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avytips · 11 years ago

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Original Song tip: what to do if you're stuck

((i'm actually just doing this because i'm stuck lol))

If you like to write originals or if you're trying to write your first or something, chances are you might get stuck at some point here or there. It's pretty much the same as an art block only with music.

This is just a list of things I do when I get stuck, in order of what helps most to what helps the least. And that's pretty much all this post will be, whoops.

Take a shower. Showering can be very refreshing and will help, especially if you sing in it. When I'm in the middle of a song and don't know how to continue it, showering helps because I sing the song up to there and think of something to continue it.

Listen to some other artists' work, especially if the genre is similar to the song you're stuck on. Chances are you may find a bunch of similar songs to combine and twist into your own.

Take a walk. I'm guilty of not doing this, but when I do, it actually really helps, especially if you go around places you haven't been very often before! The new scenery can be as refreshing as a shower.

EAT AND PLAY. Sometimes when I'm stuck I've actually just been working on the song for too long and not doing anything else. A quick meal (maybe something cold) or some nice relaxing Legend of Zelda might help (but look out because BEN)

Move to another part of the room you're in, or change your furniture around. Sometimes the problem is just your surroundings, and switching to a different spot in your room/office/living room/what have you is a good way to start fresh. I usually switch from my desk to my bed or vice versa.

Try a new VSTi or instrument that you haven't used yet. I find a new instrument is really fun to play around with and it's interesting to see what you can do! Try a kantele or a new soundfont you found or even try a different genre! Who knows, you might make something really cool with it!

Try to think positively. Don't tell yourself you're not cut out for making originals, or that you've grown tired of it, or that you just lost your juice. That will make the period you're stuck last longer.

You don't have to continue the song you're trying!! Chances are if you're stuck for a really, really, long time, you just may not know how to continue the song. Don't feel like you have to finish it or let anyone tell you to. It's your original and you may not even want to finish that particular one.

If you decide you can't continue it, SAVE IT. You can start a new one! But if you get stuck again far in the future, it really helps to save old scraps, because then you can go through your old folders and files and find it, and say "Hm, I think I could use this melody for something." or "Huh, I didn't know I could make this VST sound so nice."

If you're just absolutely, positively, stuck, do something else in general. Whatever's fun or refreshing for you--or even try something new. You don't have to sit and force yourself to write the song when you're completely stuck; let yourself relax a bit and think.

This is mostly an utau/vocaloid thing but i guess you could take it for any kind of songwriting. Just make sure to remember #7!! This is only a short time!

and now i am going to do #4 lolol

#utau #vocaloid

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avytips · 12 years ago

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UTAU tutorial: how to remove the pitchbends

Some people covering "grace" and my newer works with UTAlis are having trouble because they aren't into pitchbending, so here's an easy way to remove them but keep the transitions between notes sound smooth!

First, select all. You can do this by going to the menu, using the shortcut ctrl + a, or right clicking -> select all.

Then, right click on a note and select "Pitch." It should be the second to last.

When the window pops up, keep clicking the top left check until it's solid black.

Now the pitchbends are gone, but you'll need to click and reset the envelopes, too! After that, it's just fitting the ust to the UTAU your using!

Hope this helped!!

#utau #pitchbends #removing pitchbends #ust #editing

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avytips · 12 years ago

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Matt tries to explain PIT and PBS in Vocaloid

I’ve had a lot of people ask me about PIT editing in Vocaloid so I thought I’d make a little tutorial (I hope it doesn’t end up too confusing, but I apologize in advance if it is!!)

#vocaloid #pit #pbs #tuning

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avytips · 12 years ago

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Avy writes about how she makes fanime

Just because I made a “How to make a fanime” thingy a while ago and I thought I’d do it again here because I’ve learned even more.

BEFORE I START THOUGH, THIS IS FANIME. NOT PANIME. A lot of people I’ve met associate fanime with either Fanime Con or the panime Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls! The difference is fanime isn’t made to be bad. Panime is. Just think of fanime as a comic, only animated. That’s the difference.

And again, before I start, I’d like to say that a lot of fanimators I talk to, and actually I include myself, would not like their shows to be associated with fanime. Although it is animated, scripted, and almost everything by them, I would like to make it clear that some people just do not feel comfortable with the category. They want it to be associated with their own, unique style. You may put it in that category in the back of your head to know that it can be associated with it, but it’s best you do not say it.

