SeeU Tutorial

Well  I  know its a little late but most people on Votaku and Youtube know by now that I got Seeu for Christmas. Since I never really put anything special for seeu here ... Well I'll make this little post. This will be a little mini tutorial with tips.

  1) INTRODUCTION

Seeu is by far my favorite vocaloid. You can kinda compare her to Sonika.  No Seeu is not really muffled and very bad quality. The reason I compare the two is because they are both very versatile and great for people who experimenting and working with configurations.   Seeu's Korean voicebank gives users a chance to mess around with phonemes that are not in a Japanese voicebank. The Korean bank only works with hangul input so you will be forced to work with her on a phonetic level ... But thats not bad because we want to work directly with her phonemes. Her Japanese voicebank is slightly higher in voice and has an over all more moe effect to her then her Korean bank. That is actually okay because most Japanese songs are cute and if its a Miku song ... well ... The more moe the Vocaloid you use to cover the less hate from the Miku-Tards.

2) KOREAN VOICEBNK

Seeu's Korean voicebank is so important it has a section all of its own.  Now unless your Korean you probably are unable to use the Korean Voicebank for what it was made for ... Korean. So I will teach you how to use her Korean Bank to replicate English and if you really wanna use some korean ... I will make it easier for you to do so without hangul input or learning all that. o3o Now let's begin with a voice configuration.

2.1) VOICE CONFIG

Seeu is a flat sounding vocaloid. So is miku but thats why she is popular. The flatness of Seeu can be used to your advantage. You can easily bend her to sound how you want instead of being stuck with a vocaloid who sounds happy in a sad song or vice versa. Now my general Seeu config is made for clarity and keep that in mind.

SeeU_SV01_KOR

Breathiness: -127
Brightness: 30
Clearness: 25
Gender Factor: 0 (Can be edited up or down by 5-10 when needed)

Now I will explain the config. Lets start breathiness.  Usually a vocaloid with a breathy voice is a little hard to understand. SeeU doesn't have that problem but we remove breathiness so she is more clear.  Now her brightness is at 30. I usually like it there because it gives her a nice strong voice that I like vocaloids to have. If you need her to be more quiet for a song you can just edit her volume in the mixer or in an external mixing program. Now here comes the big important part of the config, Clearness. Seeu isnt plagued by Clarity problems but we need this Clearness factor to be edited for when singing out of her optimum range and it also leaves us with less to worry about doing mixing and such. Gender Factor is pretty self explanatory.

SIDE TIP: I usually use Pitch correction software in vocaloid3 as a VST. Try out Gsnap. Gsnap is a freeware VST Pitch correction software that comes in handy.

2.2) PHONEMES - KOREAN TO ENGLISH PHONEMES

Now comes the important part. The phonemes, and not only that but exploiting them to replicate English. SeeU does not contain all the phonemes needed for perfect English but can replicate quite a lot of it to the point that if you know what you are doing, she will almost if not just as good as most Vocaloid1 or Vocaloid2 English Vocaloids. In this section I will be referencing the phoneme chart from Vocaloid Wikia found at ( vocaloid.wikia.com/wiki/Englis… )

VOWELS

Now lets begin with the vowels. Seeu has more then just the five vowels of Japanese.  Phonemes are displayed in [  ]s.

[ a ] - As in the japanese [a] or the ahhh sound in the english 'lot'
[ e ] - As in the Japanese [ e ] or the ehhh sound in the english 'them'
[ i ] - As in the Japanese [ i ] or the EEE sound in the english  'see'
[ o ] - As in the japanese [ o ] or the ohhh sound in the english 'so'
[ u ] - As in the japanese [ u ] or the uuuuu sound in 'you' or 'new'
[ M ] - Is a more clear and open sounding [ u ] vowel.
[ 7] - The uhhhh sound as in the english 'strut' or 'cut' (isnt in japanese language)

SIDE TIP : Her [u] Phoneme is how should we say  .... odd sounding... So usually I just use the [M] phoneme but if I have to use it I usually have the [M] phoneme right after it like [u M] so it switches over to that clearer sound I love.

CONSONANTS

Now that we have the vowels done with lets move on to the consonants.  We don't need to take too much time with them do we? I will only point out the unique or differences in consonants then you are used to and some tips on making English sounds.

Lets start with the  W sound. Seeu doesn't have just one phoneme for the W sound. The phoneme is dependent on the vowel that follows. Since you know the Phonemes for the vowels lets list the W phonemes.

[oa]  - Wa
[u7] - Wuh
[ue]  - We
[ui] - Wi

Now for the next oddity. The Y sound. The Y phoneme is similar to the W as its dependent on the vowel that follows but uses the letter j.

[ja]  - Ya
[j7]  - Yuh
[je] - Ye
[jo]  - Yo
[ju] - Yu - ( I usually use [ju M] because of the reason stated in the side tip above)

Now we have the J sound. This is actually quite simple.

  [ c] - J

Now for the tricky R... I really don't understand this much but I think I have it figured out with help from the Chart.

  [r] - Is weak and sounds slightly rolled so to have it sound proper you need to follow it with a W phoneme [oa, ue, ui, u7] It works without it but sounds better when you add the W.

