Music

The Japanese Schoolgirl Watch section of Wired Magazine highlights cute and/or strange items that are popular among the young crowd and March’s issue puts its spotlight on Miku Hatsune, the aquamarine-haired singing software mascot.

Miku Hatsune is one of Japan’s hottest new pop sensations. Since last August, the 16-year-old’s cute soprano voice has been near the top of the charts – the software charts. Hatsune, whose full name means “first tone of the future,” is a vocal-synthesizer app created by Yamaha and based on audio data sampled from anime voice-actress Saki Fujita. The program lets aspiring music nerds create pitch-perfect vocal tracks by simply entering the lyrics (in Japanese or English) and musical notes. The AI superstar can be heard singing dozens of tunes on YouTube. Strangely, though, no sign yet of “Mr. Roboto.”

There have been tens of thousands of re-renditions of anime and Japanese hits as well as originally composed songs. There is also a weekly updated NicoNicoDouga countdown of the most 50 most popular Miku “song videos”, a number of CD compilations of users’ creations, a poorly produced porn knock-off entitled Hatsune Miko (NSFW), a serialized manga running in Monthly Comic RUSH involving Miku, too many doujin to count, and plush dolls designed by that Nyoro~n guy.

So why aren’t Ren and Len Kagamine getting as much as attention? Is it the moe idol factor or simply because Miku was the first big hit? All I know is that I tried the software once and gave up because of my lack of musical training or sense of tone.