Are you worried for the UTAU community?

Aali

Ruko's Ruffians
I perosnally noticed that it's harder to find someone to draw for you than it is to find someone to oto or voice provide. Art must be very popular.
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That's the thing, though - I'd be totally willing to do an art trade/collab/ect. That'd be fine.
And I do see your point in the problem of people taking advantage of others... I feel like people who won't learn to OTO (for example) just because they don't feel like it shouldn't get help, but I feel like there are some new UTAU users out there that could use a genuine, knowledgeable person to help them out every now and then. ^o^


I agree collabs would be very fun and I hope to try it out soon. Some people can't art-trade because they can't draw. But there are two types of people who can't draw. Those who can and they just think they suck and those who can only draw stick figures.

I doubt anyone would want me to make them an utau stick figure xD
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
About the topic of all things being free: nothing worth getting at a high standard of quality is free. This goes not only for UTAU, but for anything in life. You want a video game? You buy it. You want clothing? You buy it. You want food? You buy it. That's just the way the world works. Now, you can do things for "free" or by paying less if you take the time and effort to do things entirely on your own (learn how to draw, audio produce, oto, video production, etc.), but many people don't want to do that or lack the skills/tools necessary. That's where commissions and trades come in. If you can offer back the equivalent or more of what you'll receive, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with trades and collaborations. If you can't offer an equal quality product in exchange for someone's services, then the very least you can do is offer them money in return.
 

Aali

Ruko's Ruffians
About the topic of all things being free: nothing worth getting at a high standard of quality is free. This goes not only for UTAU, but for anything in life. You want a video game? You buy it. You want clothing? You buy it. You want food? You buy it. That's just the way the world works. Now, you can do things for "free" or by paying less if you take the time and effort to do things entirely on your own (learn how to draw, audio produce, oto, video production, etc.), but many people don't want to do that or lack the skills/tools necessary. That's where commissions and trades come in. If you can offer back the equivalent or more of what you'll receive, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with trades and collaborations. If you can't offer an equal quality product in exchange for someone's services, then the very least you can do is offer them money in return.

I see where you're coming from. I'm on the fence with this whole commissions and free topic. Some people, however don't/can't get paypal and can't/don't have the proper equipment to draw or record. If I could record my own utau, I'd have 5 by now and if the oto tuts weren't so confusing too.

It just depends on your (financial) situation. *Edit* Just because you don't have the money doesn't mean you're not allowed to enjoy utau.
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Just because you don't have the money doesn't mean you're not allowed to enjoy utau.
Absolutely. If all you can afford is to do things entirely free [audacity and other free audio editors (tracktion, studio one free, reaper, etc.), windows movie maker or aviutil for video, built in mic, trial and error otoing, and drawing on paper and taking a picture with your phone], then there's nothing wrong with that. Don't have the audio quality you desire? Find inspiration for the why: a decommissioned android that's cobbled together from multiple rusted parts and relies on old 1980s technology, for example. There are ways to work around monetary shortcomings and even then, you should enjoy what you're doing.
 
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★M3ROKA★

.Puri
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
I don't think it's about money at all. It's 90% hard work and 10% advertising yourself (maybe more but what do I know about statistics ha) I've never paid money for anything in this fandom except for the shareware version of UTAU itself. I will always try 110% to do my absolute best on everything; whether its artwork, oto.ini, recording, UST making - I might not be good at some of those things but I always do the best I can do. I spend more time actually doing things than socialising now.

I remember when I used to do art for free; I wanted to make people happy. However it didn't make me happy; I felt unbelievable pressure to make every piece of artwork amazing. So much in fact I would never finish artwork and fall into depression and would disappear from the internet with feelings of failure. Sometimes as soon I had finished it - I would get a "Oh thanks it's awesome!" and then they'd never speak to me again; for all those hours of work and stress? Now I will only work for free for my friends or those I know will work hard themselves in others areas such as tuning or music. Art is a career, it's a job - to some at least.

I agree 100% with Sayuri and Teri. You're paying for the hours of work that goes into that piece. People in this fandom actually price artwork lower than minimum wage. Remember Michelangelo? The Church commissioned him for his work, he didn't just paint an entire ceiling for free.

