[spywaregorilla]

Hmm interesting. I'm not familiar with this scene. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I feel like it feels kind of hollow. Like there's a lot of energy in it, but the vocaloid part just feels so emotionless. Maybe that's a cultural barrier though. Jpop and Kpop make me feel similarly and they're actually singing.

On the western side in a similar vein you've got hyper pop coming up from 100 gecs and laura les and what not. This kind of sound, hypertuned and almost as incomrehensible, sounds better to me. You do still get a vein of emotion. I love this sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879ysA4h9r4

[makeitdouble]

On the cultural barrier part, vocaloids are nowhere touching the leaderboards even in Japan, so it is far from being a widely accepted thing yet.

To me the most interesting part to vocaloid is the ability for a sole producer to make a complete song without any external help. The vocal parts have always been a barrier, and while emotionless and still lacking in some areas, vocaloids are “good enough” to support a well produced song.

We’ve seen creators rise through the ranks through vocaloid, get experience and exposure, to then move to full professional production with a staff and an actual singer (who’s voice will also be heavily processed, but they have a ton of tuning experience at that point)

I also agree with the parent comment that some creators do benefit from the “mechanical” part. Throwing more links, Giga works with both singers and vocaloids and is pretty good at extracting the best of boths: https://youtube.com/c/GigaVideos

[aidenn0]

> To me the most interesting part to vocaloid is the ability for a sole producer to make a complete song without any external help. The vocal parts have always been a barrier, and while emotionless and still lacking in some areas, vocaloids are “good enough” to support a well produced song.

An early example of this was the debut album of Boston which was mostly recorded in Scholz's basement with him on every instrument except drums, then the tapes were mailed to LA for Delp to record vocals. I think it's rather funny in particular that Rock and Roll Band was written and mostly recorded before the band even existed.

[vallanceroad]

> I'm not sure how I feel about it. I feel like it feels kind of hollow. Like there's a lot of energy in it, but the vocaloid part just feels so emotionless.

In Japan, the term is "denpa" (電波ソング). Denpa music is intentionally strange as it is catchy, and hypnotic as it is awkward. There are many producers creating high-BPM electronic vocaloid music that is chaotic for effect. It is a bit more twee than the western sounds, as you mentioned, but it can be quite enjoyable if you're in the right mood.

More on denpa music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denpa_song

Nanahira playlist, an example of a vocaloid character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHIyvhJadXM

Explaining Vocaloid in 3 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GODXMGAMpVc

Also, I think you'd enjoy the Song Exploder podcast. If you haven't heard it already, check out the episode where 100 gecs break down how Money Machine was created:

https://songexploder.net/100-gecs

[jowsie]

Nanahira is a real person, not a vocaloid

[kokocute]

There's no overlap between denpa and vocaloid; I think you'd have a very difficult time having the vocaloid sing out of tune in a charming way.

ななひら (nanahira) is probably the most well known denpa artist, but she mostly sings normal songs now I think (and has a lovely voice doing so).

ココ is my favourite denpa artist https://youtu.be/2wl8Ofce8TE

[thaumasiotes]

> In Japan, the term is "denpa" (電波ソング)

In Japanese, there is no distinction between syllable-final [n] and syllable-final [m]. But in English there is. Traditional romanizations of Japanese will transcribe this as "dempa", for the obvious reasons that (a) that is what the Japanese spelling says; and (b) that is also how the word is pronounced.

I often see English speakers get very confused over exotic modern transcriptions such as "denba" or "senpai", believing there must be a reason they are written that way. But I'm not sure what that reason is supposed to be.

[naniwaduni]

Following the "spelling" surely suggests consistently spelling 電(でん) as "den", not alternating n/m depending on the environment? The Japanese don't write different んs for 電波(でんぱ)・電流(でんりゅう)・電話(でんわ).

Attempting to approximate pronunciation is a valid theory of transcription, but one which also ought to prescribe that 電気(でんき) be transcribed as dengki; English is not much less discerning of syllable-final [n] vs [ŋ] as it is vs [m]. This is not a position I've ever seen anyone defend in earnest, though.

(Romanization for anglophone is a bit of a lost cause anyway, since we're going to fuck up the vowels no matter what you do.)

[thaumasiotes]

> Attempting to approximate pronunciation is a valid theory of transcription, but one which also ought to prescribe that 電気(でんき) be transcribed as dengki; English is not much less discerning of syllable-final [n] vs [ŋ] as it is vs [m].

That is blatantly incorrect. English converts syllable-final [n] to [ŋ] when followed by a velar exactly the same way Japanese does, and English spelling reflects that. Consider the English words "think", "clunky", or "handkerchief".

[naniwaduni]

Sure, now show us lack of assimilation to a subsequent bilabial (in a context where /nk/ does assimilate), which is what Japanese does and that you're implying English does differently (it doesn't). English has it baked in so deeply that most would-be /np/s are already spelled <mp>, which muddies the waters a bit, but these past few days have given us plenty of clips of people pronouncing "government", haven't they?

[thaumasiotes]

What are you trying to show? You seem to agree that the English spelling of /nt/ is "nt", the English spelling of /ŋk/ is "nk", and the English spelling of /mp/ is "mp". There is no possibility of "np", "nb", or "nm".

How would that suggest that it's reasonable to spell the Japanese word "dempa" as "denpa"?

For demonstrating lack of assimilation of /n/ to following bilabial, there are a couple distinct questions you might ask. It's very frequent for people to preserve the tongue gesture associated with /n/, because a bilabial stop doesn't use the tongue and so [n] is easily coarticulated. But that turns into /mp/ or /mb/ over time because the difference is not easy to hear. In contrast, for a word such as "impossible" where this process completed many hundreds of years ago, the tongue is not used at all in the pronunciation of /mp/. This is a kind of lack of assimilation.

You can also see lack of assimilation in the very people who go to special efforts to pronounce [n] in Japanese words where that is inappropriate.

Note that the English and Japanese phenomena you're talking about are very distinct. This is a fact about the historical development of sounds in English (and Latin...) that doesn't apply to current English, where a sequence like /ng/ will often be preserved across word boundaries. ("One ghost"; this is the only context in which such a sequence can occur at all.[1]) English maintains a robust distinction between /n/ and /m/ and a weaker one between /ŋ/ and the other two.[2]

In contrast, Japanese ん assimilates to whatever follows it, and in the case that nothing follows it it may (rarely) be realized as nothing more than nasalization of the preceding vowel. Word boundaries are not relevant. Japanese does not have a phonemic syllable-final /n/ or /m/ (or /ŋ/). It has a single sound (usually indicated /N/ by specialists, apparently, due to even more weirdnesses that it involves) that gets realized differently in different contexts.

So again - what would justify representing the Japanese sound as "n" regardless of context in languages where, unlike in Japanese, the distinction between "n" and "m" is meaningful?

[1] You say that most would-be /np/s are already spelled "mp", but this is false - the words that are spelled "mp" changed long ago, and do not represent attempts by modern speakers to pronounce an /np/ sequence. They represent attempts to pronounce an /mp/ sequence.

[2] Why weaker? /ŋ/ doesn't have the status the other two do; it cannot begin a syllable. And it makes for a less than perfect contrast with /n/ and /m/ because it has a fairly pronounced effect on the vowel that precedes it, which makes drawing a clean contrast difficult.

[tuanx5]

+1 for 100 gecs; their sound is a very distinct aural palate cleanser that I consistently enjoy. See also Charli XCX's How I'm Feeling Now album and midwxst's SUMMER03 EP