Imagine being at a concert one night with a friend. You don’t know who is performing, but you hear that she’s great. As the lights go down, you know the concert is about to start. Everyone starts cheering. It seems like a normal concert, until you see who, or should I say what, appears on stage. A hologram named Hatsune Miku is the artist performing that night.
With her long blue pigtails, decked out school uniform, and impressive vocal range of A3–E5, 16-year-old Miku, has become popular not only overseas in Japan, but in America as well, selling out concert venues seating thousands of screaming fans. Using Yamaha’s Vocaloid (Vocal plus Android) 2 technology and a projector, Crypton Future Media created Miku in 2007 and turned her into an overnight sensation, with many of her over 100,000 songs and movies becoming extremely popular, including “World is Mine” and “Two-Faced Lovers.”
Hatsune Miku actually started out as just computer music software called “HATSUNE MIKU,” a type of Vocaloid 2 technology. People could, and still do, purchase the software and create their own synthesized music on their computers at home. But “HATSUNE MIKU” developed into something more than computer software, with her first live concert in 2009, and others joining in her fame, such as Megurine Luka, Rin Kagamine and Len Kagamine who are twins, three of the many other Vocaloids created by Crypton Future Media.
“I love Hatsune Miku! Even though she has a computerized voice and form that makes her even more amazing and unique. One of my dreams in life is to see Miku perform live in Japan,” says junior John Kerlagon.
But some people can’t wrap their heads around this concept, and I don’t blame them: people pay hundreds of dollars to see Miku and they cheer for her just like a normal concert, despite her being a hologram.
When I first heard Hatsune Miku, I thought the whole situation was a little odd. If you haven’t heard her voice, it’s very high pitched. Even though I didn’t really like it at first, she grew on me. Although most of her popular songs are in Japanese, they are very catchy and upbeat. It’s different, and a lot of times different is a good thing.
“It’s just like dubstep or techno,” says junior Nathan Quimpo. “It’s made with electronics, but people still love it. It still takes the imagination of someone to make, and if people like it there is no harm in making it.”
It’s exciting to imagine the
possibilities. We could have concerts for legendary artists like John Lennon, Jimmy Hendrix, and Elvis Pressley who have since passed on. Even the artists of our time could, in essence, live forever through the technologies used for Hatsune Miku. But I believe nothing can compare to real thing.