Hi all, Can A newbee get some help?

Okami

Momo's Minion
Hi all, I am Okami, like you probably are guessing I am an Otaku and I love Vocaloids/Utaloids. I support the argument that Utaloids are just Vocaloids that haven't been born into riches. My favorite Utaloids are Kasane Teto, Namine Ritsu and I also love Defoko, and for Vocaoids my favorite ones are V Flower and Yuzuki Yukari. My favorite Vocaloid songs... well that is a hard one since there are so many songs that I love so much but if I had to choose 1-2 to call my favorites it they would be Close to You by V Flower and Hakumei by Kasane Teto.

So now I wanted to try and make some songs myself too, and that is the part I need a help with, I don't understand an UTAU program at all and I can't find any good tutorials. I managed to figure out some minimum on my own such as how to change a voice bank, how to insert a midi, how to make an Utaloid sing sounds I want but that is still all below the basics that i need to start making songs. The part I especially don't get at all is making unvoiced music (as in midi) myself, when I imported an unvoiced midi I got from net it open as bunch of "あRあ" that don't sound as sound あ when played and they sounded somewhat different from Midi I inserted too. So anyone knows any good tutorials in English? I know a lot of Japanese, enough to watch RAW anime if they use lower level difficulty Japanese (Such as MOE anime for example) but tutorials for complicated programs tend to be complicated even without not knowing a language they are written on perfectly (not that I know English perfectly but at least my knowledge of it is somewhere close to native speaker level if we exclude spelling).
 

etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
I think your best bet would be to start with covers (you don't have to post them of course) and work from there - figure out how it all works together, what little tweaks are affecting the notes, etc etc. I don't know what you're searching but there's a plethora of UTAU tutorials (I can't link to any right now as I'm on my phone). You may have to make your searches more specific.

"Pitch bends in UTAU," "importing MIDI to UTAU," "using MIDI files with UTAU," etc etc etc. not all midis are actually going to be good, either.

Sorry if this wasn't helpful.

Edit;

Not that I and others would mind helping you out, but unfortunately I don't think you'll find someone who will have enough free time to really sit down and go through all of the nitty-gritty basics with you, so I'm just trying to help you help yourself as much as you can.
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
I'm going to recommend the same as etherealfrost, start with premade usts and work from there as you learn what makes everything tick. Some things to keep in mind: Teto, Ritsu, and Defoko are Japanese banks targeted at Japanese users. Defoko is very LQ and requires reconfiguring of the oto - which I don't recommend at this stage. Teto and Ritsu - while they have more simple banks like Defoko - are generally used in VCV format and the VCV versions will not work with CV usts.

CV: [あ] [り] [が] [と]
CVVC: [- あ] [a r] [り] [i g] [が] [a t] [と]
VCV: [- あ] [a り] [i が] [a と]

If you want an easier learning curve, I suggest the following:
- download overseas banks so you'll have romaji support as well as hiragana.
- download the iroiro plugin as well as the autocvvc plugin. iroiro has multiple functions including converting from romaji to hiragana and vise versa. autocvvc 1.23 can convert between CV, CVVC, and VCV.
- You may consult JeremyB796 for tutorials on the interface, otoing, etc. He generally tries to teach in real-time, so you'll need to see what his availability is.
 

Okami

Momo's Minion
Thread starter
I think your best bet would be to start with covers (you don't have to post them of course) and work from there - figure out how it all works together, what little tweaks are affecting the notes, etc etc. I don't know what you're searching but there's a plethora of UTAU tutorials (I can't link to any right now as I'm on my phone). You may have to make your searches more specific.

"Pitch bends in UTAU," "importing MIDI to UTAU," "using MIDI files with UTAU," etc etc etc. not all midis are actually going to be good, either.

Sorry if this wasn't helpful.

Edit;

Not that I and others would mind helping you out, but unfortunately I don't think you'll find someone who will have enough free time to really sit down and go through all of the nitty-gritty basics with you, so I'm just trying to help you help yourself as much as you can.

Well I was trying to find some general tutorial for beginners, like for example how do I create sound other then vocal and things like that, I am also not sure what you mean when you say I should start with covers, my best guess would be that you are recommending me to try to make covers and figure things along the way but Tsukine Sayuri says that she recommends the same thing but says that i should use premade usts witch sounds opposite of how I interpreted of what you are recommending, true I don't know what usts are and goggle doesn't help.

