yellow trick

Write about Vocalo.

– kai.

Vocaloid. The singing synthesizer software that has become a sensation in Japan for the past decade or so. Started in 2004 with the faceless Leon, Lola, and Miriam, it quickly boomed to popularity with the addition of Crypton Future Media’s KAITO, MEIKO, Megurine Luka, Kagamine Rin and Len, and finally, of course, Hatsune Miku.

There’s no one in Japan who doesn’t know Hatsune Miku. According to Crypton Future Media’s official site, she’s the voice of over 100,000 original songs, has held sold-out concerts across the world, and has official corporate collaborations with SEGA, Toyota, Google, and more. She’s been in car commercials, shampoo commercials, and food commercials. The song behind Nyan Cat is her song. She’s been on the David Letterman show, she’s sung with Lady Gaga.. Even Japan’s Prime Minister Abe loves her. You name it, she’s done it.

I hope to broaden the introduction of Hatsune Miku, dance, concerts, manga, literature, anime, Japanese movie, etc.

– Prime Minister Abe.

Naturally, then, Miku has become the face of Vocaloid; she’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the synthesizer. People love her. I love her too– her Triple Baka was the first song to get me into Vocaloid seven years ago. But to me, Kagamine Rin and Len surpass her in every way, despite Miku’s enormous popularity. Why? Because in terms of sheer quality, Rin and Len are of the highest, with amazing voice flexibility and realism. For explanation purposes, I will be comparing them to Miku for popularity reasons. Don’t get me wrong– Miku’s popularity is well-deserved. She is the perfect formula of a pretty anime girl with a cute anime voice that appeals to a wide audience. But in the end, Miku has nothing on her blonde successors.

First off– design. Rin and Len were initially designed as twins, with Kagamine meaning “mirror sound” to represent the two. However, due to some artistic representation of the two of them as a couple in some fanart and songs, Crypton Future Media clarified the two of them to simply be “mirror images” and not twins, making a reference to their last name. As such, their designs reflect two sides of the same person, one female and one male. This allows many creators to work off of this dynamic and make stunning and creative use of their “mirror image” and symmetrical dynamic which is unique solely to these two. They are also objectively cute. Yes, I mean it when I say objectively. You can’t argue against this.

Second– their voices. Rin and Len are both voiced by the amazing Asami Shimoda, known mostly as the voice actress behind the Futami twins in THE iDOLM@STER, so she’s already had done some work with voicing multiple similar but different people. Her Rin voice is sharp and strong, while her Len voice is soft and accented. And they sound absolutely stunning together, with the slight differences in the voices creating a subtle contrast but also an overall harmony as they originated from the same sound. This is definitely something that could not be achieved in a duet with any of the other Vocaloids, as you can hear in Cendrillon with Miku and KAITO versus Adolescence with Rin and Len.

Same song, same tuning, same producer. The difference? The voices. Rin and Len sound so much more powerful, and the back-to-back chorus between the two of them fit together seamlessly. While they are both voiced by the same person, you can still differentiate the two voices. Asami Shimoda did an incredible job. As for realism– Rin and Len both have something that the other Vocaloids just do not. All Vocaloids have a wide range; after all, they are just synthesized sounds, and software definitely has reaches that the average human cannot. But with that range comes some limitations. Because although Vocaloids can reach extremely high and low notes, that does not necessarily mean that the essence of the sound carries over. In other words, the voices can sound hollow at these extreme ranges. However, Rin and Len are able to surpass this limitation and produce surprisingly strong sounds with clarity at these pitches. Along with this power comes emotion. Of course, Vocaloids cannot convey emotion in their robotic, synthesized voices. But with the right tuning and the right pitch, Rin and Len can sound emotional and almost lifelike in their songs, something that other Vocaloid voices cannot mimic.

Published in 2013 and 2014 respectively, Lost One’s Weeping and Wings of the Four Seasons convey just how incredible the software had grown to that point since their debut in 2007 and just how emotional Rin and Len can sound in both a rock-ish and folk-ish setting, a sound that other Vocaloids simply cannot attain with the same ease.

And if their default voices just didn’t have the right tone for you, let’s not forget their other voice libraries. Their 2010 append voicebanks and 2015 v4x voicebanks include Power, Warm, and Sweet libraries for Rin and Power, Cold, and Serious libraries for Len, giving added flexibility with the exact sounds that you want.

Thus, due to their brilliant similar-yet-different designs and their powerful similar-yet-different voices, Kagamine Rin and Len are my top-tier Vocaloids. They’re why I help run a Kagamine Discord server and why I’ve been following them for the past seven years. And hopefully this post will help promote them to farther reaches, and maybe even help you start to give them a listen. They definitely deserve much more attention than what this post can ever hope to offer.