Now, we can start!

What is a fanime?

If you go to the fanime wiki, it will say this:

Fanime (a portmanteau of “fan” and “anime “) is a relatively new genre of web animation that has recently started to gain popularity on Youtube. Most fanime has an anime art style, hence the name, and are often inspired by pre-existing animes, the most popular of which being Magical Girl shows such as Salior Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew. Unlike most web cartoons, fanimes are usually made using MS Paint or Photoshop and Windows Movie Maker instead of Flash and are usually drawn by a one-person team.

The term has been changing and including more and more, though. “Fanime” can mean any home-made animated webshow, usually from fans of anime, hence “Fanime.” A lot of people, as I said before, don’t feel comfortable with the term.

Some popular examples of fanime I can give are ~*Eternal*~ and Guardian Angel, and more popularly, Elemental Goddess.

WHY ARE ALL OF THEM MAGICAL GIRL???

Not all of them are. Just, unfortunately, the most popular ones are. It’s just a fact that magical girl is the most popular genre of fanime; it has been in 2007, and it still will be now.

A lot of people tried to fix this by adding blood or little fight scenes with scary elements in their magical girl series. THIS DOESN’T WORK. I would just like to say that. The best way to fight the magical girl genre is NOT to make a magical girl. Unless you want to try extremely hard to stand out.

The rest of the majority of fanime is horror, but I’ve never seen any of them finished… Possibly because the animators can’t draw blood?

How to make a fanime

So you want to make a fanime? I’m assuming that. Because you’re reading this. Soo. If not, you’re probably just curious and that’s fine too.

Making a fanime takes a lot of work, time, dedication. It is extremely stressful and is hard to tackle if you want to put your schoolwork first. My suggestion is do that; if you’re planning to dedicate most of your time into your show/fanime/what have you, you should do your homework as soon as you get home so that the rest of the time you have can be used for other things.

Now, onto actually MAKING it. First of all, you need an idea, a plot, something to start your story. If you don’t have anything, there’s no point in making the show. Once you get it, if it comes out of nowhere and you just think of it, skip this step. If you based it off something, DON’T.

Before you can make anything, you have to make sure the idea is original and hasn’t been overused. If it’s a magical girl, make the costumes more original or throw some tricks in there. What made certain magical girl shows interesting? In Madoka Magica, it wasn’t the oh-so great desuness that made it great, it was the life choices and development of the characters. If horror, don’t make it blind blood here and there, there has to be a reason for it, be it supernatural or not. You can have the plot based around finding the reason. Developing the plot is an extremely hard step. For Eva -Eve-, it took 7 years for me to get it where it is today. At first, it was a horrible Magical Girl. Now, it’s has some elements of it, but took so many of it out, diving into many genres. Don’t be afraid to experiment. My recommendation for finding out if your plot is good, is going to any somewhat experienced fanimator and saying, “Here’s my plot. Is it too cliche, or can it pass? Do I need to do more development?” Some might be too nice to tell you to do more, but some will lead you in the right direction. At this point I’d like to say my inbox is always open. Also, be aware that other fanimators may have used the idea already. For example, I just recently saw a show that reminded me of Yin Yang almost immediately. The concept of light and dark in a child has already been used; either develop it more, adding more twists, or use a different idea. Make sure you don’t rip it off.

Next is character development. Once you have the idea and have development, it’s back to other development, only with who will be in the show. Is the main character going to be male or female? How did they grow up? What’s their main goals? With main characters, or characters that show up a LOT, I recommend filling out a character sheet, my favorite being here. You also need designs for that character. If your story is going to be placed in a certain area, research fashion in that country or place. If it’s on a different planet or fictional culture, you could make up your own fashion, based on researching several cultures. If you just want to make a fictional Renaissance-y thing, research clothing from the Renaissance. If your characters don’t match the era or setting of the story, the show won’t sit well with the audience.