I'm going to recommend the same as etherealfrost, start with premade usts and work from there as you learn what makes everything tick. Some things to keep in mind: Teto, Ritsu, and Defoko are Japanese banks targeted at Japanese users. Defoko is very LQ and requires reconfiguring of the oto - which I don't recommend at this stage. Teto and Ritsu - while they have more simple banks like Defoko - are generally used in VCV format and the VCV versions will not work with CV usts.

CV: [あ] [り] [が] [と]
CVVC: [- あ] [a r] [り] [i g] [が] [a t] [と]
VCV: [- あ] [a り] [i が] [a と]

If you want an easier learning curve, I suggest the following:
- download overseas banks so you'll have romaji support as well as hiragana.
- download the iroiro plugin as well as the autocvvc plugin. iroiro has multiple functions including converting from romaji to hiragana and vise versa. autocvvc 1.23 can convert between CV, CVVC, and VCV.
- You may consult JeremyB796 for tutorials on the interface, otoing, etc. He generally tries to teach in real-time, so you'll need to see what his availability is.

The only part of this post that I understood is about Teto, Ritsu, and Defoko being Japanese voice banks witch I was already aware of . VCV, CVVC, CV, oto, I don't know what any of those are, examples are confusing on their own , Also I don't understand why would I want romaji support or convertor between romaji and hiragana, is there some difference in whatever I write in Hiragana or romaji?
 

Terindie

日本語 Patrol - Active Duty
Defender of Defoko
Phew. Okay. I'm gonna start by linking you to this glossary of UTAU and vocal synthesis terms, so you can understand what exactly is going on when you read tutorials and such. Click here!

Beyond that, UTAU is one of those things that can be learned, like most instruments, by trial and error. There's a lot going on in the UTAU program, and there's a ton of tutorials on everything; it would take forever to link them all here! Your best course of action may be to continue playing around with the program and see what all the buttons do (you already figured out how to make it sing and import stuff, that's a good sign) until you run into something you don't understand, like the oto. Then, because you read the glossary up there, you can google "oto tutorials" and pinpoint exactly what you want to learn.

To answer the specific questions you had in your post:
The part I especially don't get at all is making unvoiced music (as in midi) myself,

UTAU is strictly vocal synthesis. If you want to use virtual instruments, or VSTs, you need to get a separate program that does that, like FL Studio, Reaper, Studio One, Ableton... the list goes on. UTAU only ever handles vocals, though, just like VOCALOID.

when I imported an unvoiced midi I got from net it open as bunch of "あRあ" that don't sound as sound あ when played and they sounded somewhat different from Midi I inserted too.

MIDIs are tricky in UTAU, and unless you plan to make USTs right away, they're not useful to you right now. You want to import .UST files instead, which is what UTAU uses and saves as, similar to VOCALOID's .VSQ. Instead of looking for midis, look for USTs; they come with the lyrics, pitchbends, and other modifications built in.

Best of luck on your UTAU journey! Remember that there's lots of answers to questions you might have on UTAforum, and if you have any specific questions, don't be afraid to ask. :smile:
 
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etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
Before you can even THINK about using it to create your own songs, you are going to have to learn what this program does and how it's used.

Voice banks are recorded using sound clips that the program splices together to form words (or jubberish, if you so choose). .ust is the file type that UTAU uses - such as how photoshop uses .psd.

I was telling you, same as Sayuri, to download USTs that OTHER people have made - a ust is going to be a song! - and open it up and test it out. I am not telling you to create your own UST file, I am advising that you get some that are already made and use whatever voice banks you choose to play it.

In order to create a song with this program, you are going to have to learn what OTOs are, what the difference between CV (consonant vowel) CVVC (consonant vowel vowel consonant) and VCV (vowel consonant vowel) are. You will need to understand pitch bends and flags, and how to use resamplers for different voices.

It sounds daunting, but with all of us here to help you, you'll get the hang of it.
 

