No Nonsense Japanese VCV

Resource No Nonsense Japanese VCV

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Tsukine Sayuri submitted a new resource:

No Nonsense Japanese VCV - A VCV reclist optimized for efficiency

This @reclist is optimized for the Japanese language. This is intended to be thought of as an improvement over Ritsu or Ruko's lists which include...
  • redundancy
  • uncommon/largely unused sounds
  • inflexibility
This reclist eliminates all redundancy, unnecessary sounds, and is easy to edit to one's needs, for those wishing for more sounds.

What's included:

vowels (a, i, u, e, o)
consonants (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, m, n, p, r, s, t, ts, v, w, y, z)
consonant blends...

Read more about this resource...
 

comet3

local rain enthusiast
Defender of Defoko
aaah...this is so great !
would you happen to have a kana version ?
 

AmeKinoko

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
Damn! I wish this had been around when I started recording my VCV! I guess I'll just use it next time...
 

Myth

Momo's Minion
Not to be mean, but this reclist is missing a number of phonemes important to the Japanese language.

I completely get the exclusion of the "Cw" such as the くぁ, くぃ,くぇ, くぉ characters, those aren't really required and are just extra samples. But the exclusion of the other phonemes is a significant detriment, in the sense that some of these phonemes are indeed required. The つぁ,つぃ,つぇ,つぉ are still significant - even it's indeed true they're not used as much as other sounds in the Japanese language - but they ARE used. That'd be the same as excluding the "U"( "6" in Cz's system ) phoneme from the English language because it's not used in many words, and yet when you need to use it, you don't have a proper replacement that doesn't sound strange. You also have to consider the exclusion of the てゅ,でゅ samples - as they're not just used for Engrish, they are also used for the kana transcription of foreign words, English or otherwise - making them still relevant to the system. "ふゅ" is of course, redundant as you say, but the former is still important to the system.
Also, may I ask what's what the exclusion of what you called "aspirated sounds"? First off, the sounds in question are not aspirated, if anything it's the opposite, they go through what's called "palatalization" - the most basic explanation is that it produces a stronger, harder sound than it's non-palatalized consonant - it's more complicated than that of course, but that's the gist. It's not aspirated. I also briefly looked at the reclist, and I can't say I quite understand what you mean by you "removed" them, the palatalized are clearly there, and it's a good thing they're not missing, that would be bad if they where. Palatalization is something that just inherently when native or fluent speakers speak the language, it's only separated from the regular phonemes to create better, more accurate transition in CVVC, and it isn't even separated in VCV generally.

I also have to point out the listed benefits of using this reclist are questionable - specifically "inflexibility". How does omitting sounds - extra sounds or otherwise, make a system more "flexible". It certainly makes a system more condensed and less time-consuming to develop, but flexibility would define how easy or difficult it is to use - adding extra sounds only increases that aspect. It'd be easier to use a voicebank with extra, potentially useful sounds, than to have a voicebank lacking the sounds you would rather have. It's like taking a system of English that includes the trilling "r" sound as an extra sound, and saying that excluding that extra sound makes it more "flexible".

Again, I'm not trying to be mean, but the benefits of this reclist are questionable at best, especially considering you're using a "lite" reclist as a base, then again, considering you're trying to make it more condensed that may not be necessarily a bad thing, but it's looked down upon by a good portion of the community for it's tediousy since it's significantly different from the standard VCV in a way that degrades the quality of the vocal in question. But more than anything else, at the very least, make you have all the required sounds for the language you're making a reclist for. That should be a basic sentiment in creating a recording script of any kind.
 

Zoku

making doper vocaloid music than the rest
Defender of Defoko
Myth, tsa, tse, tsi, and tso are almost rarely used in standard Japanese, but they're used in loanwords. The reclist was designed for efficiency, not to cover all possible words using extra japanese phonemes. Same for the others you've mentioned. The top clearly says you can make your own amends to it if you want. Change whatever you want, don't bash her though.

Those sounds can be accomplished in this reclist with envelope editing and the available sounds.

Usage-wise, it doesn't degrade the VB on anyway. I'm not sure where you got that...?
 

Terindie

日本語 Patrol - Active Duty
Defender of Defoko

Hi Myth! I wrote the resource that this reclist was based off of; and I wanted to address a couple of points you had about it.

The exclusion of the "つぁ、つぇ、つぉ" as well as the "てゅ、でゅ" samples were a consideration but eventually left out. Why, you ask, are these left out of the list? As a 'no-nonsense' reclist, the goal was to eliminate any extraneous sounds that only served to bloat the file names and not contribute much to the Japanese language.
You list 'てゅ" as an important example, but the 大辭典 lists exactly three words that begin with 'てゅ', Tudor, as in the Architectural Revivalist Movement, 'tuba', and Turgot, the French economist. These words are also all given as an alternate, lesser-used transcriptions of the languages; the tyu/dyus are being phased out of the language, and are used sparingly if even at all. Even then, there are alternate ways to synthesize 'tyu' if absolutely necessary. This reclist (and my resource) believe that the average UTAU user is not composing music about French economists or fancily-pronounced tubas, so the extra few MBs of space and recording time is worth this cut. Excluding these pieces is less 'removing entire vowels' and more 'removing the _ngsts end cluster from an English reclist'.

Aspiration refers to the stylistic aspirations of certain consonants while singing, not patalization. Some reclists address this, but as a minimalist list, this one does not.

The flexibility refers to its structure as something that could be easily built upon without disrupting the list's flow in any way. (Such as adding some English consonants).

As a Japanese speaker, a linguist enthusiast, and a reclist writer, I can assure you that this is a sonically complete, if fun-size, reclist. Any UTAU user who's going to just do Japanese and is willing to be flexible in case of French Economist lyrics is going to succeed with this list and not be wasting their time.
 

