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It takes a village: The rise of virtual pop star Hatsune Miku
The crowd waves neon green glow sticks in the air. The performer they came to see is loading on a screen. After a kaleidoscopic burst of magic dust, Hatsune Miku, one of Japan's preeminent pop stars, appears on stage. As she breaks into a song-and-dance routine, her long aqua-colored pigtails brush her ankles. The thunderous roar inside New York's Hammerstein Ballroom is for an artist who doesn't exist. She's a computer-generated virtual singer projected on a screen.
Hatsune Miku takes the stage in Project Diva F's launch trailer
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F launches for the PlayStation 3 in North America today, marking the first time the popular rhythm series has seen an official release outside of Japan. Sega commemorates the occasion with this new trailer, giving a quick look at some of the game's quirkier features. Vocaloid fans will recognize many of Project Diva F's featured tracks, including ryo's "Black*Rock Shooter," kz & Hachioji's "Weekender Girl," and...yes, that infernal Nyan Cat song. After tapping along to Miku's live performances, players can cool off backstage in the Diva Room customization mode, giving the starring Vocaloids a chance to kick back and enjoy sugary desserts in between rounds of rock-paper-scissors.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F synthesizing North America this August
Sega has announced that its rhythm game/simulated-girl simulator Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F will be released for "both PlayStation 3 and Playstation Network" sometime this August, with a demo available June 11, according to the PlayStation Blog. Originally released for the Vita last August, Project Diva F includes 38 jams by Miku and her Vocaloid friends, as well as "over 90 different costumes and accessories" with which to customize her look, in addition to an Edit Mode that allows players to create their own Miku music videos. The North American version of the game will be equal to the most-recent Japanese releases in terms of graphical updates and feature parity, according to the announcement. For those of you outside of the thriving digital-girl loop, Hatsune Miku is a Japanese pop star that doesn't actually exist. She was created as a mascot by Crypton Future Media, and her voice is fabricated entirely by Yamaha's Vocaloid 2/3 software. During her live shows – yes, live shows – she appears as a holographic projection, much to the chagrin of her enthusiastic, die-hard fans. If that sounds at all familiar, don't get it backwards: Tupac got the idea from Miku, not the other way around.
Yamaha Vocaloid on Miselu Neiro synth: exclusive hands-on at Google I/O 2012 (video)
Did you enjoy our first look at the latest apps being showcased on Miselu's Neiro Android-powered synth here at Google I/O 2012? Want more? You've come to the right place. As promised here's an exclusive hands-on with Yamaha's Vocaloid app demoed by the man behind the technology himself -- video game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi. We got the chance to play with an early build of the software running on the same 3-octave prototype version of the synth that we last saw at SXSW. The verdict? It works pretty well considering the pre-alpha status of the code. The app features two modes of operation -- edit and play -- the former letting you type or speak text and map it to an existing melody and the latter allowing you to chose preset sentences and "sing" them with the keyboard. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so take a look at our gallery below and watch our hands-on video after the break.
Miselu Neiro synth at Google I/O: exclusive first look at apps from Korg and Yamaha (video)
Remember Miselu's Neiro -- that prototype app-based Android-powered synth we last played with at SXSW? Not only is it being showcased at Google I/O 2012 here in San Francisco, but we got an exclusive first look at some of the apps being developed for the new platform ahead of the event. The company's been on a roll since our meeting in Austin, gaining (ex-OQO CEO) Jory Bell as CTO and building relationships with partners like Korg and Yamaha. Now on its second iteration, the laptop-like synth has evolved from the hand-built prototype we saw at SXSW to a more polished reference design -- complete with breakout board for SD card and Ethernet support. As before, the device runs Gingerbread on a dual-core TI OMAP processor and features a two octave velocity and pressure-sensitive keyboard, a capacitive multitouch widescreen, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, audio and MIDI I/O, plus USB and HDMI ports. This version even adds XLR and quarter-inch audio jacks -- just keep in mind that those specs have not been finalized. What's really exciting about the synth is the apps. The company's ongoing partnership with Retronyms to create a suite of touch-controlled, cloud-enabled musical apps has evolved beyond the drum-machine demo we covered at SXSW. Called nStudio, the suite now also includes a pad-based sampler / sequencer and a mixer. Plasma Sound is a touch-based musical instrument that's part theremin, part keyboard / sequencer. It's already available for other devices on Google Play, but was easily tweaked to run on the Neiro -- sight unseen -- thanks to Miselu's musicSDK and OS X-based emulator. Miselu will be showcasing two more apps on its synth here at Google I/O: Korg's Polysix and Yamaha's Vocaloid. The Polysix app faithfully recreates Korg's legendary 1981 synth -- known for its rich, thick analog sound. A real, mint-condition Polysix was even available for comparison during our brief time with the app (see our gallery). Vocaloid takes full advantage of the NSX-1 DSP chip that's built-into the Neiro. It's a singing synth app produced by Yamaha that "uses concatenative synthesis to splice and process vocal fragments extracted from human voice samples." We'll be spending some time with the Vocaloid app and its creator -- video game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (of Sega and Lumines fame) -- later today. In the meantime, check out the gallery below and watch our hands-on video with the other apps after the break.%Gallery-159214%
Yamaha's singing keyboard makes X Factor even more redundant (video)
Tired of singers over pro-ho-ho-ho-nouncing every vowel? Perhaps the solution is to just remove their ilk from the equation altogether. That's the idea behind Yamaha's new Vocaloid Keyboard, which transforms the Vocaloid software into a ready-to-play device. 16 keys represent consonants, vowels and the types of voicing marks used in Japanese, while at the same time selecting a tone on the keyboard. An LED display prints out each letter as its plays, ensuring that you aren't making any playing errors (or should that be "typing errors?"). Experienced musicians who have used the device found that they were able to produce nursery rhymes after three hours of practice, but sadly the company isn't planning to press it into production. Instead, as the chip inside is "removable," it might contemplate licensing it to another interested party, Simon Cowell, perhaps.
