"When you make deviled eggs and put mayo into the yolk mixture, you're putting more egg into the egg." -me

I have been told to make a blog post so here we are :) (I promise it won't be boring... or do I?)


Howdy.
Since I am academically obligated to write about stuff here, now seems like an opportunity to talk about what most would call my main hobby (It is not a hobby it has taken over my life)

So, I've worked with vocal synthesizers since for over 10 years now. What is that you may or may not be asking? Fair enough. Vocal synthesizers are programs where users can use libraries recorded from a source (typically a human voice provider, but we've had sine waves, text-to-speech synths, even a train!) and make them sing by inputting lyrics and a melody, typically on a piano roll user interface. Ever heard of Hatsune Miku? Her voice is a vocal synthesizer library.

My main focus is on engines that allow users to make custom voice libraries AKA voicebanks. UTAU is the main one I've used during the duration of my hyperfixation, but I've also worked with DeepVocal(Half of it's broken and also it's lowkey abandonware but I made an English voicebank for it, which probably 5-10 people at most have successfully done) and NiaoNiao (The whole UI is in Mandarin Chinese... I can't read Mandarin Chinese).

There are also AI vocal synthesizers, and while some people find them scary, there are plenty that have strict rules in place about ensuring consent from their voice providers, and AI is just being used as an alternate recording method. (Y'all don't want to see my spreadsheets for the English non-AI script I'm working on I have to use 4 displays to work on it and I'm pretty sure even that isn't enough I see arpabet in my nightmares but it's somehow the easiest dictionary system to deal with... but at least I made the spreadsheets rainbow)

Since I started working with vocal synths at such a young age, I had to learn how to do everything myself since I couldn't pay people to do it for me. That's one thing that's nice. There's always a variety of stuff I can do that builds up to larger goals. Art, videos, trying to explain to people what on earth an "ix" vowel is, metal screaming the first 5-10 minutes of the Bee Movie script into a microphone, questioning my life choices when I have to leave my computer running while I try to sleep and it starts screaming every 3.5 minutes on average. Yup, living the life over here.



A self portrait since I don't feel like being directly perceived at the moment.


Click here for puppy pics