Sunday, May 1, 2016

Vocaloid Quick Tip: Don't Accept The Default Phoneme If You Don't Like It!

I've mentioned before that, although Megumi is a native Japanese speaker, her English is pretty good. But, there are several cases where her pronunciation just sounds off.

Remember, don't just accept the default phoneme if it doesn't sound right to you. Take for example the word world. To my ears, it sounds like Gumi is singing word, not world.

The default phoneme for world is:

{w @r l d}

Looking at it, it should be okay. The @r sound is like maker. You would think that this would work, but to me, it sounds too much like word. The d sound at the end is not strong enough. It doesn't sound like it ever closes out.

I've played around with it--separating world into two phonemes:

{w @r l} and then tacking on {dh V} at the end for a pronounce duh sound. But I can't get it to be smooth and seamless.

So I then played around with different vowel sounds:

{w U@ l d} as in poor

{w O@ l d} as in pour

{w O: r l d} as in taught

{w U r l d} as in put

You can here an example of these sounds with Gumi singing My World, beginning with the default phoneme of world.

What do you think sounds the best? Do you think the default sounds the best? None of them sounds perfect to me, but I think {w U@ l d} sounds the closest to how I think the word should be pronounced.

Since I will be using this phoneme is the future, I went to the toolbar, Lyrics | User Word Dictionary | English, and created my own dictionary and added the word world to it with my new custom phoneme. That way, whenever I type in the word world, my new phoneme will be used instead of the default phoneme.

Do you think other words don't work well with the default phoneme? Don't hesitate to make your own and add it to your custom dictionary!

Hope this helps! Keep rocking!

2 comments:

  1. Hi there,
    I don't know if you're still active on this, but I have a question regarding a similar thing...

    Gumi English doesn't pronounce the word "shuts" correctly... leading to some awkward situations with teachers... anyway. Do you know what the phonemes should be? I can't figure it out

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  2. Hi, I just saw this comment. For some reason, Blogger is not notifying me when someone comments. Sorry about that!

    This is one of the most annoying glitches with Gumi English. It's the combination with "sh" and "u". She has no problems pronouncing another word like "hut" or "but."

    What I resort to is using O: for the sound in "taught." It's not great, but it's the closest that I could find to match the V sound. In any case, it's a lot better that the "i" sound she makes trying to pronounce "shut"!

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