Diagnosed with vocal cord cancer-need help with my Utau

[Rakuei]

Hello everyone. I made an utau about 5 years ago, and had planned to make improvements to her. But I was recently diagnosed with stage 3 vocal cord cancer, so I am no longer able to sing and voice for her. As I am likely to lose my voice permanently, I was wondering if anyone would be able to help give me some advice with anything I can do to improve her sound (alias, using the right resamplers, etc)

This is a wonderful community and even if I am physically unable to sing again, I want to be able to make covers with my utau to still keep my singing spirit alive, and hers as well!

Ref link to her is here:

I'm also terrible at mixing, someone mixed her in here for me. She is a VCV utau, highest range is C5 I believe. I'll upload a link to her bank very soon.

Thanks so much for all the help, you guys are amazing <3

A voice full of love,

Rakuei

 

[Big_B]

Hewoo!

This one is hard. What you mean by "improve her sound"? Considering that you can't record any more samples we should think in another ways to make your utau sounds better, but sounding better is very personal and is very biased from person to person. So You have to define what improve sound means.

Anyway, probably at this point you can edit her samples. If you don't have a backup I recommend it. The put your samples in a DAW and edit it by removing it's noise sample (It helps to make your utau clearer with different resamplers) and play with the Eq options (I heard that the low end has a lot of unwanted noise. You can't eliminate all of it, but if you make it's frequencies lower it surely can help. Search about "how to mix vocals" and "how to vocal treatment", it helps a lot).

Inside utau the best thing you can do is learn how to tune. My tips are that you try to imitate the style of a producer you like or a cover you like, with time little by little you will understand how pitch bending and tunning works! :3

Sorry, that's the best I could think about! If you have any questions I'm here to help! ^^

See ya~

 

[Rakuei]

Hewoo!

This one is hard. What you mean by "improve her sound"? Considering that you can't record any more samples we should think in another ways to make your utau sounds better, but sounding better is very personal and is very biased from person to person. So You have to define what improve sound means.

Anyway, probably at this point you can edit her samples. If you don't have a backup I recommend it. The put your samples in a DAW and edit it by removing it's noise sample (It helps to make your utau clearer with different resamplers) and play with the Eq options (I heard that the low end has a lot of unwanted noise. You can't eliminate all of it, but if you make it's frequencies lower it surely can help. Search about "how to mix vocals" and "how to vocal treatment", it helps a lot).

Inside utau the best thing you can do is learn how to tune. My tips are that you try to imitate the style of a producer you like or a cover you like, with time little by little you will understand how pitch bending and tunning works! :3

Sorry, that's the best I could think about! If you have any questions I'm here to help! ^^

See ya~

Hey there! Thanks so much for your reply!

She has some not so obvious pronunciation problems sometimes, and her "a" sound is a bit too strong, but nothing I can do about it now. I actually like her little mistakes, makes her unique.

By improve, I mean what you've said, cleaning her up and making her sound as clear as possible! The mic I used to record was a Blue Snowball, so not the best quality, but certainly better than a standard cheap mic. But she could definitely sound clearer.

What is a DAW? Like FL studio or Audacity?

And yes, I am terrible at tuning, haha!

 

[Big_B]

Hey there! Thanks so much for your reply!

She has some not so obvious pronunciation problems sometimes, and her "a" sound is a bit too strong, but nothing I can do about it now. I actually like her little mistakes, makes her unique.

By improve, I mean what you've said, cleaning her up and making her sound as clear as possible! The mic I used to record was a Blue Snowball, so not the best quality, but certainly better than a standard cheap mic. But she could definitely sound clearer.

What is a DAW? Like FL studio or Audacity?

And yes, I am terrible at tuning, haha!

You're welcome! ^^

About her pronunciation stuff you can fix it by otoing and tunning. Not everything is possible, but certainly some things are. For weak sounds idk much what to do, but for stronger sounds dragging the overlap around and testing how it will sound surely will help. Also speeding the strong part using consonant velocity will make it "weaker", everything that is in the pink part will be affected, but at least you will have a "weaker sound". You can also use moresmapler's "B" (Or "b", I don't remember now! ;~ to make these sounds more pronounced. It doesn't affect all consonants, but weaker ones like "p", "b" and "r" becomes really pronounced with this flag.