My problem with the community is that it seems like everyone is competing sometimes, there is a subtle bitterness at times that seems totally different from the 2010 days but that might just because the community is now massive and opinions tend to conflict. Another big thing is that hardly anyone likes criticism; I'm an art student. I got destroyed weekly about my artwork and they would point out everything that was wrong.

Is that a bad thing? No I don't think so; people are blind to their own mistakes; I couldn't see the errors in the first year of my art degree; by the time I was a third year I could pick out the errors myself and fix them. I could criticise my own peers politely and help them fix there own work; most importantly I could handle criticism with a smile and not feel like a failure unlike my 15-16 year old self who had just started UTAU. I think people tend to get better at handling criticism as they get older but it's still a pretty big thing here.

I believe that if you don't have money to commission; do it yourself; even if you "don't have the skills" art is literally 99% hard work and practice same with everything else. Fair enough if you don't want to become an artist and don't want to put in the practice because it's time consuming. I get that, art is not everyone's thing; but remember that even Circus-P draws his own art sometimes; do you think he just suddenly gained that skill as well as doing music? No, art is time consuming. I spend a lot of time practising anatomy, trying different styles and hardly get to socialise any more. I started of in this fandom with literally 0 skills; less than average artist high school student, couldn't sing or anything. All I had was my imagination and my hard work.

Now I have around 5-6 years in UTAU, I can now draw & paint, know basic Japanese, make midis and sing. Although I haven't produced anything for youtube or neither am I popular; the hard work that I did is why I remain here. I gained something back from UTAU, not just fun, not just a hobby, not just friends; I gained skills and a possible future in an art & design related career. If you expect overnight popularity from UTAU; it's not gonna happen, and defiantly not if you don't put effort in.

I don't worry for this community however, I think it'll get better as people mature; grow and improve but maybe I'm just optimistic and naive. The community has gotten huge and successful in only 5 years, I can only imagine what another 5 years will bring.

//end rant teehee just my thoughts and opinions, not really meaning to offend anyone.
 

etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
Thread starter
I mean, isn't a huge part of getting into a fandom wanting to make friends to discuss it with? Even the girl I was very close with during my main UTAU activity and I didn't use each other's voice banks THAT much. I really just want people to talk to about it and grow with.

Also, yeah, Ameya not updating is hugely worrying as well... The program itself will certainly last a long time as it is, but once something stops receiving updates, it's...
 
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bio

VocalSynth Enthusiast
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Also, yeah, Ameya not updating is hugely worrying as well... The program itself will certainly last a long time as it is, but once something stops receiving updates, it's...
Im sure their working on a BIG update to utau. We just have to wait!
 

chunter

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
The program itself will certainly last a long time as it is, but once something stops receiving updates, it's...
I'm pretty sure that if you lose interest it's because you found something else to do, it's not because Ameya stopped releasing bugfixes.
 

MystSaphyr

Procrastinator Extraordinaire
Administrator
Defender of Defoko
I apologize for the terrifying doom textwall y'all are about to encounter, especially since as of late I've been scarce around this place. As a couple of people have already said, adulthood changes things. I've become a victim of the 30-40 hour retail work week.

---

Speaking as one of those aforementioned "oldies", when I got into UTAU, we as a fandom were literally growing alongside the software itself. I mean heck, I started before the UTAU grid scrolled as it played USTs! There were software and plugin updates right and left, and new techniques being developed for recording and otoing and usting all over the place. When something new got tossed to the fandom, you can bet within the week there'd be a tutorial and tests spattered all over YouTube and, later, Tumblr and Soundcloud. All these improvements brought in new fandom members who wanted to jump right into things. UTAU was no longer the scratchy mod-less mess of 2008 but a respectable competitor to Vocaloid. People took notice: LOTS of people. At the same time, our sister software Vocaloid was blossoming into a cultural phenomenon. We had a LOT of material coming out to cover, remix and reimagine: seeing as 99% of us were still just making covers.

