Vocaloid

Welcome to the Vocaloid/Vocal Synth Shrine! This is my most intense special interest, and I've been a superfan for over a decade now! Vocaloid has had a massive impact on my life, from career decisions to creative inspirations to blooming friendships and relationships. Because of the storied history I have with vocal synths, this will likely be the longest and most comprehensive shrine on the site.

What is Vocaloid? What are vocal synths?

If you have never heard of Vocaloid before, I'm honored to be the one to enlighten you! For a quick and dirty introduction, I'd start with this video. It packs a lot of information in a few minutes. Otherwise, if you just wanna keep reading, that's cool too.

Vocaloid is a vocal synthesizer product developed and released by Yamaha Corporation in 2004. Much like how you'd use a digital synthesizer to create sounds of a trumpet or a piano, these are made to mimic human singing. Using actual recordings of human voice actors or singers, these samples are then compiled into an individual library called a voicebank. To make the voicebank sing, users must input the lyrics and melody by placing each note on a piano roll interface, and lyrics are entered on each note. The software also allows changing of tone and pronunciation of syllables or adding vibrato. As of June 2025, there are six versions of the Vocaloid program, each one adding new features and voices. Vocaloid 1 only had support for English and Japanese, but Vocaloid 3 added support for Spanish, Chinese, and Korean as well. The most recent version of the software, Vocaloid 6, has added AI support for additional vocal clarity and dynamicism.

Vocaloid is not the only vocal synthesizer product on the market. Synthesizer V, Utau, CeVio, Crypton's NT, and Voisona are all similar softwares with their own quirks, benefits, and disadvantages. All of these programs, including Vocaloid, are vocal synths. Many people use Vocaloid as a catch-all term for all vocal synth software, and while this is technically incorrect, I am also guilty of this. If I am referring to things like "the Vocaloid community," I probably mean "the vocal synth community." If there is an important distinction that needs to be made for a certain synth, I'll try to specify wherever possible.

That being said, you might be wondering "What's the big deal? This is computer software. Sounds kinda boring." And in theory, it does sound a little nerdy. But what does attract many people isn't the actual softwares, but instead the mascots. Many of the voicebanks for these softwares are represented by anime character mascots. Having a character to visualize the voice can make the software seem much more realistic. What's a pop star's voice if she doesn't have a face to show off to a crowd? This brings us to...

Hatsune Miku

Hatsune Miku is the mascot character for the Hatsune Miku voicebank for the Vocaloid 2 engine. Released in 2007, she is not the first Vocaloid and not even the first one developed by Crypton Future Media. However, her release was cause for a sudden boom in popularity for Vocaloid. She is responsible for bringing Vocaloid into mainstream Internet circles, but mainstream music as a whole. She has grown to international fame, having concerts all over the world, collaborating with notable brands, thousands of pieces of merchandise, and being featured in commercials, animes, and talk shows. Fans cosplay her, play rhythm games featuring songs with her voice, draw fan art, and collect figures like any other popular anime character. And all without having a real personality or even single person behind her. She is software.

Rather than fans consuming content provided to them by just one person or company, most of the content of the Vocaloid community is created by the community itself. Anyone can make a song, animate an MV, or create art of Miku. According to Crypton, she is 16 years old, 158 centimeters tall, and has long blue turquoise pigtails. That is all the "canon" we have, and even then these can be flexible. She can be whatever or whoever you want. I've seen fan arts and cosplays Mikus with hijabis and transgender pride flags. There is official merchandise of Miku as a baby and a music video of Miku as an elderly woman. She is a blank slate of a character, which allows people from all walks of life to project onto her and interpret her however they feel. And the best part is Crypton is 100% cool with it.

Miku is the embodiment of the Vocaloid community and the creative power it holds. While her official concerts are put on by the companies responsible for her, every song that is performed was created by a different person. Every note and lyric is tuned by a different producer with their own tuning and instrumental style. Each piece of merchandise, official or fan made, is created by a unique artist. Everything is created by fans. Fans who love Miku and want to keep making her as real as she can be.

How Did You Get Into Vocaloid?

When I was 13, I was finally starting to have more access to YouTube via my iPod Touch. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to mainstream Internet things, as much of my childhood online was spent in kid-friendly spaces like Club Penguin, Animal Jam, and Webkinz, and flash game sites like Miniclip. Now with YouTube easily in-hand, I would watch hours of Good Mythical Morning and Warrior Cats fan animations. There was one video that would change everything.

Nyan Cat. I was a curious person who loved learning every little detail and bit of history about something I liked. Finding the Wikipedia article for the meme, a section was dedicated to the song used in the video.

