Something Unreal

Here’s a much-needed compilation video using some of the many videos I recorded at London MCM Expo (May 2009). It mainly focuses around cute things because this video was originally going to be for the Touhou cosplayers, and… well, you know, I didn’t think soldier or Alien cosplays would fit in very well. I wonder if you can call a Dalek cute though.

[Watch in HD]

The sudden song change is because Cirno’s Perfect Maths Class had so many different parts that it was too hard for me to be lazy while editing the video. I tried to at least change the song when it reached an appropriate place.

MCM Expo in London was held last Saturday and Sunday, and, quite awesomely, there was a group of people cosplaying as characters from Touhou Project! Here’s a bunch of pictures I took (some are screencaps from videos I recorded, so they generally don’t look as good). Please click an image to see a larger version of it.

In particular, the Suwako one is bad because that’s from the only video I ever got of her, from a distance while waiting in the ticket queue.

After seeing a box of doujinshi dedicated to the game series last October, but then not seeing a single piece of Touhou merchandise this May, I was disappointed, but these people more than made up for that. The group consisted of 3 guys cosplaying as Eirin, Yuyuko and Marisa, and 2 girls cosplaying as Sakuya and Iku (one of them was being Reimu on Saturday). There were also 2 other girls doing Suwako and Marisa, but they didn’t appear to be part of the group.

I may well upload some HD videos to YouTube, since videos just seem more realistic to me than photos, and I mentioned doing so on the Touhou Group thread on the MCM forum and no-one seems to be objecting to me doing so. However, that involves me not being lazy (at least cutting and joining the video files), so it will take me a while to do.

Oh, there were some cute Mikus too, which was cool to me, given that I’m pretty fond of her too.

Here’s Miku singing along with my attempt at playing “Naraku No Hana” (opening of “Higurashi No Naku Goro Ni Kai”) on my keyboard. I tried my hand at a little video-editing too. This was my first time using MikuMikuDance, so I decided to keep it simple. I still think I made it look weird. This is also my first widescreen video, and it was actually necessary.

A high-quality MP3 can be downloaded from here.

I played the music on my keyboard and had my computer recording both the audio (line out) and notes (MIDI out). Then I imported the recorded MIDI into Vocaloid2, removing the chords (keeping only the melody), changed a few things, and made Miku sing the lyrics. This way, I can play anything at all and Miku will always stay in sync without me having to tediously sync her notes.

(more…)

I made this yesterday after suddenly randomly thinking about it the night before. Probably because I’d been previously been playing a song on StepMania which has the negi-waving Miku as part of its background video.

It’s connected to my custom StepMania lights, which are being controlled by my “SM Player” program. Miku’s supposed to stay in sync with the simfile’s beat, although currently I need to physically adjust the range of her arm for slower and faster BPMs because she doesn’t like having to move her arm too far too quickly.

I think she’s worried her negi will fly out of her hand, or something. =/

Calming down from the ‘technicalness’ of my last entry, I’m proud to announce that there’s a new sticker on the front of my computer. (Click for full-size view)

And Miku is installed on my computer, so it’s not lying! =D It updates my rather old-style “Intel inside” sticker, since it’s in the fancy new style of Intel’s stickers:

The actual “Miku Hatsune inside” image was made by Narugami (from NicoNico). The page where they uploaded this image (which I’ve used here) is here. (…Is it just me, or did that last sentence sound weird?) I printed it on an address label, by the way. And I’m going to have to do it again when my new computer’s up and running. :P

Sorry about my large period of inactiveness for the past week! >_<

Here’s an updated version of my remix of Unlocked Girl by IOSYS! I called it “6 Voice Style”, since now, instead of just the 1 electronic voice, there are now 6 voices used, including a backing harmonizing voice (Miku Hatsune)! The other 5 voices are made using RealSinger on Virtual Singer, part of Melody Assistant. There’s also now a much cooler-sounding Distortion Guitar used during choruses.

Here’s the YouTube video, this time featuring my attempt at a full translation of all the lyrics, and 10% of your RDA of randomness near the end. Of course, this is in mono and at low quality. This time, I think I avoided typos and forgetting things in the credits. ><

The actual YouTube page is here - there’ll be comments there. ;P Of course, I don’t mind if you leave comments here at my blog either! ;)You can download the high-quality stereo MP3 of this “6 Voice Style” [6.48 MB] (or if that link doesn’t work, you can try this link, although it will be much slower, sorry). I’m also putting up the original MIDI for download [64 KB] which I made for this remix, which is at the heart of this MP3. Please note that the MIDI is not complete. Sorry about that. But it’s certainly better than nothing (well, probably). It does contain all parts of the song, by which I mean that just by copy-and-pasting things you can complete the song. But I didn’t do that to the MIDI – just to the final MP3′s audio. That’s why the MP3′s complete and the MIDI isn’t – I’m lazy. ;P

A year or so ago I made a MIDI out of the final boss of Stage 2 on the excellent game “Ragnarok Battle Offline”. Now I’ve found out about Vocaloid2. And the most recent voice to be released for Vocaloid2 is the second voice in the “character voice series”, Rin Kagamine (鏡音リン) , whose voice is apparently stronger than Miku’s (whose voice has been criticized as being too soft).

[Watch in HQ]

So! Since the overdriven guitars in the music are certainly meant to sound “strong”, I decided to give Rin the job of singing it to test the supposed “strength” in her voice. She doesn’t handle the low notes well (sounds like a puff and then electronic), but I have to say I was very impressed at how the voice handles the “screaming” high notes. So that Miku didn’t feel too left out (=P), I gave her the job of the harmonizing ‘backing’ guitar, with a cool little stereo flanger to make her voice easier to notice. I know the lyrics I made are kind of lame. I let the MIDI loop and play through once more by itself when it reaches the end. By the way, that overdrive guitar the MIDI uses was sampled from my brother (‘steeeven1′ on YouTube) playing his electric guitar.

You can grab the MP3 with the voices here! (2.76 MB, 2:34 length). You can download the MIDI which I made and used in the MP3 here (27.1 KB, 1:16 length).

Please leave a comment if you want to! :D