Now, UTAU development has slowed down to a crawl. Last year and the year before that, we still had plenty of new resamplers and plugins to play with, like Masao's patcher and the pitch drawing tool and utaugrowl and what have you. Stuff was still happening even though UTAU itself hadn't updated in a year. For the past several months however, that's stopped for the most part. I mean hell, UTAU-Synth is essentially dead now: it hasn't been updated since early 2013, the download link recently broke, and the monthly serial key generator seems to be busted. At the same time, there's cries that the Vocaloid fandom is dying off (though arguably, I don't 100% agree with this, for reasons I might be posting elsewhere later). Either way, though. you can't deny that attitude has spread all over the singthesis crowd (save for maybe the Chipspeech fandom, bless their souls)

I think Jeremy makes a very important and valid point: UTAU has survived, despite Ameya himself being in development limbo, through a series of innovations made by the few. These innovations have subsequently turned into trends and standardized by the majority. When something new and revolutionary gets brought to the table, people flood in, all wanting to be THE FIRST to try it out and master it. Then a trend forms. (I mean, the DAY that Cz announced her VCCV, someone asked me in a YouTube comment if I planned to record VCCV Aiko. This was even before that BalladSoft test was made public!)

However, I think this general attitude of waiting for the Next Big Thing to show itself is dangerous and is, in part, what is causing the general VocUTAU fandom to stagnate as it is. The ratio of people actually innovating to people following innovations has gone off balance due to the sheer amount of users here now, and you can only follow an existing fad upwards for so long before it plateaus. It happened with VCV. It happens with every spam cover. It happened with story-song series. It happened with same-voice types in the V3 era. Too much of something, and people get bored with it because it becomes the norm! It's a fact of life.

(I think this oversaturation of the same-old, same-old is one major reason why many REALLY GOOD current Vocaloid songs go overlooked, and why no one has really caught onto presamp. Let me tell you, if Delta had come along in 2012 with a CVVC plugin that automates everything for you, people would've eaten that shit up. But we're so inundated with powerscale VCV - The Golden Standard - that it just hasn't gotten a foothold.)

There have been lulls before in fandom activity, but not this long or to this extent. But do I think UTAU (or, while on the topic, Vocaloid) will die out? Naw. Not at all. as chunter has pointed out, the fandom has matured. It's settled. It's not the exponentially growing, bustling hive of activity it used to be, but it's still here. We're proof of that! And it's really up to us as members of the fandom to choose whether or not to help push it forward, rather than give up on it because the forum has quieted down or there aren't weekly floods of spam covers of the Breakout Vocaloid Hit Of The Month on SC/YT to prove its ongoing existence.

I'm not saying we all need to learn to program and churn out resamplers, but don't be afraid to break boundaries and collaborate. History has shown us that these avatar singthesizers are made for collaboration, but (again, as it's been brought up) in the overseas crowd, people don't seem too keen to go outside their comfort zone. But with an aging fanbase that's quickly losing its free time, collaboration is the key to being able to turn out interesting, quality works at a decent speed and quantity to keep interest going.

Heck, maybe it's a long shot, but what if we could unify enough to reach out to directly Ameya, thank him, and express that we'd like to see more open development tools available for UTAU and UTAU-Synth to keep things going on the programming side, perhaps?
 

Lystrialle

Administrator
Administrator
Tutor
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
A sort of addendum from myself, based off what Myst just said: Covers got old.

There were actually never that fast of an original-making rate in the UTAU base, because by and large it still was a small community, so most of the fuel came from people doing covers. But then things in the community happened - after the stigma developed about taking people's USTs, slapping them on an UTAU with minimal edit, and posting it developed, there just wasn't as much novelty to making covers as there was before. (I think it was originally good intent - people initially were worrying that nobody even checked the USTs before posting, leading to things like lyric mistakes leaking into final products - but it eventually developed into full-on stigma, even when the UST was well-tuned.) Add that to the fact that people started complaining every time there was a flood of covers of a new popular song, and everyone developed a complex about their own hype at once. So now everyone's sort of just hanging around, talking about UTAU and making UTAU, but never actually sure what to do. It's never bad to make a cover, but people started feeling less excited about making them.

And it's actually pretty closely tied to Vocaloid as well - since a lot of Vocaloid reprinters/subbers started changing hands, and the nature of the Vocaloid community changed (which would also merit a different post, but tl;dr: a lot more first-time amateur producers started making Vocaloid works, and you still see a lot of excellent new Vocaloid originals on NND, but there's so many now that nobody knows who to single out as their Next Big Hit Composer, and after most of the producers who were big names from 2010-2012 have either moved on to better prospects or found different interests, now there's just this bunch of fresh amateur producers on NND that encompass a whole sea, making it difficult to find what you want unless you're a regular Nico surfer). So without the whole Next Big Hit Bandwagon Song, the UTAU community didn't know how to follow up on that.