Choreographing a humanoid robot's dance routine is as easy as click and pull
You may not be able to build an HRP-4C fembot in your average garage, but the programming would practically take care of itself -- not only does the AIST humanoid sing using off-the-shelf Yamaha Vocaloid software, its dance moves are click-and-drag, too. Roboticist Dr. Kazuhito Yokoi gave IEEE Spectrum an inside look at the HRP-4C's motion trajectory software, which works much like 3D animation tools: you position the limbs where you want them to start and when you want them to end up using keyframes, and the software takes care of the rest. The system's intelligent enough to generate a 6.7 second sequence from just eight keyframes, and it compensates for hazardous instructions, too -- if your haphazard choreography would tip her over or send limbs flying, it'll automatically adjust her moves. See how it works in a video after the break and hit up our source link for the full interview.
MGS: Peace Walker to feature Vocaloid, interactive cutscenes ... and a surprise that'll make you buy a PSP?
Ever the consummate hype man, Hideo Kojima is fluffing up Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker by teasing an apparent system-selling feature. "I haven't announced this yet, but there's another feature in [Peace Walker] that will surprise people, to the point where they'll want to go out and buy a PSP right now!" Kojima blabbed in the latest issue of Famitsu (as translated by 1UP). Short of some sort of in-game subliminal advertising (hey, these guys like to experiment), we're thinking The Two-Hundred-and-Forty-Nine-Ninety-Nine-Dollar Feature -- or maybe it's just "The Buck-Seventy Feature" -- could get lost in translation. After all, the two Peace Walker features that have been newly revealed seem distinctly Japanese in their appeal.Also plucked from the pages of Famitsu, is the revelation that Peace Walker will feature Yamaha's Vocaloid software. (Yeah, we'd never heard of it either -- just wikipedia it.) If we understand it correctly, Vocaloid will allow certain weapons in the game to sing and scream. Mm-hmm, sounds incredibly annoying.Also revealed: Those 2D-illustrated cut scenes? Yep, like this one. Well, they're interactive. "For example, if you zoom in on the scene where you first meet Paz, you can see the uniform she has on under her coat, and then what's under that," art director Yoji Shinkawa explained ... rather creepily. "It's an idea I came up with while thinking about what makes games different from movies or animation. I think it's pretty interactive." Hopefully, not too interactive.
Japanese homebrew games that will blow your mind
Whenever the topic of internationally developed homebrew DS games comes up, as it often does among hip and attractive people, most people in "the scene" immediately think of France, whose homebrew community rivals North America's in both size and production. You'll see an occasional release from other countries, such as Spain or Korea, but you'll rarely see much activity elsewhere. But what about Japan's scene? For a country with so many DSes and a strong independent game development community, outside of Infantile Paralysiser's MoonShell media player, we've hardly seen any DS homebrew projects cross the Pacific. Where are all the doujin developers? At least one programmer in Japan has been working on creating games for the DS, and we're bringing him out of the shadows to highlight three of his projects, likely games that you've never even heard of, let alone seen. If you're interested in homebrew development at all, you definitely need to pay attention to MeRAMAN!
Play music with a nonexistent person
For this blogger, Hatsune Miku is something to be feared. Something about the creepy voice makes this blogger cringe like that scene where Freddy is scratching his claw against a chalkboard. Except, you know, less awesome.But, the fears of one man are not to affect an entire country, as the fake thing has become quite the icon in Japan. In fact, Miku has become so popular that she is to star in a real game. Titled 13-sai no Hello Work DS, the game will have players tapping away on a virtual keyboard, eventually working their way up to the stage to sing with Miku.We wonder how long it will take for someone to turn GLaDOS into a pop diva over here, since nobody can seem to get enough of that song? Actually, she might already kind of be one ...[Via Siliconera]
