Megurine Luka

Megurine Luka (巡音ルカ) is a humanoid anime-style character persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media, headquartered in Sapporo, Japan. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technology. Her voice is sampled from Yū Asakawa. She has performed at live concerts onstage as an animated hologram projection.

In this Japanese name, the surname is Megurine.
Megurine Luka
Megurine Luka V4x
Developer(s)Crypton Future Media
Initial releaseJanuary 30, 2009
Stable release
Megurine Luka V4X / March 19, 2015
Operating systemWindows
PlatformPC
Available inJapanese
English
TypeVocal Synthesizer Application
LicenseProprietary
WebsiteCrypton Future Media

Development

Luka was developed by Crypton Future Media using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2. Her voice was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Yū Asakawa at a controlled pitch and tone.

Megurine Luka was originally designed to be the first Vocaloid of the Character Vocal Series that Crypton Future Media would release and was going to be called "Hatsune Miku", designed to be capable of singing both English and Japanese vocals. However, the concept was put on hold and the name was used for another character, making Luka the 3rd vocal of the Character Vocal Series to be released instead.[1]

Additional software

She originally was going to receive an update called "Megurine Luka Append" developed for Vocaloid 2.Luka's Append vocal was used on the album Vocaloid Minzoku Chō Kyokushū (VOCALOID民族調曲集) for the song "Hoshizora to Yuki no Butōkai (Zeal mix)". The promotional album Vocalo Append used a beta of Luka's "Soft" Append. The vocals were announced to have been dropped in favor of Vocaloid 3 productions on December 1, 2011.[2] Once again the Vocaloid 3 update did not occur. During the brief period her V3 website was up, the listed vocals being created for her were; Japanese/Power/Soft/Cute/Whisper/Closed/English.[3]

On March 19, 2015, a new version of Luka developed for Vocaloid 4, called Megurine Luka V4X, was released containing a package of 6 vocals - 4 for Japanese and 2 for English. The Japanese vocals were "Hard", "Soft", "Hard EVEC" and "Soft EVEC" while the English vocals were titled "Straight" and "Soft". Japanese vocals "HARD EVEC" and "Soft EVEC" utilized the new "E.V.E.C." (Enhanced Voice Expression Control) system for Piapro studio allowed delicate adjustments of phonetic sounds to change how a sound played. The EVEC "Colours" for Luka are; "Power 1", "Power 2", "Native", "Whisper", "Dark", "Husky", "Soft", "Falsetto" and "Cute". All 4 Japanese vocals could use the new "Cross-Synthesis" ("XSY") system for Vocaloid4 together, while the 2 English ones could be cross-synthesized also with each other.

Marketing

Despite the inclusion of English, Megurine Luka was not aimed at a worldwide audience, instead focused primarily at Japanese producers. In 2010, Luka was ranked as the 3rd most popular Vocaloid product Crypton has sold.[4] In October 2013, Luka's Vocaloid 2 software disappeared off the top 10 products charts as the Hatsune Miku V3 and its bundle package disrupted the chart rankings.[5] Luka had already fallen to 6th place during the 2013 period as a result of the KAITO V3 release, but this was the first time Luka had disappeared from the charts. After the charts began to settle down again, Luka began to occupy the same spot on the charts that the Vocaloid 1 KAITO package previously occupied (6th-8th place), putting the popularity of the product on par with the older product. After the MEIKO V3 release, Luka became the only member of the Vocaloid 2 Character Vocal Series vocals to have a product on the charts, leaving her in 5th place. However, Vocaloid 2 vocals were mostly absent from the rankings in April 2014. By mid-2014, both she and the Vocaloid 2 Kagamine Rin\Len package no longer held constant places in the rankings and were constantly on and off Crypton Future Media sales charts. In March 2015, the Megurine Luka V4x package got the no.1 spot for the sales of all digital instruments on Big Fish Audio.[6] Soon after the V4x package release, she grabbed the Crypton top sales rankings and remained there for April 2015. On May 1, the site updated to reveal the package now in 3rd place behind Hatsune Miku V3.

Characteristics

According to KEI, who was asked to illustrate her by Crypton, due to her bilingual software her design was made to be asymmetrical, so from different angles she would look different. Unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform. She is based on the "Yamaha VL1 VL-1". Her dress was designed to look old fashioned, to make her represent the past, as a form of contrast, the "∞" on her neck area represents "sound around".[7] Her design incorporates woodwind and brass instruments. The gold curl design on her chest mimics brass instruments and a circulatory organ. The blue jewel near her throat represents moisture in the air and water drops.[8]

Luka has so far been used in over 210 songs and one of her songs titled "ダブルラリアット (Double Lariat)", by Agoaniki-P, is considered one of her most popular songs with over 7,000,000 views on Niconico.

References
  1. "英語に苦心　大人なVOCALOID「巡音ルカ」ができるまで (1/2)". ITmedia ニュース. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  2. Wataru Sasaki [crypton_wat @vocaloid_cv_cfm] (1 December 2011). "おお、答えれていなかった質問が幾つかありました。現状、betaとして出ている音源については全てVOCALOID2を使用したものでして、原則、VOCALOID3に適合させた上で改めて音声化し、デモソング等としてリリースさせて頂きたいと思います m(_ _)m" [Oh, several questions have been left unanswered. Status quo, all sound sources released as beta are made with VOCALOID2, and in principle, these should be adopted to Vocaloid 3, then rendered using it, and finally we will release these as demo songs. m(_ _)m]. Twitter (in Japanese). Crypton Future Media.
  3. "piapro.net". Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  4. "Luka ranking 3rd". Archived from the original on 2014-02-04. Retrieved 2015-07-05.
  5. "The Disappearance of Megurine Luka".
  6. "Luka V4X ranked first".
  7. sekise. "初音ミク視聴のススメ". 初音ミク視聴のススメ. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  8. IT Media News - 「巡音ルカ」は「ミク」「リン・レン」とどう違う？ (How is Luka different from Miku and Rin/Len?)
  • This article contains excerpts from Megurine Luka at Vocaloid Wiki, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (Unported) license.
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