When I first heard of Utau, it was during the time I was curious about Vocaloids.
I believe it was the year 2010? 2011?
Not sure.
What prompted me to research them was when I was interested in anime at the time.
I was researching on the web for any anime I can find that I could watch.
I found this character called Black Rock Shooter who was inspired by Miku Hatsune. Plus Miku's vocals were used for the character as well.
As I clicked the link for Hatsune Miku, Black Rock sure did look like her. XD
Anyway, I started learning about what Miku was and what she was about.
I found out there were more of her kind, and so begins my research of Vocaloid.
They were interesting in how lifelike and human they were for being androids.
However, I didn't listen to their songs and voices until a year later.
Before one year later, I learned about Teto Kasane and how she was the first Utau and Vocaloid.
Or first Utau to gain Vocaloid status.
I begin to find out what Utau was.
I didn't know what freeware meant at the time, so I just assumed it was a competitor for Vocaloid.
Now a year later, in the year 2012, I began to listen to Vocaloid songs.
My first Vocaloid song was World Is Mine by Miku.
After that, it was Honey by Meiko Sakine.
This Meiko was a young teenager of herself, and the song was a MMD music video.
It was at that point when watching that, I wanted to try MMD.
Silly little me for thinking that MMD is a program for making Vocaloid models sing when it wasn't like that.
But I enjoyed playing around with it, making the models move and dance.
I was in fact good with it, but not
professionally good.
After that, I listened to more Vocaloid songs, plus Utau songs.
I listened to Cantarella covers and English covers of songs used by Vocaloids and Utau.
I also listened to Vocaloids and Utauloids singing Phantom of the Opera in English. A lot of them.
Heh. I was in a Phantom of the Opera fan craze phase.
At this point, I
REALLY wanted a Vocaloid program that sings.
But I found out that Vocaloid is expensive as it is shipped from Japan, and the shipping costs.
I know there was a 50% or something sale on Engloids, as I loved the Engloids more than the Vocaloids, but I never ended up buying them. ;-; ;-;
I ended up trying UTAU as it was the only option I had, plus it was free.
I confess I wanted to try Polkaloid.
But thank God and my computer that I ended up abandoning that idea.
My computer refused to download it, and I quickly heard how illegal it was.
Well, Utau wasn't so bad as I thought it was.
But I was not creating a Utauloid.
I was enjoying making Teto Kasane and Momo Momone sing.
I tried to make them sing to an original song, but no success.
Even to this day, I still can't figure out how to make Defoko sing! XD
Even looking at tutorials were not helpful because they were not
thorough enough. ( I'm talking about Defoko.
)
I learned how to use UTAU by myself by finding out how to download and where.
But the hands-on experience I learned is by changing the locale to Japanese on my computer.
This allowed me to mess and play around with the controls while I made Teto and Momo sing.
Lesson I learned?
Tutorials are helpful.
While it's good you want to teach yourself how to use it for making the default Utauloids you have to sing, don't be afraid to learn a few tips from people.
Especially since any new member can have a chance now, since I don't think there were tutorials on how to make an original Utauloid when I first started out. ( At least, not that I knew of.)
There are even people who are veterans in using this program, so don't be afraid to ask.
This forum is a great place to get tips and tricks.
I'm already in the process of making a few Utauloids of my own.
It's slow and steady, but it's so fun and creative since you're giving life to a vocal synthesizer of your own.
Not like those blank slate Vocaloids we all know and love, huh?
.
