Thorough CV Japanese/English

Resource Thorough CV Japanese/English 1.1

OcarinaLink24

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
OcarinaLink24 submitted a new resource:

Thorough CV Japanese/English - Thorough CV Reclist

This is a good reclist for people who want to record a CV UTAU. It's got the Japanese syllables, as well as some extras that will enable it to cover most instances of English used in J-Pop. The added consonants are not required, but recommended as it helps with advanced tuning.

For recording a full English voicebank I highly recommend Recording a CV VC bank. CV is not built for English, and therefore does not work well beyond basic speaking/singing functions.

Overkill CV...

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Kiyoteru

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I appreciate the effort you’ve gone through to create a list suitable for newbies. However, I feel like your language is a bit dated, and more aimed at the type of perspective held in the past. For example, you recommend that users record “CV VC” if they want real english rather than VCCV™ (which you simply threw in as a small note at the bottom). You also mentioned that an intermediate user should be doing VCV as a second step, rather than a CVVC, which is now regarded as simpler because it takes less recording, less otoing, and no UST editing.

Additionally, the pronunciation guide uses English words as a reference, which can lead to accenting.
“farm” has too back of an “a” where japanese is a fronter one. An example is “eye” without the “ee” at the end.
“open” uses an “oh” sound rather than the pure “o” sound Japanese needs. An example is “core” or “boy” without the R/Y.
You could put a link here to a youtube video that explains Japanese pronunciation so that people get the chance to hear the sounds, have them explained, and then try to say it themselves.

As for the list itself, I think putting “english” in the title is somewhat of false advertising. The purpose of the list, you outlined, was to cover Japanese as well as extras used in J-pop. These types of lists should be named “Japanese + Extras”. The choice of single vowels is ok, but you could expand these if you want to more accurately transcribe English. The vowels in english are (in x-sampa) i, I, u, U, E, 3, O, {, V, A (but it varies from accent to accent). You’ve already covered i, I, u, E, O, {, V, and A, which leaves behind U and 3 (6 and 3 in Chezzie)
However, since the list is just for the english words used in j-pop, which are often said with a japanese accent anyway, you could leave out english vowels entirely.

The diphthongs seem unnecessary, since they can be constructed with two single vowels crossfaded together. (a + i = ai, e + i = ei, etc.) Blends for Y are a must because of the language, but I think blends for W should be restricted to consonants that actually need them. (Such as K for “queen” and S for “sweet”)

he consonant choice covers mostly everything. I feel like a few are missing though.
You’ve only got one TH, so it doesn’t distinguish between the unvoiced “thin” “bath” TH, and the voiced “the” “that” TH. It’s a common mistake, since many english speakers are unaware of the difference until it’s pointed out, with both sounds being spelled the same way. You could use DH for the second type, and just TH for the first type.
You don’t really have an “ng” consonant, like at the end of english words like “ring”. This actually shows up in japanese sometimes, where it is pronounced instead of an actual “g” consonant. It adds more expressiveness to singing and shows up in some Japan-originating banks, but I feel like it’s underused.
Another thing you could add for expressiveness is the rolled R. In some songs, like aggressive-sounding rock songs, the R is rolled to make it sound more “wild”.
There’s SH samples but no ZH (as in pleasure or Asia) This one isn’t really a must to me, but it could provide an alternative to J (like how G is substituted with NG).

I hope you can improve this list and resource post to make it more useful and helpful to the newbies of 2015.
 
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OcarinaLink24

Ruko's Ruffians
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I appreciate the effort you’ve gone through to create a list suitable for newbies. However, I feel like your language is a bit dated, and more aimed at the type of perspective held in the past. For example, you recommend that users record “CV VC” if they want real english rather than VCCV (which you simply threw in as a small note at the bottom). You also mentioned that an intermediate user should be doing VCV as a second step, rather than a CVVC, which is now regarded as simpler because it takes less recording, less otoing, and no UST editing.

Additionally, the pronunciation guide uses English words as a reference, which can lead to accenting.
“farm” has too back of an “a” where japanese is a fronter one. An example is “eye” without the “ee” at the end.
“open” uses an “oh” sound rather than the pure “o” sound Japanese needs. An example is “core” or “boy” without the R/Y.
You could put a link here to a youtube video that explains Japanese pronunciation so that people get the chance to hear the sounds, have them explained, and then try to say it themselves.