"The original version of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" was uploaded by user "daniwell" to the Japanese video site Niconico on July 25, 2010. The song features the Vocaloid virtual singer Hatsune Miku. The Japanese word nya is onomatopoeic, imitating the call of a cat (equivalent to English "meow"). The song was later included in the rhythm game Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F, released by Sega in August 2012. On January 30, 2011, a user named "Momomomo" uploaded a cover of "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" featuring the UTAU voice Momone Momo. The voice source used to create the Momone Momo voice was a Japanese woman named Momoko Fujimoto."

From there, the link to Hatsune Miku was set in motion. I began looking into her. Who was this blue-haired girl? I looked up the song, but why does it sound different? What does a computer have to do with all this? This looks really confusing...

Thankfully, another set of YouTube videos would help me enter this rabbit hole. Enter googoo888.

Googoo888 was a YouTube channel that posted edits of various MVs from "Hatsune Miku: Project Diva," a series of rhythm games that featured songs using Miku and the other Crypton Vocaloids: Kagamine Rin and Len, Megurine Luka, MEIKO, and KAITO. These videos were edited to show off the different costumes that can be used in the game, but for me, this was my first true exposure to the world of Vocaloid music. I still didn't quite understand what Vocaloid was, but I liked Miku and her voice. Her songs were cool! I remember listening to "Secret Police" on repeat in my algebra class, with the screen of my iPod Touch flipped over so no one see what I was listening to.

When I was a freshman in high school, my family moved towns again, making this the fourth school of my childhood. Every move had been harder than the last, and moving gets especially harder the older you get. However, this information is crucial to understanding why Vocaloid has intertwined with my soul as much as it has.

How Did Vocaloid Influence You?

Vocaloid has influenced me in various aspects, so I'd need to divide this section into a few parts.

Art, Animation, and the Drive to Create

Many Vocaloid songs are accompanied by their own music videos. Some are fully animated, some just use a single piece of art, and some are just text. As someone who was beginning to dip their toes into the world of anime, these unique MVs drew me in. I'd redraw screencaps or different modules found in these videos in an effort to develop my art style. The illustrators, editors, and animators of the vocal synth community continues to be one of my biggest inspirations and drives for me to create. I am now a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.

Character Design and the Inception of "Chimera Heart"

"Chimera Heart" is my original webcomic series that has been seeing regular updates since 2019. It's been my passion project for a long time, and as of writing this in June 2025 I'm currently working on the final arc of the story. What some may not realize is that the main cast is based off of various vocal synth characters.

My family's new home was out in the country, about a ten-minute drive out from our new town. There were two reasons that allowed my new interest in Vocaloid to explode as much as it did.

• 1. Because of the distance our new house was to our new school, my siblings and I had to take the bus. None of us were old enough to drive, even with a school or learner's permit. Every morning at 6:50 AM, the four of us would be the first ones to board the bus and ride along for an hour while it made its stops to the neighboring small towns.
• 2. The Internet service at our new house for the first six months were slow and had to be rationed. Our ten gigs per month had to be carefully split among me, my siblings, and my parents. Once per week, my siblings and I would travel to a larger town for practice for a swim team we were in at the YMCA. This place had free wifi, so naturally I'd use this window of time to download a small handful of new Vocaloid songs to my iPod Touch.

With the long bus rides and a group of new Vocaloid songs each week to listen to, I'd daydream about original characters singing along to the songs or how the plots of the songs would be related to their own storylines. It was simple. Each of my OCs had a vocal synth to go with them... But then I starting learning more about Vocaloid. There were so many more than just Miku and the other Cryptonloids. Many more. Vocaloids like Gumi, Gakupo, and IA. Fan-made characters like Akita Neru, Sakine Meiko, and Yowane Haku. And Utauloids like Momone Momo, Defoko, and most notably Kasane Teto.

Side Tangent: The Adoration of Kasane Teto

divide here

With the influx of new characters and voices I was learning about, I felt the need to create new OCs to keep up. Five of the seven main cast members were originally based off of Utauloids or Fanloids. But because I had made these characters just after I had moved, these OCs also became a projection of the kinds of people I wanted to be my friends. Over my high school years, I'd develop this fictional magical world and imagine scenarios that this colorful cast would wind up in, and this would eventually become "Chimera Heart!" My webcomic would not exist without the existence of vocal synths.

Connection and Friendships

During this first year at this new school, I kept my love for Vocaloid a complete secret from my classmates. At my previous school, liking cartoons and anime were considered weird by most of my peers, so I didn't want my interests to affect my chances of making friends. Shortly after my freshman year ended, I got to attend a band camp with high school students from all over the state. For the first time, I was able to open up about Vocaloid to both new people and friends from my school. It was the first time I felt like I was able to be my true self in forever.