About her strong "a" you can make a duplicate of it's entry in the oto window. With this copy you enter the edit mode and drag the cuttoff part (The purple bar at the beginning) until you find a place where the wave seems weaker. The idea is to let the weaker sound in the white area while the strong part is cutted. For example:


Pay attention at how the wave is presented. What is inside the purple part starts weak, then go stronger, then falls into a weaker part (It's inside the pink area) until it starts to be stronger again (the white area). If you pay attention really closely you will see that the pink area is weaker then the white one. Here a better picture:

So if I was in the same situation as you I would cut the stronger parts and let the weak one in the white area, like that:

It really depends how your recording is, but if you do that you can achieve a weaker result. Here is an example of how it sounds (The first "a" was made by letting the strong waveform in the white area, while the second "a" is the one you're seeing in the image above. Note how the first sounds more pronounced while the second one sounds weaker, like if it's volume was reduced).

Yes, DAW are programs to edit your voice. If you learn how to eq, vocal compression and how to reduce background noise it will help you a lot ^^

I'm going to post a tutorial about tunning in the future, I just want to have more experience with that sopaksaopk So unfortunately I can't say much here ;~;

I'm glad I could help you some way! ^^

 

[IO+]

I'm terribly sorry to hear that, this must be incredibly difficult for you.

About the quality of voicebanks, this is happen at very first of the process, which mean, get the great sound in recording stage.
Since you can't record your voice anymore. But fear not. With proper editing can make it shine, there is always hope.

I don't know if you still have original audio files. That would be wonderful if you have a backup, so you can redo it again or send it to someone that's really good at making utau.

I can provide a technical stuff like mixing,editing,mastering, but my queue is full at the moment.
My mixing request is still open, you can hit me up anytime.

 

[HIRATELIER]

Hi Rakuei! I'm not entirely sure if you remember me from 2015-2016, but it's so nice to see you again. I'm really sorry to hear about your diagnosis though ;^;

I remember that there was a utility that removes background noise from samples (like most of the noise, but not all of it). Since you're unable to record anymore, I recommend checking that out, and I hope it improves the quality of your voicebank.

And when it comes to resamplers, I LOVE using f2resamp (aka an improved version of the original fresamp). Helps a lot with making the background noise not too obvious and works well with the voicebanks I use. Doppeltler is another nice resampler to use, it's one of the newer resamplers going around.

 

[Rakuei]

You're welcome! ^^

About her pronunciation stuff you can fix it by otoing and tunning. Not everything is possible, but certainly some things are. For weak sounds idk much what to do, but for stronger sounds dragging the overlap around and testing how it will sound surely will help. Also speeding the strong part using consonant velocity will make it "weaker", everything that is in the pink part will be affected, but at least you will have a "weaker sound". You can also use moresmapler's "B" (Or "b", I don't remember now! ;~ to make these sounds more pronounced. It doesn't affect all consonants, but weaker ones like "p", "b" and "r" becomes really pronounced with this flag.

About her strong "a" you can make a duplicate of it's entry in the oto window. With this copy you enter the edit mode and drag the cuttoff part (The purple bar at the beginning) until you find a place where the wave seems weaker. The idea is to let the weaker sound in the white area while the strong part is cutted. For example:

View attachment 11300
Pay attention at how the wave is presented. What is inside the purple part starts weak, then go stronger, then falls into a weaker part (It's inside the pink area) until it starts to be stronger again (the white area). If you pay attention really closely you will see that the pink area is weaker then the white one. Here a better picture:
View attachment 11301
So if I was in the same situation as you I would cut the stronger parts and let the weak one in the white area, like that:
View attachment 11302
It really depends how your recording is, but if you do that you can achieve a weaker result. Here is an example of how it sounds (The first "a" was made by letting the strong waveform in the white area, while the second "a" is the one you're seeing in the image above. Note how the first sounds more pronounced while the second one sounds weaker, like if it's volume was reduced).

