Vocaloid
| |
| Vocaloid | |
| Developer | Yamaha |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Yamaha |
| Platforms | Windows |
| Released | Worldwide: January 15, 2004 |
| Added to Museum |
Not yet |
Vocaloid, first released on January 15, 2004, is singing synthesizer software created by Yamaha.
Two voicebanks were publicly released to create songs using the Vocaloid software. Those were the English Leon and Lola voicebanks by Zero-G. Neither of these voicebanks were updated to work with future versions of the software.
Vocaloid was replaced with Vocaloid₂ on June 29, 2007.
History
The vocal synthesizer software began development with a team led by Kenmochi Hideki at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain in March 2000.
The working title of Vocaloid was Daisy, after the song "Daisy Bell", which has been used in computer voice synthesis since Bell Labs programmed an IBM 7094 to sing the song in 1964.
Vocaloid was chosen as the name of the software in February 2003, as a portmanteau of vocal and android. Yamaha revealed the Vocaloid software at the Musikmesse fair in Germany, which was held from March 5 to March 9, 2003.
On July 24, 2003, the first album that contained a song with Vocaloid voicebanks, History of Logic System by Hideki Matsutake, was released. The song, "Ano Subarashii Ai Mou Ichido" (あの素晴らしい愛をもう一度, "Let Me Feel That Splendid Love Once More") was created using early Vocaloid 1 prototype versions of the Kaito and Meiko voicebanks.
Versions
Vocaloid
The original version of the Vocaloid engine was 1.0, which was released on January 15, 2004. It could create songs in both English and Japanese. The first Vocaloids released were the male Vocaloid Leon and the female Vocaloid Lola, which had English voicebanks created by unrevealed vocalists. Zero-G released them on March 3, 2004, and they were marketed as virtual soul vocalists. Zero-G also released a female Vocaloid named Miriam, with an English voicebank provided by Miriam Stockley, in July 2004.
An updated version of the Vocaloid software, 1.1, was released in June 2005.
The first two Japanese voicebanks were the female Vocaloids Meiko and the male Vocaloid Kaito, which were both created by Yamaha and were marketed by Crypton Future Media. These voicebanks would not be publicly released until Vocaloid₂.