HoneyPai

Defoko's Slaves
Defender of Defoko
I would just like to say, looking this over and seeing comments in the chatbox from earlier, I'd like to point out that this doesn't seem like a no nonsense reclist, this just seems like a reclist that requires a lot more effort to put into making or editing UST. Yes the sounds that have been removed are not used very much on their own, but if you think about it あ is not used by itself that much either, and by that logic, it can be removed and borrowed from another sound, which of course does not work very well. I saw earlier in that chatbox that the excluded sounds can be made by simply combining other sounds, now, this just makes no sense to me due to instead of taking the time to perfectly combine the sounds and even then, they may end up sounding choppy, you could take at least one minute to record the sounds that were excluded rather than go through the hassle of combining the sounds and having the high possibility of the sound being choppy.
Also I'd like to say that this is just an edited 6 mora vcv lite reclist at most, the title is a bit misleading
 
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Myth

Momo's Minion
First, I am not "bashing" anybody, I am simply stating what should be acknowledged in regards to the reclist.

Second, as somebody who studies Japanese in a professional environment, つぁ, つぃ, つぇ, つぉ, are sounds used in the Japanese language, including without loanwords - again, they're not used as often as other characters, but they are significant enough to where they're important to the system. Even in the case of loanwords, they're still important because of the way the Japanese language transcripts foreign words into their own language because of the certain rules in regards to the Japanese's language's unique phoneme system, and how loanwords simply don't work. The fact is, the Japanese language uses loanwords regularly, and uses them as common terms, which is why there are some phonemes that are included in loanwords are still important. てゅ and でゅ are indeed used rarely in native Japanese words - but again, the Japanese language does use a significant amount of loanwords, and transcribes them in such a way it's significantly different from it's source material. Loanwords are incredibly intricate and important in the Japanese language, and it doesn't make much sense to simply exclude them.

As far as changing it goes, the description makes it quite clear that it thinks that it's recommended nothing in the system should be changed, if it just said "You can change whatever", your point would be perfectly valid, but it clearly states it's not recommended - it's made with the intent that it not be change later on.

The degrading on the quality part - I meant in comparison to standard VCV, as the lite VCV system is missing many transitions that the standard VCV contains, thus being lower quality than the former - and I only brought that up to clarify as to why the lite system is looked down upon by most of the community, and as to why it can be somewhat tedious to use in comparison to the alternative, nothing more.

As far as editing sounds goes, that makes things incredibly tedious and is certainly not something I would call "flexible", and to some extent, is much more "redundant" than the standard VCV.


Covering aspiration, are you referring to the alternate samples that are often found in voicebanks generally marked by the katakana counterparts such as ガ,ギ,グ,ゲ,ゴ where it's pronounced like the English "ng" sound? In which case - that's still not aspiration in the least; aspiration refers to the expulsion of air in pronouncing an unvoiced consonant phoneme - but I do understand the reason for removing it. That is to say, it clearly uses a lite reclist as a base - which begs the question if they were even there in the first place? Because they're generally not in most reclists.

On to flexibility - did you not just bring up the fact that in order to make certain sounds you have to combine certain sounds that you otherwise wouldn't have to in a regular reclist? As I mentioned before, that's incredibly tedious if you are missing the sounds you need, and you essentially have to mash notes together to get the desired sound and the result is often choppy. Not only is that not flexible, it dampers on the quality of the singing.
 

na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Effort editing a UST? Pshaw, here's the thing.
If the sound is rarely used then you're going to have to rarely edit the ust. You comparing あ to something like つぁ is like comparing an apple to a brick house. あ cannot be borrowed, it's a core vowel. But something like つぁ is literally tsu+a and thus can be derived from these sounds.
If it's choppy then the oto is wrong.

A "lite" list is a VCV list that relies on an external CV list to function. This list functions fully without one at all. You don't know what you're talking about at all.

I would write more but there's nothing more to say.
 

Myth

Momo's Minion
The reclist is blatantly missing "n" transitions and some "- CV" samples as well; a very notable feature in "lite" reclists

More than anything, the strings are in a similar order to the lite reclist that comes with oremo, if anything - that leaves a reason for assumption for that to be the case, and it's not like there's a reason to deny it to be honest.
 

na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
More than anything, the strings are in a similar order to the lite reclist that comes with oremo, if anything - that leaves a reason for assumption for that to be the case, and it's not like there's a reason to deny it to be honest.
You mean the order that basically any VCV list has ever followed ever?
 
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Zoku

making doper vocaloid music than the rest
Defender of Defoko
Can I also add that you compare てゅ and it's 'd' counterpart to the [6] phoneme in Cz' English list. Not only are they incomparable (6=look, good, would, should, soot, nook, etc, てゅ=tuba and two others) the [6] phoneme is more widely used. But, the sounds you argue for have not been in any of the USTs I've downloaded and used and neither have I needed to do so when trying to make my own usts.

If making a small [- tsu] followed by [u sa/- sa] is so inconvenient that you don't want to amend the reclist for you own use and you choose to complain publicly, I don't know what to tell you.
 
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Zoku

making doper vocaloid music than the rest
Defender of Defoko
The reclist is blatantly missing "n" transitions and some "- CV" samples as well; a very notable feature in "lite" reclists

More than anything, the strings are in a similar order to the lite reclist that comes with oremo, if anything - that leaves a reason for assumption for that to be the case, and it's not like there's a reason to deny it to be honest.

Exactly what are those missing sounds other than the previous ones you've explicitly stated? It's insane that you bring this up when the description of the resource page explicitly says you can add if you want to add.
 

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