MikitoP’s Voice Articulation of VOCALOID／20th anniversary of VOCALOID（YAMAHA VOCALOID）

MikitoP Interview / 20th Anniversary of the VOCALOID

MikitoP Profile and Comment

【Profile】He started working in March 2010 in internet music scene. He has been produced Vocalo songs such as “Loki” and “Shoujo Rei” so far, and done main theme for various Anime and musicals. He also provides many songs to other artists.

Congratulations on the 20th anniversary of VOCALOID!　I have been a part of VOCALOID for a long time, as the year 2025 is exactly the 15th anniversary of my Vocalo career. I hope we can continue to create new expressions and music together. I hope we keep working with you.

Mikito P’s first posting “Kokuhaku” x SF-A2 Development Code miki

ーAgreed. I can see that number of Vocalo-Ps has increased a lot from the number of participants of Posting Festivals etc.

MikitoP　Yeah the hurdle to enter the Vocalo world has become very low. Because if you use Vocalo, you are already a Vocalo-P lol. The hurdles might become a bit higher now, but I think the appeal of this scene is that even if you are doing out of nowhere, you can still have the chance to initiate big hits. As for the quality of videos and so on, depending on the idea, even something cheap can explode. It is true that things are difficult, but I think there are many ways to achieve success.

ーWhat was the reaction of your surroundings toward you when you started Vocalo-P?

MikitoP　I started using VOCALOID because I wanted to start something new after my old band went down. At that time my old fried of my band era asked me “what are you doing these days?”, and I told him that “I’m making VOCALOID songs and posting them on the Internet”, and he said, “Well you’re a little stagnant, aren’t you?”. I clearly remember that. So what was new to me was unfamiliar to them. But now there are more and more people who are interested in Vocalo, and more and more people are asking me, “Can you teach me little quick?”.

ー I can feel a mood of fad and reevaluation these days. By the way, do you still remember when you first touched VOCALOID?

MikitoP　Of course I do. The first VOCALOID I used in 2008 was called “SF-A2 development code miki”, which was a database based on the voice of SUPERCAR’s Miki Furukawa. At first I didn’t understand what it was all about, and I was like, “what the heck is this?”. So I took a little break, then I started to try my best to finish and shape it again, and then started to post them as a test of my skills. My first posting was “Kokuhaku”.

After that, I found out the number of views of my song was not increasing and thought like what should I do. So I came to the decision to use a big star, and this is how I introduced Hatsune Miku.

ーSo how did you feel after using Hatsune Miku for the first time?

MikitoP　When I added MIKU APPEND (expansion pack for Hatsune Miku) I found an additional voice library called Dark, and I really liked it. It has a sad, but clear and a little damp voice. The default Hatsune Miku works better with higher notes, but with Dark, Miku sung lower notes well too. Although I use VOCALOIDs, I like to create songs that could be sung by a human, so I remember thinking that Dark would be a good choice. Then I posted a song called “Secret DVD”.

ーSo you started Vocalo-P because of Miki Furukawa, and how did you manage to continue until now?

MikitoP　When you are in the Vocalo community, being a nerd is rather cool, right? I spent the past 10 years feeling a little bit of inferiority that I wasn’t a nerd. I couldn’t keep up with anime conversations, and I always felt like an outsider. But finally, I came to understand the atmosphere like the doujin community, and in 2012, I released “I-aru Fun Club” and so on. Then I came up with lyrics like, “Dandan Kimi To Onaji Kotoba Ga Tsukaeru Ne (I can gradually use the same words as you)”. In a word, I think I was able to continue because I managed to fit myself in.

ーWhat charm points of VOCALOID have been supporting your music?

MikitoP　For me, VOCALOID is the one speaks things I can’t say face to face instead of me. There are too many things that are too embarrassing to say with my voice.

ーThen why did you decide to sing along with VOCALOID, a spokesperson according to you, for “Loki”?

MikitoP　I had wanted to sing with VOCALOIDs for several years before I released “Loki”. Singing itself is not very comfortable thing for me, but when I considered myself as an instrument, I thought it would sound pretty good, so I wanted everyone to hear it.

ーWasn’t it purely because you had confidence in your voice, and also because you wanted to say things by yourself, instead of speaking for yourself?

MikitoP　Well then, it might be true I wanted to say messages in “Loki” with my own voice.

ーWhy did you think “Loki” and “I-aru Fun Club” could make hits?

MikitoP　I relatively enjoyed producing these two songs. Neither of two songs have complex gimmicks and sharp targets. But I think that the timing of many things, such as the evaluation of the people around me and my own reputation, was good, Especially for “Loki”.

ーWhat do you mean by timing for “Loki”’s hit?

MikitoP　There was a period when people said VOCALOID was in decline, and everyone was out in the cold for a moment. VocaloPs started to do things other than Vocalo, internet singers started to make original songs, and everyone scattered. After that, heroes like Nayutan Seijin and n-buna came out. It was at that time that I said “Shinunja Nezo, Otagaini Na! (Don’t die, you and me!)” in “Loki”. It was what I was saying to the people in the scene. Something like “Let’s do our best”.

MikitoP’s Voice Articulation of Vocalo

ーTell us about voice banks and editors you use.