Okami

Momo's Minion
Thread starter
Thanks for help guys/girls, I managed to get premade .ust to work in UTAU so I'll do as recommended and play with it in order to figure out the basic. But I have 2 more questions first, when I try to open some .usts it gives me project configuration window and if I only press ok it says "Invalid Voice Setting" and if I change voice bank to use it does load but when I try to play it no sounds come out, but when I open the one that I managed to open properly it opens directly without giving me project configuration window and works fine, so is the first .ust broken or am I missing something? I am quite surprised to hear that you need separate program to use virtual instruments as I always thought that a whole songs ware being made in UTAU, so my second question is witch one do you recommend?
 

etherealfrost

Teto's Territory
The voice banks are files just like anything else - if the one saved to the UST doesn't exist on your computer, the program won't be able to load anything.

Chances are, a bank not playing on a certain UST has to do with currently not understanding the different types of voice banks - CV banks can only play on CV usts, VCV banks can only play on VCV usts, etc.
 

Kiyoteru

UtaForum power user
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
If the name of th voicebank shows up in red when you first open the UST file, that means you do not have that voicebank on your computer. Like stated above, ensure that the lyrics in the UST are compatible with the voicebank that you are currently using.

If you really want to start writing original music, there's a wealth of resources in this post.
http://utaforum.net/threads/month-of-song-challenge.9522/
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Red names or red Tool 2 (resample) simply means that you don't have the voicebank or resampler that that ust was made with. It's not necessary to have the voicebank used for a particular ust. Simply switch to a voice and resampler that you do have. As for why some usts will work and others won't...

This is where learning the different voicebank types come in. An explanation for each is found in the glossary Terindie linked, but I'll copy-paste here (since it's my glossary anyway):

CV: Consonant-Vowel. The most common voicebank type for new users to the software. This style of voicebank uses single sound recordings ("ka," "ki," "ku," "ke," "ko," etc.) to replicate simplistic languages such as Japanese and native Hawaiian. While it is the easiest to record, it is often the most difficult oto style to master for creating a realistic voice.
ex.

CVVC: Consonant-Vowel; Vowel-Consonant. The most recent voicebank type to gain development, made popular for its use for English/Korean/Chinese/Spanish/etc. capable UTAU. Can be as smooth as the VCV voicebank type with proper configuration, while requiring less recording. Banks are often aliased as "- ka," "ka," "a k," "ak"
ex.

VCV: Vowel-Consonant-Vowel. Arguably the most fluid and popular voicebank type for the Japanese language. It is considered the easiest to configure (provided recordings are done correctly) due to being largely uniform in nature. While many users have attempted, it is considered impossible and/or impractical to develop voicebanks of this type with languages of higher complexity than Japanese. Banks are often aliased as "- か," "a か"
ex.

Within the program, their usts look like so:
CV: [あ] [り] [が] [と] OR [a] [ri] [ga] [to]
CVVC: [- あ] [a r] [り] [i g] [が] [a t] [と] OR [- a] [a r] [ri] [i g] [ga] [a t] [to]
VCV: [- あ] [a り] [i が] [a と] THIS IS GENERALLY WRITTEN AS THE WAY YOU SEE IT. VCV STANDARD IS HIRAGANA WITH THE PRECEDING VOWEL BEING IN ROMAJI.


All banks are a little different. Some are only CV and may or may not include elements found in CVVC or VCV (namely, vowel to vowel transitions). Some of these CV banks may not play if the sound is written as [あ] and vise versa with [a]. These differences in why they don't play has to do with the alias. This is where having hiragana and romaji support comes in. If a bank doesn't have alias for a sound, it's not going to play. The banks that you currently have: Teto and Ritsu are more than likely VCV with Defoko being CV. Teto and Ritsu won't be able to read anything that's not written like the VCV sample above. Defoko can only read the CV example above that's in all hiragana.


This is an example of my voicebank rendering 2 samples it doesn't have:upload_2015-7-31_7-22-34.png

upload_2015-7-31_7-24-10.png

The 2 samples in question that failed to play are the 2 selected [a か] and [a k]. My bank doesn't include those samples or aliases so there's no transitional fade between them and the rendering window will state that they failed. This is where those plugins I mentioned earlier: iroiro and autocvvc come in handy. There are other plugins as well for switching between hiragana and romaji as well as between the different alias types (iroiro only handles the transition between CV to VCV but does include romaji to hiragana switching and vise versa), but you'll have to seek them out (and have google translate handy cause most of them are written in Japanese with kanji).

upload_2015-7-31_7-20-29.png

upload_2015-7-31_7-20-33.png

upload_2015-7-31_7-23-47.png
 
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