[DECtalk] An update RE: Vocaloid Manual

[Ulysses Garcia]

Hi, I added new stuff to the vocaloid manual as I just happened to do 
some experiment. For proof, here's an example.
Hi everybody: Today, I will be showing you some ground-breaking 
discoveries many of you

thought would never come. But it was my perseverance and patience that 
did it, and

collaboration with other people who were like me but who lacked 
motivation in some ways. Now,

I am trying to reach out to as many blind people, whom I know have a 
major interest in singing

synthesisers, that there is a way after all, a way that many, including 
myself would never be

here. Sometimes I ask for directions, but the person giving it to me 
does not give me detailed

step-by-step documentation-style directions, which has lead me to be 
hampered with all of the

work. Soon I discovered this new method and now I am sharing it. Sadly, 
there has been very

little enthusiasm throughout the forums to which I am subscribed to.
I first remember being fascinated with singing synthesisers back in June 
of 2007. I did not know

much about linguistics at that time, neither did I know about music 
notation. I just learned how

to make Dec talk sing using my knowledge of time and note and after 
understanding phonemes I

cranked out quite a number of songs. Then I learnt how to harmonise and 
then two years later I

learned how to back-mask with phonemes. Eventually though I came across 
speech synthesisers

that sounded much better than Dec talk that somehow made me feel that 
Dec talk was now

inferior because it sounded so bright where as the others sounded dark. 
The first one that I

really liked was Vocal Writer, and I was doing research on it. 
Unfortunately, however, it was

meant for the Macintosh. So I put that in my to do list, and when I 
found a Mac I could work

with, I installed Vocal Writer. Then I found out that Voice-over was not 
working well with it, so I

asked about it. It turned out that two people learned how to use it. 
Hugh Emerson and Flint

Million. However, there were no links to these external resources, so I 
was stumped. At that

same time, however, I learned about Vocaloid, and I remember trying to 
find a way to get a hold

of it. Eventually I gave that up and I assumed it was going to be only 
in Japanese. Then, in 2013,

I finally found  away to obtain Vocaloid, and for about four months I 
kind of did not use it until I

got a hunch that lead me to try something. Apparently someone said you 
had to have someone

select the first note for you before you could insert lyrics. Well, what 
if you selected all? So I

tried that and sure enough, it worked perfectly. But guess what? I was 
surprised that I was not

even excited. Maybe because I knew it was right there, but have not yet 
figured it out? I knew I

learned ow to make eloquence sing based on learning and my creativity, 
and someone helped

me how to make Orpheus sing, but I lost interest in those right a way. 
But with this, it will be

something I will be using for a long time.
Soon after my big discovery, I spent one week exactly turning a lot of 
my MIDI collections into

real songs. And this struck me as funny because a few days before this, 
someone posted on the

Dec talk mailing list that they heard of a MIDI to Dec talk converter. I 
knew there was no such

thing because now we already know how Vocaloid and Vocal Writer and 
Flinger work. So, now I

am willing to share the directions with anyone who is interested and I 
hope we can recruit more

blind people and renew the enthusiasm.
After you read the below steps, you will finally learn how to make 
Vocaloid sing just about

anything you wanted to. Note that Vocaloid Editor 3 only provides the 
voices. To mix in

instruments you will need some kind of a sound editor. You will also 
need this if you are to make

choral pieces of some sort.
To begin, use a midi sequencer like Quick Windows Sequencer. Make sure 
the notes are

precisely timed with the metronome though, or else you will have to 
normalise with Vocaloid.

Not only that but Vocaloid will count any irregular notes in your song 
and this can mess up your

project.
Once you set up your MIDI roll, open Vocaloid, and when you open a file, 
choose Vocaloid MIDI

from the files of type drop down menu list. Locate the file and press 
enter. A list of tracks will

appear. Check only one and do not bother with any of the others. Before 
adding lyrics, you will

need to press space to play, and when it tells you that there are 
overlapping notes, go to the

jobs menu and press enter on normalise.
Next, go to the edit menu, and find the select all. Alternatively, press 
control+A. This will select

all the notes in the musical editor window, which is where you need to 
be or else this will not

work. Once you have done this, go back to the jobs menu and find the 
insert lyrics item.
When an edit multi-line appears, you will see 'ooh ooh ooh' depending on 
how many notes there

are. Note that each ooh represents one syllable tied to that note, so if 
you had a word that had

more than one you would have to separate them using dashes. You cannot 
write any nonsense

words because it  will check the dictionary.
Lyrical notation: For those of you who are music Braille readers or just 
musicians  in general,

this might be easy for you to understand. A syllable is simply a combo 
of vowel and consonants

like this 'word' in single quotes. When a word is more than one syllable 
and it evenly ties to each

note, you or Vocaloid will put dashes, like this. Hel- lo I am 
des-cri-bing how to write ly-rics with

Voca-loid. For words that stretch across multiple notes such as in the 
example Angels we have

heard on High in the word Gloria, write a dash after the first syllable, 
like this. 'Glo- - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - ria'. Also make sure your MIDI file has the right number 
of notes for` each syllable.

Some people try to hush a two-syllable word into one note that is tied 
only to find out that it

does not work, so instead, separate them with MIDI and try again. 
Sometimes, you may find

yourself that you are dealing with a word you think has one syllable, 
when it really has two.

These kinds of words are tricky, because there are words that sound like 
they have two syllables

when they count as one. examples are words like our  or soil. Our is a 
two-syllable word while

soil is a one-syllable word.
  Vocaloid is pretty good at analysing words though, and if you want you 
can use phonemes if you

are dealing with a tricky word Vocaloid cannot pronounce or if you want 
to be really accurate.
Once you have finished, check the song to make sure you have the words 
right. This may take

time and I nearly gave up on it. After you finished, save the VSQX to 
your hard drive, and then

you can export the result as a wave file.
 From now on, you will have to repeat the above steps if you want to do 
the same thing to the

other tracks. Eventually you will want to establish a suffix for each 
wave file you are working

with so you can mix them later.
Note: To change voices, press control+tab to go to the track editor, 
press control+a to select all

parts, press alternate+p for parts menu, and up arrow for part 
properties. Depending on how

many voices you have installed, you can select which voice you would 
like to use for that part.

After selecting your voice press enter. You will have to experiment with 
really slow work-

arounds, like mixing and rendering. It is a pain, but this is the best 
method that does not require

any other form. And as always, you can experiment on your own, to learn 
how to make Vocaloid

sound more human. These include things like adding breath sounds, 
portamentos, vibratos, and

more.
Now that I am a pro, it takes me about five to ten minutes to write up a 
short song. I hope you

found these directions simple to read and feel free to ask any 
questions. I am sure that from this

point on, experimentation will be entirely up to you to be creative in 
the long run. I know I did.
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