Thread by @Lystrialle

This is going to be another long thread (I'm sorry), but in light of some recent projects and conversations with friends, I kind of want to muse a little bit about the background behind my perspective as a Vocaloid producer in the West and what it's like making amateur music...

For a sense of background, right now I identify, to the end, as a "hobbyist" musician; I have no intention of going into this professionally as a career, or to even remotely pursue it, and despite the difficulty of finding free time, still prefer to do it for personal enjoyment

I do not expect I will ever be as good as a professional and although that's frustrating in its own way, I've made my peace with it, because in the end my end goal is to just have fun with my work and make cool things as it comes, whenever I have that kind of time

But as I was growing up, I had no idea this kind of musician could even exist.

I had a Mac in high school, and it came with GarageBand, but I had no intention of touching it; I'd heard of family friends who made music as hobbyists, but I felt they still had to be some kind --

-- of "semi-professional" with a whole studio. The concept of DTM wasn't a thing (and look, it's a Japanese bit of lingo, too; the closest we have is "computer music" which doesn't quite capture what's actually going on). VSTs? Never even heard of them.

And that's the thing, like...the concept of "amateur" music is a very difficult and intimidating barrier, especially in Western indie music circles. Many of them have a reputation for being very tough on gatekeeping, and it's very easy to feel the pressure that you have to be --

-- professional-sounding right out of the gate or else you're going to get mocked or ridiculed. Hell, you can already get belittled for using the "wrong" DAW (FL Studio is a common target), in ways far more biting than using the "wrong" art program would be.

Moreover, music software is prohibitively expensive (although this is changing -- I'll touch on this later). It's one of the most intimidating things to get into if you want to do something as "just a hobby". It's easy to look at it and think that it's just a thing for the pros.

It's not that I didn't have ideas for melodies once in a while or occasionally muse that it'd be nice to make a song or whatnot. I had piano training as a kid and I even plotted out a (very bad) composition as an assignment when I was six. But I wasn't a pro, you know?

My encounter with the Vocaloid circuit in around 2009 was what changed all that for me, and while I don't have any testimony I would not be surprised if others felt this way as well.

I think context is an important thing in assessing anything, so for a bit of a diversion I should explain this first: Vocaloid's advent in 2007 was largely tied to Nico Nico Douga as an online community, but it was also very linked to the *existing* doujin music circuit

There are events like Comiket and M3 where you can sell indie music, both fanworks (Touhou remixes were and still are big) and original. Of course, that also comes with its own baggage, but the point to be made here is that the concept of "indie music" is an establishment.

I think that's the thing that a lot of people, especially the Western press, misses when it evaluates Vocaloid and criticizes it for being too obsessed with characters to go anywhere professional. It's true that it's a stifling point for its professional image (especially in --

-- the West, where there's still a stigma against anime character-branded stuff), but it ignores the fact that a lot of people do not have professionalism as a goal at all. Sheer passion projects, even in the face of amateurism, for fun and nothing else -- are ingrained in it.

So, going back to what the situation was like when I had my encounter with Vocaloid. This was 2009, so it was *just* before the sudden advent and influx of already-professional people starting to seriously consider it as portfolio building and career advancement.

(And before I continue on this thread, let it be known that I am not, in the slightest, condemning people who do have professionalism and career advancement as a goal! I think part of the virtue of Vocaloid is people from all different backgrounds and motivations taking part --

-- in it; it's just that I think the professional-aiming circuit is the more "obvious" of the subgroups involved, so I don't feel a need to touch on them as much, especially since I don't identify as one myself.)

So you did have some people with professional backgrounds, and people who were already experienced in DTM, but there were a *lot* of amateurs, people throwing out passion projects because they liked the character or wanted to make a thing...even in spite of low production value

And so this brings us to the question of the Western fanbase, which was largely comprised of teenagers and young adults, because of the fact it was tied to the anime fan cluster...and a lot of them decided they liked Vocaloid too, but
..."Western Vocaloid originals" didn't exist.