The people are there. The interest is there. We just need to, as Myst said, expand our options a bit.
(Or in my case, I need to get out of school.)
 
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Roenais

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
I think another problem maybe is that standards for UTAU banks might be too high? Back when I started with the program a quick search for an UTAU cover could give you hundreds of quickly made, cheap CV banks and poor quality covers- but it never really mattered. People would still give the time to these banks and help them with the problems. Each creator would learn thought their mistakes and slowly develop, and some even became the "popular" banks we see today. Hell, I probably wouldn't be here if my first terrible covers hadn't gotten comments teaching me what an OTO was. But nowerdays some of the popular UTAU banks are getting so good that nobody seems to have the time for the poorer ones. Recently two of my close friends both got interested in the idea of making UTAU, so i tried to help them with making their first CV banks, but they both lost enthusiasm pretty quickly because it didn't sound good enough. They wanted to make smooth multilingual multi appended UTAU like all their inspirations but got too frustrated when trying to learn VCV and CVVC and all that jazz and gave up. idk, maybe this isn't a widespead problem and it's only something happening in my circles, oops.
 

Mrs.Peach

Married Sugar Mama
Global Mod
Defender of Defoko
We need to breathe new life in our community and the ONLY way we can do that is to bring down the ridiculously high standards that have been set. Everyone and their mother wants to have multi-pitch pitch power VCV and that in itself is a daunting task (I've been in the community since 2010 and I struggle to meet these standards due to real life).

Back in 2011-2012 I ran UTAUOnline, a fine website that saw fantastic growth and I watched a lot of UTAU users flourish on that site, we had even created our own vcv reclist for beginners and people with short breath. Back then CV was the way to come into the fandom. You were not shot down for it and you upgraded that CV bank when you could.

This is were I think our problem stems from, we aren't seeing growth because we as a community are scaring newbies! We want smooth, non-slurry banks with the ability to sound as realistic as possible and we force that standard on newbies whether it be conscious or not. You introduce you friend to the community and ask them to record a VCV, the record that with your guidance and oto that for them.... Where is the learning? You are taking the most fun part away!

My point is people already in the fandom need to be less enforcing of high standards on newbies, be more welcoming and let newbies flourish and grow in their own way without them feeling that they need to catch up really fast.
 

Aali

Ruko's Ruffians
I mean, isn't a huge part of getting into a fandom wanting to make friends to discuss it with?

I guess it is for some people. But I'm 16 and parents don't like me having online friends. So I'm not here to make friends :/
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I think another problem maybe is that standards for UTAU banks might be too high?

I agree. I love my Aali's vb and don't want to change it but everyone keeps telling me that it's crappy :/
 
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etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
Thread starter
I'm pretty sure that if you lose interest it's because you found something else to do, it's not because Ameya stopped releasing bugfixes.
As operating systems get updates, the program will stop functioning properly. Eventually it will become impossible to use.
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I agree. I love my Aali's vb and don't want to change it but everyone keeps telling me that it's crappy :/
But this - and please don't take this too personally, as I have nothing against you - is an example of how a lot of the users during the boom just didn't want feedback or to improve. By all means, do whatever you want with your voice bank; it's yours, after all! You have every right to say "I don't want feedback I just want to make songs," but if you ask for feedback then people are going to tell you what could be better. And if the voicebank doesn't match the quality they want/are used to, they won't use it.
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I honestly had no idea CV was suddenly taboo. I love my CV bank and I've got plenty of good CV banks from other users as well. I love working with both VCV and CV, and while yes, VCV is the better of the two, CV still has it's own fine points.
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It can be difficult because I try not to post unless someone has specifically asked for critique. The same thing happens in the general art community as well; newbies are looked down on for their lack of skill...but where the heck are they supposed to learn from if the established artists shun them? But the opposite can be true as well; someone can post a well-meaning critique and get yelled at for ~~being negative~~.
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
I honestly had no idea CV was suddenly taboo. I love my CV bank and I've got plenty of good CV banks from other users as well. I love working with both VCV and CV, and while yes, VCV is the better of the two, CV still has it's own fine points.
It's only taboo in the sense that people still don't know how to properly configure it for a smooth sound (it won't exceed vcv in smoothness, but it's not impossible to get smooth results that don't sound like a speak n spell or defoko's default settings) and there are people here and elsewhere who will link to the old 2009 wiki tutorials instead of actually giving updated information. The few that do release up to date information often get ignored cause not every knowledgeable person actually has tutor colors.
 

etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
Thread starter
Your post was amazing. I never really thought about how each "big thing" kept the fandom pumping...mostly because it was always happening, so it just seemed natural. But when you explain it that way, it makes it a lot clearer.

Luckily, producing music is always going to be exciting and popular. Another big step was songs getting turned into stories and then anime. A long-time personal favorite of mine is Black Rock Shooter, and I'm really sad that nothing has happened with it since that weird PSP game (which I still haven't played...oops.)

Man, I think another thing is the amount of Vocaloids coming out. We're getting so many that it isn't even special anymore. I feel like I used to be amazed when a new character came out, but now we've always got like ten in production. We end up with Vocaloids that nobody touches or even hears about, we end up with weird, low-quality Vocaloids, and some projects are straight-up abandoned! Luka's update was in development for YEARS... Ring and Lui were announced at the beginning of V3 and just..............ceased. etc etc

I would absolutely love to reach out to Ameya. I can't describe how much UTAU has meant to me despite not being particularly active with it.

That being said, I'd love to add people on Skype or something and be able to chat with people/produce with people again.

Yeah! DECO*27 has a lot of real-life voicers now for their songs. Honeyworks still produces Vocaloid songs but they also have a market for just their manga/books/etc. I never really seriously considered the Vocaloid fandom dying out; I thought it maybe seemed less active but I also personally have not been very active so I also figured I was in no place to consider the fandom as a whole when I wasn't really participating.[/QUOTE]
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
In my opinion, we all need to become more open to the newer community.
The few of us that are can't do it for everyone lol.
it should be a learning experience that allows everyone to grow and not just for personal gain/make yourself look good.
 

Aali

Ruko's Ruffians
But this - and please don't take this too personally, as I have nothing against you - is an example of how a lot of the users during the boom just didn't want feedback or to improve. By all means, do whatever you want with your voice bank; it's yours, after all! You have every right to say "I don't want feedback I just want to make songs," but if you ask for feedback then people are going to tell you what could be better. And if the voicebank doesn't match the quality they want/are used to, they won't use it.

I agree, but like you said, I just want to make songs. And my vb is private because I don't want others to use it anyway :smile:
 

baye

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
This is a really good thread with a lot of interesting points. I especially resonate with people speaking about "waiting for the next big thing" and the whole loss of time when going into college. I've been in the fandom since about 2010, and it was extremely integral to my development. Because of UTAU, I gained an interest in Japanese language and linguistics, which has become my college major. I want the new additions to this fandom to be able to receive the same interest in their work as I did, so that new doors can open for them too.

I also agree with bringing down the intensely high standards for UTAU voice banks. I remember back when I did UTAU for the first time, a cute little CV bank with a good concept and an ok voice that could keep improving was all people needed. Now, it's multiple pitches and complex reclists. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. I personally love looking at all the new styles and things that people come up with. That sort of creativity is what this community needs to keep going. Even so, the standards for newer users should be lowered, I believe. In order to get to those high quality voice banks, you need to start with the low quality ones, and keep improving with critique and encouragement. One can't expect all newbies to just grind out a multipitch VCV with a perfect OTO.ini on their first attempt, to be dramatic about it.

However, in my own experience, I sometimes get discouraged regarding my own work when I find such high quality banks because I don't always have the time nor resources to improve upon my own. I am sure that newbies feel this tenfold.

On another note, I would also love to get back into UTAU producing and chatting with people. I would love to go back to "the good old days" of producing a lot of content with other people. Being inactive in the community due to mental health problems, lack of time and inspiration has been a bit difficult, but given the opportunity, I would gladly assist and work with others.
 

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