Now that I'm an adult, I don't really hide the things I like anymore. In fact, I think I've made a lot more friends because of the passion for my interests! I've become mutuals with others on social media via Vocaloid fan art. I've become great friends with various fellow artist alley vendors because of a shared love for Vocaloid. Some of my closest friends first heard my voice in Discord calls where we watch Magical Mirai concerts. A lot of them are now into Vocaloid because of me, and even if they aren't, they still love me just the way I am!

Comfort Amongst Realizations

I'm going to avoid putting in too many personal details here, but Vocaloid was a massive comfort for me during the darkest moments of my life. No matter how alone or sad I felt, Miku would always be there to sing for me. There are hundreds of thousands of Vocaloid songs, made by producers who used these singing voices to put their own feelings into words. I'd find myself relating more to Vocaloid songs than other music. This Kasane Teto cover of Niito-P's "My True Self" by Caped Kappa was the first song that I actually cried to. I had never experienced a song that genuinely made me seen and perfectly summed up how I was feeling post-move.

As high school and college progressed, I'd experience a lot of emotional highs and lows. I realized a lot of things about myself. Vocaloid was by my side all the way.

The Final Year of College, Miku Expo, and Falling in Love

The summer before my senior year of college, I got a job in the print department of the local OfficeMax. When classes started for the semester, my schedule changed from weekdays to weekends only, and because of that, I met a coworker I hadn't had much time to talk to. Kind with customers, knowledgable about computers, and had brown hair that was as long as mine. One night we were on a closing shift and waiting for our boss to finish counting out the earnings for the day. We made some small talk about what we were studying in college and what kind of stuff we did in our spare time. His name was Ethan. I introduced him to some vocal synth music and we exchange some our new discoveries as they came along each weekend.

Senior year felt like playing a game of catch-up with things we needed to learn while also preparing for our "Senior Show." This was a thesis project for the graphic design students to display what they had learned over their time at the school. The rules were simple: develop a branding identity and elements for a fictional product, service, or business. Our professor encouraged us to make our projects revolve around things we were interested in, as to make the project more fun to work on. My Senior Show project, dubbed "Cyber Heart Beat," would be a rhythm game that was inspired by properties like "Sound Voltex," "Project Diva," and "Project Sekai." It ended up being a huge hit among my classmates and friends, and I'm pretty sure I got a B on the project overall. "Cyber Heart Beat" was a love letter to vocal synths and rhythm games, which genuinely made it my favorite project I did in college.

I graduated and moved cities. My retail job was secure, but exhausting with an inconsistent work schedule. Miku Expo 2024 got announced, and the friends I had made online over the past year or so were planning to meet up. Ethan had managed to get us a set of early-bird tickets. It was a dream come true. Not only was I finally going to get to see Miku live, but I was going to see it with a group of amazing friends.

After the new year, Ethan began to come up to my city to go to Round1 with a friend. But after hanging out at the arcade a few nights, Ethan remembered how much he liked hanging out with me... and how much he liked me. We made it official a week or two later. A couple months into the relationship, we traveled to Denver for Miku Expo. While the setlist wasn't my dream show or people complained about the lack of the hologram, I'm so blessed and honored I got to hang out and meet longtime friends. Getting to exhange stickers and bracelets with fellow members of this creative community during the hours we waited in line for the show reminded me why I fell in love with Vocaloid in the first place. Hell, we even got enough penlight film for the whole group from a very kind Japanese man after we complimented the Nendos he was carrying around! People of all ages and backgrounds coming together to celebrate what we had all made together. One big group passion project brought to life on stage by a single fictional character.

So What's Next?

It's been over a year since Expo and I already can't wait for the next one. I'm so happy they got to hold it in Denver, so I hope they come back again or maybe Kansas City next time around! Now that I've crossed off going to a Miku Expo off my bucket list, I'd love to make the ultimate Vocaloid fan pilgrimmage and attend a Magical Mirai in Japan someday. Until then, I'll keep connecting with other vocal synth fans around the world from my cozy treehouse.

Ethan and I have moved in together, and we have a room dedicated to all of the things we like. Amongst the corner where my computer sits, posters and prints of Miku are plastered up. Miku plushes sit on top of the shelf in our living room. A Miku charm dangles with my keys on my Miku lanyard. I sip orange juice from a cup with the Cryptonloids on it, and my Miku bobblehead smiles up at me as I work a 9-to-5 job in the adulthood that sometimes I didn't think I'd make it to. Vocaloid saved my life, and has influenced it in so many ways.

Hatsune Miku Kasane Teto MEIKO Other Vocal Synths

Favorite Vocal Synth Characters