One of Japan’s most popular video sharing Nico Nico Douga‘s driving force in its early stage, Miku Hatsune, a virtual girl character attached to a PC application Vocaloid performed her first “live” concert in front of an audience of 25,000 people at an anime event in Saitama prefecture, Japan.
She “played” two of her popular songs with her band, which is real.
Vocaloid is an application to let computer sing (voice synthesis) on melody you set. Miku Hatsune is its one version with a female voice actor, and known by used on a lot of music/video mash-up on Nico Nico Douga movies. Users can “train” how it (or she?) sings so each Miku Hatsune could sing differently.
I am now totally confused what “live” is, but another recent feverish music phenomenon, a girls techno unit Perfume was well known by their lip-syncing live, which no one minded.
Japan has a long history of virtual idol started by Kyoko Date since 1996. 13 years after her finally one can create a sensation with a big stadium full of people.
We recently covered another Miku Hatsune news around a parody song she (actually the software) sings.
(proofread by Sean O’Hagan)
See Also:
Asahi.com tries to explain Miku Hatsune boom on YouTube – you may turn on English subtitle on YouTube
Miku Hatsune and Techno Design Exhibition 8/26 – 9/17 at Shibuya Parco [J]
Another concert by Nico Nico Douga is to go on 8/31 at Tokyo Waterfront [J] – incidentally the last day of the Odaiba Gundam Statue