Alright the rest is self explanatory but I'm gonna point out a few things. First ending consonants.  A few consonants have special versions of themselves for when used after the vowel. They are the consonant with a 'p' adding onto it. List bellow of ones that you will have to use in place of the normal phoneme or sacrifice pronunciation to the weird sounding ways of the dark side.

[mp] - Ending MMM sound.
[np] - Ending NNN sound. NEVER USE [n] FOR AFTER VOWEL ALWAYS USE [np]
[Np] - NGGGG sound as in 'song, long, ding'

Now I believe thats it for explanations of phonemes lets move on to some tips for replicating english.

2.3) KOREAN TO ENGLISH TIPS AND COMBINATIONS

DOUBLE CONSONANTS

Now SeeU has trouble with double consonants before the vowel. She can use some double consonants but not all will work. The biggest problem one is the SP sound as in 'special'. (Yes SeeU, you are very 'special' -snickers-). Another is the ST sounds as in 'Stand'. And you will find more as you work with SeeU.

To fix this there are a few things you can do. 2/3 Ways I use have the use of special hidden phonemes that do interesting things. Now onto the first way.

  1) Adding the first of the two consonants to the end of the note preceding it. Will not work if there is space between the two notes. Usually I make use of the [Sil] phoneme. All [Sil] does is add a short silence, its not noticeable but sorta breaks the smoothness of the transition from phoneme to phoneme. Example bellow.

"Will you stay?"
[ue e l] [ju M Sil s] [t e i]

2)  This next method makes use of the hidden phoneme [_0]. It is a very strange phoneme which I will use Sekai's explanation for.

{ This phoneme is rather interesting in what it can do. It devoices the samples to leave just a mechanical / breathy version of the consonant. For example, "desu" is not pronounced "de-su", and is instead pronounced as "de-s[and very soft "u"]". The [_0] phoneme does this like so:
"desu" = [d e][s M_0] -> "de~s" }

An example for making english would be:
[s M_0][t a np][d M_0]  "Stand" - The [d M_O] and the [s M_O] notes would be very short and most of the  note will be the [t a np].

3) Now the third way would be the same you would use for Engrish. Just make a tiny note, put the consonant and the [M] phoneme. Make it short enough so that you don't hear the vowel. I don't use this way because it produces choppiness.

  ENGLISH "TH" SOUND

Sadly with all the extra phonemes and stuff SeeU has ... She doesn't have a proper "TH" sound. To replicate the "TH" you can do a few things.

1) The most simple, basic, and choppy way. Just use the [d] or [z] Phoneme.

2) This is a combination of two phonemes. The 'J's [c] phoneme and the 'Z's [z] Phoneme. Use [c z] for the 'TH'. This is the best way in my opinion.
EX: Then - [c z e np]  (Sometimes you will need to put the [c z] in a separate note)

  [r] PHONEME

Now Seeu's Korean bank includes a few extra sounds not native to Korean. They come in very handy. They are:

[f] - The 'F' as in "Father"
[v] - The 'V' as in "Vector"
[z] - The 'Z' as in "Zero"
[C] - The 'S' sound but only used before an [ i ].
[r] - The 'Er' sound as in "singER, markER, sistER"

Now lets talk about the [r] Phoneme. The r has a few oddities that come with its amazing 'Er' sound not usually found in Korean or Japanese voicebanks.

The first of these oddities is that it can only be used after a Vowel. If the phoneme before it is a Consonant then it will not make any sound.  The second oddity is that it will only work AFTER a vowel. Not before .

Now the third oddity is actually a good thing. It will work as the only phoneme in the note but only when the note before it ends in a vowel. There we go again with the Vowels. Lets make this easy to remember. '[r] is a player and likes hitting on the Vowels. But because the consonants are unpopular he will not even go near them.' (lol?)

Thanks to these oddities there is another downside to r. The r sound alone is hard to get when that is all you want. Lets say we are making the word "Maker". We will have to do:

[m e i k] [e] [r] - The [e] will be at a length of 1/32 and the r can be as long as you want it to be without the [e] sound stretching as it would if you did [e r].

:thumb255979081: 3)  JAPANESE VOICEBANK

Now the only problems Seeu has on her Japanese voicebank is that her TSU sound is liked nulled. So its more like Su... To fix that just either place the consonant in another note and lower the Velocity or... You can just spike up the volume on the note. o3o Simple as that.

Now also keep in mind her Japanese bank as a slight korean accent and is also a bit more cute or moe sounding then her Korean bank.

For her JP configuration i use a derivative of her KOR config.

Breathiness: -127
Brightness: 23
Clearness: 17
Gender Factor: 10 (Can be edited up or down by 5-10 when needed)

4) CLOSING AND FURTHER HELP

Now I think that is all that is needed for this. When working with Korean to replicate English you will have to rely on the Korean - English Phoneme Chart on Vocaloid Wikia which i linked to above. After a while it will get burned into your head.

Also don't be afraid to ask for opinions on how her 'Konglish' work you have done sounds. Try soundcloud to upload it and share it on places like Vocaloid Otaku, and Deviantart. People who know what they are doing would be glad to help.

Also for help with SeeU's flatness or pitching problems check out Sekai's Tumblr: skeyi.tumblr.com/

If you need any help with anything feel free to comment bellow!~