MikitoP　I have VOCALOID from 2 to 6. As for voice banks, I have Hatsune Miku V4X, Kagamine Rin/Ren V4X, Megpoid V4, v4 flower, Kaai Yuki V4, Megurine Ruka, IA Fukase and so on.

ーLet me ask about “I-aru Fun Club” and “Loki”’s Voice Articulations for this time. Let’s start with “I-aru Fun Club”!

MikitoP　I used Megpoid and Kagamine Rin for “I-aru Fun Club”. I basically made the voice energetic, for example, Kagamine Rin’s voice was set to Power. Her voice was catchy here. Looking back at it, nowadays I mainly write volume automation on the DAW, but at that time I tweaked the Dynamics parameter and such on VOCALOID4 editor.

ーLooks like velocity values are also tweaked.

MikitoP　I’ve been tweaking velocity values for past 5 years or so. When I raised it the first consonants got delayed a bit, so I can create rhythm by speeding up the timing of following sounds, or in other words I can make the pronunciation more human-like and natural.

ーYour Vocalos have clear lyrics singing with adequate airy atmosphere. Is there any technique to achieve it?

MikitoP　Without Voice Articulating, you are going to have unclear pitch change and it will become flabby vocal sound. I’d rather want to have sharper pitch changes, so it might be important to have melodies with sharper pitch changes. I also separate consonants and vowels, such as “T” and “O”. With single letter “To” the resulted sound would be attenuated, so I compensate with additional “O”. I think it is important to keep doing simple works, which is listening and facing each sound one by one.

ーIf it is too mechanical, it sounds uncomfortable, then you look for a natural sound to make it sound more like real human. Now let’s move on to “Loki”!

MikitoP　I can see improvement from “Loki” and other songs around that time. I was using some more modern techniques.  The hot topic of “Loki” at that time was growl voice, and I would like to introduce a parameter called Growl. This is a parameter that was introduced in VOCALOID4. At the time, I used this parameter to express trill pronounce by raising the Growl parameter as high as I could and using letters “Ru Ru Ru”.

I was told by many people that the growl of “Loki” was amazing, and that parameter was truly my favorite. When I was trying it, I thought like, “Wow! I can even do this!”. I remember that I had found a new way of expression.

ーAs this is also a fast song, did you do any special tricks to make it more human-like?

MikitoP　I think the trick is to imagine real human pronunciation and mouth shape, so if you put “n” in front of “Na Ni Nu Ne No” or “Ma Mi Mu Me Mo”, it sounds more like it.

ーWhen you use English lyrics, do you have to elaborate some techniques different from those in Japanese?

MikitoP　For example, put “_0” to insert voiceless sound for the “s” in the phrase “like this,” then you can get a good pronunciation. This is also used to express small “Tsu” (the way to express gemination in Japanese). English pronunciation is different from Japanese, so I always find it difficult to create good nuances.

ーAnd finally you apply effects for vocal mix on DAW.

MikitoP　Right. For example I use Waves VoiceCentric to adjust the tone, Waves DeEsser for de-essing, and Waves Doubler for doubling.

MikitoP’s VOCALOID6 Review

【Check this out too!】
What is VOCALOID? From explanation of Vocalo culture to how to use VOCALID. instructor : KagomeP

Let’s learn VOCALOID culture and how to use VOCALOID6 simply by a Vocalo-P Kagame P!

ーHave you already used VOCALOID6?

MikitoP　I’ve been using it after I bought new PC recently. It has various functions so I think it might be good to find my own way to express things. I want to try new things later on.

ーWhat new functions of VOCALOID6 are you particularly interested in?

MikitoP　I’ve been doing Vocal Articulation for a long time, and I’m the person who do basically everything by myself, but I thought it was interesting to be able to choose waveforms for attack and release from presets. It changes the sound drastically so I recommend using it with care.

ーHave you tried VOCALO CHANGER function as well?

MikitoP　I tried it with NAOKI from the voice bank comes with VOCALOID6. I think it wasn’t quite good enough to use as it was, but it might be useful as a tools for studying, such as find new tips for Voice Articulation. It’s fun to see like “yeah I might want to do in this way sometimes”.

ーHow were all those VOCALOID6’s new functions? There are separately sold voice banks other than the one comes with package, and they will release Hatsune Miku in the future.

MikitoP　Sounds great. As for the VOCALO CHANGER, I would use it to seek for another new way of expression. I also might be using attack presets if I can find ones that can reproduce a certain way of expressing my standards, which will save some time. It’s nice that I don’t have to program every single notes for Hatsune Miku, which will be released in the future.

ーSounds exciting! Finally, could you give a cheering massage to those who wants to be a Vocalo-P?

MikitoP　Have fun anyway!　If you want to improve the quality of your music, just post many songs. Someone is definitely watching you somewhere.

VOCALOID6 for Windows / macOS

■Bundled voice banks：16（VOCALOID6：AKITO、ALLEN、ASAHI、HARUKA、LUCAS、MICHELLE、SAKURA、SHION、ASAHI、TAKU、YUINA、NAOKI）（VOCALOID5：Amy、Chris、 Kaori、Ken）
※You can use VOCALOID3, VOCALOID4, VOCALOID5’s voice banks and project file（VSQX、VPR）
■Operating environment：Windows10, 11 （64bit）,macOS 13（Ventura）,14（Sonoma）,15（Sequoia）
■Specifications：https://www.vocaloid.com/en/vocaloid6/specs/