And by "didn't exist" I sincerely mean they did not exist.
I think the first one I ever saw was in 2010, and while there were probably some that missed my view, they were such a scarcity that the concept was just nonexistent.
Professionals had no idea the software existed.
And --

-- from the perspective of the fans, it was easy to feel completely powerless.
After all, we're just a bunch of kids. We're a bunch of kids overseas who are watching fun things being made on Nico Nico Douga.
Moreover, we can't even speak Japanese!

If you think the current state of English Vocaloid is technologically bad, I assure you it was far, far worse in the V2 era. If you were a Western Vocaloid fan, it was easy to feel like the proverbial kid stuck outside the candy shop. You're just doomed to be a spectator.

So what can you do? Well, if you have some pocket cash on you, you can at least buy a Vocaloid and maybe try to make covers -- it's not as bad if someone's written the lyrics, anyway. If you don't have money, you could try out UTAU, too. (Which is what I did.)

And every so often, you would see someone try to make an original -- even despite the language barrier, even knowing so little about music, there was so much desperation and desire to have *some* part in being able to create something that occasionally people would just...try.

Every so often someone would try and what could you think, at a time like that?
At that point it didn't matter if someone was professional -- it was hard to imagine anyone professional would look at Vocaloid at all.
Anyone who tried to make a song was amazing for even trying.

And that was the thing, like -- for me, as an UTAU and eventually Vocaloid user, who was surrounded by all these other people who were making an earnest effort for what they loved, regardless of what they could do, I realized in 2011 or so that in the process of learning to --

-- do covers (which had never felt that intimidating because it was primarily just knowing scales and BPM), I'd already half learned to do mixing and how to use a DAW. The concept of making an original was literally one step away.

I posted my first original in 2012 (Crystal Heart). And it was really bad.
I even admitted in the description that it was bad.

I also wrote that hopefully if I kept at it maybe I'd get better, and was met with encouragement and comments saying that it was good for a first try.

I think I've improved a lot since then, but I still do a lot of things that I'm sure a lot of professionals would wince at. I don't really care, because I want to do things on my own terms. And because of that, I want to advocate for people who want to do the same.

As for where we are now. English Vocaloid having improved, along with UTAU and CeVIO and now SynthV -- I think we're safely at a place where more people are starting to see it as a viable option for self-expression, rather than just chasing after the Japanese circuit

And I don't think we *should* chase after the Japanese circuit, either. Demographically we're dealing with different age ranges, we're dealing with different popular music styles, lyrical practices, fan culture -- more importantly, we *still* don't have music doujin events

(Which, by the way, are still cheerfully going on in Japan, and still have amateurs cheerfully going on there as well -- just because there are actual professionals working there doesn't mean the amateurs have magically vanished!)

Like I said, the music world itself has been changing even in the last five years. Cakewalk Sonar is free, which is a seriously big deal. I feel like the monetary wall is one of the most intimidating barriers to hobbyist music making, so I'm glad to see it go down even a little

so I think we should embrace the Japanese Vocaloid fan and doujin music culture that allowed this kind of environment to come in the first place, but *also* embrace what makes our own independent culture work and learn to integrate that in what we do

I think a comparable analogy to make here is like -- for instance, zines.
It's a fairly recent thing, and it takes a lot of influence from Japanese doujin anthologies. But it also has its own distinctive structure and procedural customs that are necessary in the absence of --

-- Japanese doujin events (where Artist Alley is the closest equivalent)

You do what you can. You explore the opportunities that are available to you, and you make things work using the resources you have available. It's a surprisingly boring take-home message, but understanding that allows you to express what "you" want best.

I love making music and I love it enough that I probably could still be reasonably satisfied making it regardless of whether Vocaloid was in my life or not, but I don't think, with any certainty, I could have taken that step into it if it hadn't been there

and so the fact I use it is an entirely deliberate choice out of my love for it and its ability to express things in ways I couldn't have otherwise, and I think there are many other people with different motives.
But the important part is to enjoy it and to follow your dreams.

Anyway, that's all for today, so if you read all of this, thank you for sitting through all of it. m(_ _)m