Yes, DAW are programs to edit your voice. If you learn how to eq, vocal compression and how to reduce background noise it will help you a lot ^^

I'm going to post a tutorial about tunning in the future, I just want to have more experience with that sopaksaopk So unfortunately I can't say much here ;~;

I'm glad I could help you some way! ^^

Omg...thank you so much! So much detail! <3

I'm uploading her files to a file sharing site again so I can link you guys. Maybe you can look at it and make more sense of it than I can. I haven't touched her in nearly 5 years. I think I forgot most of what to do lol.

Post automatically merged: Mar 4, 2022

Hi Rakuei! I'm not entirely sure if you remember me from 2015-2016, but it's so nice to see you again. I'm really sorry to hear about your diagnosis though ;^;

I remember that there was a utility that removes background noise from samples (like most of the noise, but not all of it). Since you're unable to record anymore, I recommend checking that out, and I hope it improves the quality of your voicebank.

And when it comes to resamplers, I LOVE using f2resamp (aka an improved version of the original fresamp). Helps a lot with making the background noise not too obvious and works well with the voicebanks I use. Doppeltler is another nice resampler to use, it's one of the newer resamplers going around.

HIRA!!! Yes, of course I remember you! Long time no talk! Nice to see you again too! Thank you, it's been hard and a little scary.

I'll check out both of the program and the new fresamp! Thanks so much for the help! I'm gonna try to work with it as much as I can, but I'm told I'll get chemo brain, so I hope I can figure stuff out!
Also, *hugs*

Post automatically merged: Mar 4, 2022

I'm terribly sorry to hear that, this must be incredibly difficult for you.

About the quality of voicebanks, this is happen at very first of the process, which mean, get the great sound in recording stage.
Since you can't record your voice anymore. But fear not. With proper editing can make it shine, there is always hope.

I don't know if you still have original audio files. That would be wonderful if you have a backup, so you can redo it again or send it to someone that's really good at making utau.

I can provide a technical stuff like mixing,editing,mastering, but my queue is full at the moment.
My mixing request is still open, you can hit me up anytime.

Hello! Yes, I luckily do have the original audio files. They're in the voiceband, so I can edit them and put them back in, I think.

I may have to send it to someone who is good at doing utau, as I don't know how well I'll be able to do anything on chemo.

 

[Rakuei]

Here is a link to download my bank if anyone wants to look at it. There are some sample pronunciation mistakes that I sadly, never fixed, but they're also not noticeable enough to anyone but me I think lol

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/vui5f9wu9vf3t/迷音ゆい+-IMAJ-+(alias+fix)

 

[Big_B]

Here is a link to download my bank if anyone wants to look at it. There are some sample pronunciation mistakes that I sadly, never fixed, but they're also not noticeable enough to anyone but me I think lol

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/vui5f9wu9vf3t/迷音ゆい+-IMAJ-+(alias+fix)

Could you please put it in a zip file so we can download all at once instead of file by file?

 

[Rakuei]

Sorry about that!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/bfzx1jjxb1ru3hi/迷音ゆい+-IMAJ-+(alias+fix).zip/file

 

[Viran]

I am so sorry for your diagnosis...
Thank you for uploading a zipped version
If you'd like I'd be more than willing to configure the voicebank (if needed, haven't yet had the chance to download), remove click/mouth noises and artificially fix pronunciation mistakes!

 

[Rakuei]

I am so sorry for your diagnosis...
Thank you for uploading a zipped version
If you'd like I'd be more than willing to configure the voicebank (if needed, haven't yet had the chance to download), remove click/mouth noises and artificially fix pronunciation mistakes!

Oh my god that would be amazing!!

I would love you forever.

I'm starting chemo today, so I didn't think I would get to it myself.

Have I mentioned that you're awesome?