As for the list itself, I think putting “english” in the title is somewhat of false advertising. The purpose of the list, you outlined, was to cover Japanese as well as extras used in J-pop. These types of lists should be named “Japanese + Extras”. The choice of single vowels is ok, but you could expand these if you want to more accurately transcribe English. The vowels in english are (in x-sampa) i, I, u, U, E, 3, O, {, V, A (but it varies from accent to accent). You’ve already covered i, I, u, E, O, {, V, and A, which leaves behind U and 3 (6 and 3 in Chezzie)
However, since the list is just for the english words used in j-pop, which are often said with a japanese accent anyway, you could leave out english vowels entirely.

The diphthongs seem unnecessary, since they can be constructed with two single vowels crossfaded together. (a + i = ai, e + i = ei, etc.) Blends for Y are a must because of the language, but I think blends for W should be restricted to consonants that actually need them. (Such as K for “queen” and S for “sweet”)

he consonant choice covers mostly everything. I feel like a few are missing though.
You’ve only got one TH, so it doesn’t distinguish between the unvoiced “thin” “bath” TH, and the voiced “the” “that” TH. It’s a common mistake, since many english speakers are unaware of the difference until it’s pointed out, with both sounds being spelled the same way. You could use DH for the second type, and just TH for the first type.
You don’t really have an “ng” consonant, like at the end of english words like “ring”. This actually shows up in japanese sometimes, where it is pronounced instead of an actual “g” consonant. It adds more expressiveness to singing and shows up in some Japan-originating banks, but I feel like it’s underused.
Another thing you could add for expressiveness is the rolled R. In some songs, like aggressive-sounding rock songs, the R is rolled to make it sound more “wild”.
There’s SH samples but no ZH (as in pleasure or Asia) This one isn’t really a must to me, but it could provide an alternative to J (like how G is substituted with NG).

I hope you can improve this list and resource post to make it more useful and helpful to the newbies of 2015.

I appreciate your suggestions, and SUPER appreciate the feedback! I'm always looking to improve :3

I did have a reason for the way I worded the CVVC thing though. I said CVVC because if a newbie wanted information on the voicebank type they would have better luck finding general information on how it works that way. I then recommended recording using the VCCV method for its clarity.
In my experience I have found VCV to be a middle stepping stone when it comes to learning to use the program effectively, and therefore I recommended it as such. It does not require 'no UST editing.' It can if you decide you don't feel like it, but it's much easier to understand if you use VCV first. At least that's how it worked out for me. Everyone learns differently I suppose, but this is normally the way I see others progress as well.
If somebody is creating their very first voicebank, then using Japanese words as reference wouldn't be very helpful. Especially considering how many people throw a reclist at their friends asking them to record. It was just to give a basic idea because people were confused and sending me messages about it. If you have a link to a video like that then I would appreciate you throwing it my way. I've never been able to pin down one that I find more useful (and painless for ones who don't really care) then those simple explanations.
I labeled them as 'English' due to the fact that, as you mentioned with Japanese recordings, calling them just 'extras' would lead to accent problems. Especially since the 'r' sound is pronounced differently nearly everywhere. If you wanted to get technical, I used English words as examples, so...English pronunciation, for English.
And it is not always said with a Japanese accent, and I find it more satisfying to actually have the English bits somewhat understandable, so that's why I included those vowels (but that's just me). As for the way they should be named...well, I know that we had a bit of a disagreement about this in a thread of somebody who was asking for a voicebank critique awhile back, but not everybody puts their locale in Japanese since it can mess with certain programs, and people have over-cautious family members. When your locale is in English, having two syllables that have the same letters with different capitalization is totally useless, so this ensures that all users have easy access to the sounds, and that they don't accidentally end up with the wrong one.
In my past experiences of using UTAU, I've found that having a diphthong file makes things smoother when you want to use more advanced tuning methods. In some cases it's more effective to use a diphthong, and then use the ending vowel with crossfade. Usually the ending vowel doesn't even get heard, but you can hear the voice preparing for it so it sounds smoother and more natural.
Adding the extra 'w' sounds are admittedly my personal preference for tuning certain words due to the style I use. I use this reclist myself and know of others who tune similarly (heck, I learned it from them), and if anyone else picks up that specific style it could be useful to them too. This reclist wasn't meant solely for beginners, and that's why I kind of went overkill on the number of samples.
You make an EXCELLENT point about the 'th' sounds. Thank you so much for the suggestion! I think I'll add that in. Funny how I've been speaking English my entire life, and while I knew about the difference I didn't even think about it when I was constructing the reclist XD

Thanks again for all your feedback! I really really appreciate it ~^^~ It's funny how complicated English can be, even when you only want a few basic starting sounds XD
 

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