Now that you finally have characters and a decent idea, you need to write a script. Now, I do everything improv because I know my characters well and the story, but for a lot of people, I know it helps to write an outline of the series first. You could make an overview of your series in notecards, putting events and making them, shifting them around until you like the order. This could be the order of episodes. You also need to decide how many episodes you want in this stage, and how long they should be. If it doesn’t matter and you’re doing it for fun, that’s fine. If it does matter and you want it to be on a resume or something, that’s fine, too. Whatever you want!

When writing a script, you can write however you feel comfortable (I do mine my own way), as long as you clearly have some direction for what you want happening. A normal script is written in a certain way, and you can go here (more details on trimming down your idea, and picking one), here (picture guide), and here (full script formatting guidelines) to find out how to write it, but you may also use different approaches since you’re making it yourself. As long as there’s context on how the character feels, and the voice actor/actress can tell, it should be fine. You also need to take into account all of your characters’ likes and dislikes, and what they value in other characters. This sets up chemistry and how interactions are in the show and makes it more interesting.

After the entire script is done, you can finally start what you want to do! Normally, in a production team, people make storyboards. Storyboards are extremely easy. All you do is make a few quick sketches of certain shots, and know how long each shot will be for, and what the character say in them. It’s pretty much like a comic. I’m not even kidding. This video is a great sum-up of how to storyboard. The sketches, I’d like to emphasize as the video does, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE PERFECT. They are ONLY just so you know where everything is!

When you’re done with the storyboard, you can go back and edit things you don’t like out. It’s your planning stage. You don’t have to keep everything you write down or draw out. My friends and I also make storyboard reels, where you do not make it on paper, or in little comic form, but in its own video. These are some storyboard reels, with the final product (advertisements) on the side, to get a gist of how important storyboards can be.

After the storyboard, or as a lot of fanimators do, you can go right into the animation. Sometimes, I don’t even make a storyboard! Though they’re extremely helpful, animation can be better. To animate, you need any art program—even MS Paint will do, not kidding! Preferably, though, you want a program that has layer. The artist toolbox has several programs in their tags list if you want to look for one! A lot of them are free!

When animating, you want to redo it several times. First, the sketch, then the clean-up (if you have time), then the lineart, and finally the coloring. Preferably, do the sketch more than once. Treat every frame like a work of art—except, don’t color it too much. Making it TOO good will make the animation take too long to come out. One of my friends has this problem with Terra Lucis, but she likes doing it so I’m not gonna stop her xwx ((She’s been working on the first episode since she released that opening. And only this, from what I’ve heard, is fully colored and ready. Much of the rest is still in sketch stages))

Speaking of MsIlluna, she’s uploaded an extremely helpful tutorial on animating here! It touches the characters, sketches, lineart, just the many stages of what she does.

During the stages of animation is when I’d recommend you look for voice actors. Before looking, though, you want to make sure you have at least a little bit to show them. Give what’s actually going to be in the show, not just some frames you made up real quick. To get voice actors, you can go to voice acting alliance, or simply post on YouTube and ask for auditions sent to either your email or as a video response.

Additionally, you need to make sure you have a good OST. I’ve already made a tutorial on that here.

SO MUCH WORK I CAN’T EVEN DO IT I JU-

OKAY THIS IS WHAT WILL MAKE ME SLAP YA. If it’s too much work, DON’T DO IT. Nobody’s FORCING you to. Some people fanimate JUST FOR THE ATTENTION AND IT REALLY BOTHERS ME. Do what’s FUN FOR YOU. Not what’s fun to watch for OTHERS. If you DO like it, then don’t complain that much. If you love it, it’s worthwhile. If not, then oh well, you don’t have to, just stop.

What’s some good do’s and don’t’s?

Ah, yes, the do’s and don’t’s.

Dos:

Make your ideas original and check if you think the idea has already been taken

Choose unpopular music for the OST, and study your anatomy and things you’re not so great with.

Make your animation smooth; experiment

Don’t’s:

Be afraid to experiment.

Make your animation choppy.

Be nervous; if you like what you’re doing, chances are, someone else will, too.

Be upset from hate—though you might be inexperienced, people just trashing your stuff without leaving tips to help isn’t right. Don’t get worked up over it

Use vocaloid music. A lot of fanimators I’ve talked to get annoyed when a Vocaloid is singing the opening, so instead, try finding a cover on Nico. You can do this by copying the title, putting a space, and pasting in 歌ってみた (which literally means “I tried to sing”). With covers, you still get to use the song you want, and you still get a “real” voice singing!

