on Youtube:
What popped into my mind was "wait... what? just who is this girl swinging this leek around?"
That sparked my curiosity which later not just made me a fan of Miku but also of this revolutionary technology.
So just who exactly is this girl? Is she from an anime or a cartoon? A mere gif image? For those that have not yet heard of her, she is Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid created by Crypton Future Media. Nope, she's still not an anime character, to be precise, she's a persona created for a Singing Synthesizer program called the Vocaloid Software. The Vocaloid Software is a program that enables users to make the program "sing" their songs for them. For example, one only need to input lyrics of a certain song into the program, adjust the pitches / tone / length to sing that particular note etc, and woola, you just made the program sing your very own song!
For each Vocaloid, such as Miku herself, she has her own special voice bank, with the voice data provided by a real singer. For Miku, her voice comes from a seiyuu, Saki Fujita. As Miku is a Japanese vocaloid, she isn't actually capable of pronouncing english words clearly, which later versions of her started to improve on that, until today's latest version 3 of Hatsune Miku which has her english capabilities enhanced.
For some people who hear Miku for the very first time, what commonly comes out of their mouth was that this singer's songs are all auto-tuned! Well, duh... This is a computer program singing, not a real person.
Then the next question would be, just how popular is she?
Hatsune Miku was mainly made popular over Nico Nico Douga, where people started uploading their own songs, sung by Miku, which then later included Youtube as well and Miku's popularity started climbing. Some of her more famous songs include:
World is Mine
Love is War
Melt
and the more latest few such as
Senbonzakura
Secret Police
Tell Your World
Not only did people contributed to the songs under Hatsune Miku, Miku has since made a difference to many. These are 2 examples for which I'm most familiar with: huke and Supercell.
Ryo from Supercell took notice of this character and got inspired to make a song about Black Rock Shooter which later became a hit among many and BRS started getting popular spawning an original video animation or OVA for short, a TV anime series, a game and many other merchandises. Through the song, huke's illustrations caught the eyes of many as well and he was later drawing for the original characters of Nitroplus's Steins;Gate which also became famous for its amazing art and storyline and later spawned many merchandises as well. The song "Black Rock Shooter" was also one of the first few Miku songs that I've heard and I would say that I've waited many years before BRS got noticed by animation companies and decided to make an OVA for her. Boy was I happy at that time. I honestly wasn't expecting BRS to be adapted as an animation but was hoping that it would. And it did :)
Supercell is a doujin music group and consisted of singers, illustrators and song writers. The group started out by making music through Miku and released their first Miku album in 2008, which consisted of Melt, Black Rock Shooter, World is Mine, Love is War and many others. Sony Music later took notice of them after their songs became very popular in Nico Nico. Supercell later started to stream into the music industry as a actual music band, not only producing music with actual vocalists but more Miku songs as well. Most of the 1st few Miku songs that I've heard were composed by Ryo from Supercell so I guess thats why Supercell has that special touch with Miku to me.
It was only just in 2009 that Miku started to appear on the screens, and that was where the world got introduced to this "virtual concert". A projection of Miku moving about, singing and dancing along as though she was performing in a real concert while having a real band perfoming her music at the back. It was a revolutionary technological breakthrough that no one knew that even such virtual concerts could have such popularity. Later in that same year, Miku performed in her very first overseas concert here in Singapore at AFA 2009. It was a very short clip, wasn't an actual projection screen or a hologram-like concert, but nonetheless, it was amazing to see Miku "programmed" for Singapore viewers! My next concert experience with Miku was in 2011 where it was the real hologram-projection-screen concert that was made famous in Japan and they were bringing it to Singapore at AFA 2011. Nonetheless I bought the tickets which got sold out pretty fast, the management even had to open up more tickets during the actual day to accommodate more Miku fans!
I can still remember that day where I was frantically swinging my lightstick around throughout the whole concert and it was really an amazing experience.
Some people might ask that why pay so much to watch a concert where there is no actual person singing? Or why do you like such virtual songs? To me, Miku is more than just a virtual singer but instead, I see it as a separate music industry and a platform for many new music lovers who have the talent of composing songs but lack the ability to sing or to find someone to sing for them. Miku has also been a common interest and a common talking point amongst many with more and more songs appearing in Nico Nico and on Youtube and people listen and share those songs, making more and more people take notice of this amazing singer. Google Chrome took notice of Miku's popularity and made her a mascot:
In that video, we see Miku as a interconnection for people all over the world, connecting people. For a Miku song, a person in Japan could have composed the song, another person in another country could have come up with the dance step and another, her song video animation and another, possibly the background music. Even though they might not know each other but with Miku as the central pillar, many contributes to each other, creating this wonderful interconnected world of Vocaloid songs. To me, Miku is the core of many original songs, some may sound weird, some might sound slightly off-paced, some might sound so-so and some might sound catchy but all in all, they are all original songs produced by music lovers and I appreciate listening to each and every of those songs. For those who have yet to get in touch with Hatsune Miku, now is the time to do so! :)
And to end off, here's a clip of Miku's live concert in Taiwan:
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