TRACE OR RECOLOR. THIS IS JUST THE STUPIDEST THING EVER. IF YOU DO, THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY WILL MOST LIKELY HATE YOU AND YOU’LL END UP RUNNING OUT OF THINGS TO TRACE/RECOLOR SO YOU WON’T EVEN HAVE A FREAKING EPISODE UP.

Hopefully this is somewhat helpful if someone was interested! I’ve just been in the community for so long, and recently lurking, and I’m just hoping this will get a little less mahou shoujo frilly horror out of the way :’D

Again, if you need more help personally, my inbox is ALWAYS open.

#tips #fanime #fanimation #fananime #how to #how i make fanime #how i do things #avytips #yep #is this helping?#non-utau

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avytips · 12 years ago

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OST Tips

Before I begin, I'd like to make it clear this isn't an UTAU tutorial, but just some tips on picking soundtracks for someone's fanime, game, webshow, etc. I've also bolded the main points for easy skimming if reading isn't your thing.

Now that that's out of the way, imagine any movie without its music. It would be rather boring, wouldn't it? Music creates suspense, excitement, and elicits emotion in the listener. In order to create a scene, one must consider what emotion they would want to bring out in a viewer and match it with a useful soundtrack.

At this point I would like to tell you that you should find someone who enjoys writing songs and ask them to write a track or two for you, or even do it yourself (especially if you're making a fanime). But I also realize that not everyone feels music is what they want to pursue and I accept that. So now let me just go over what I hate seeing in a fanime.

Music taken from an already existing anime (if it's a popular anime, it's even worse)

Music taken from an already existing video game

Music taken from "mainstream" music

Mismatching music/scene -- sad music with a happy, calm feel to it

In order to avoid this, when I was creating a fanime, one of the reasons I got into VOCALOID was how much music was easily available and great. With producers from VOCALOID, you can get almost any genre imaginable and simply get the instrumental to the song, and even an "utattemita" (literally "I tried to sing;" used for covers) for the opening or ending.

Now, many will also dislike VOCALOID and may not even want to move into Japanese music. I've seen many fanime with mainstream American music. Instead, you could pick a more ambiguous band or musician and take some of their tracks.

Just do NOT take something from something already popular. It's extremely annoying and some viewers may only picture the scene that particular soundtrack was from in the original production.

Again, I highly suggest you find a person who enjoys writing songs -- many hobbyists would probably be glad to contribute a few soundtracks to your show or even collaborate with you in the future. If you do find someone, please do NOT alter their tracks yourself in programs such as Audacity by pitching it down, speeding it up, etc. It will only anger the musician you found and they may not agree to work with you again (I know this is true for me).

One last thing: ALWAYS credit whose music you use. Even if it's just a friend of yours that didn't really mind. ALWAYS. Imagine someone taking your entire show and claiming it as your own. Or even your artwork. Music is an art too, so it also deserves respect to the original producer.

If you are only doing this for your own fun and games, and not really caring about what music you pick (or you're just planning to practice animation and creating openings) you could head to gendou.com, create an account, and download TV sized soundtracks. This helped me for a while and I pretty much learned how to animate practicing on them. However, if you're aiming for the most viewers or highest quality, you shouldn't; gendou is basically filled with songs from anime that many fanime viewers have already watched and may be able to pinpoint which anime it's from.

I would also like to make a point to say that I myself am creating soundtracks for free use and starting a website where you can download them and use them as long as it's for non-commercial use and you credit me. So, I'm always an option if you need original soundtracks. //selfadvertisement

Thank you for reading and I hope this was helpful to figure out your choices in making a fanime/game/webshow/etc!

#fanime #fananime #OST #original soundtrack #original sound track #music #music selection #tips #avytips #non utau

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avytips · 12 years ago

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Edit: ah crap I forgot to put H in soft consonants. For the record, H is a soft consonant. HOW TO OTO, IN HALO’S WORDS: THE UPDATE.

Things to check out before you read this: Fitting a UST to a Voice Library Note how the overlap, in these diagrams, is always in the same place. It should be around 40-60ms.

It’s neater, more precise, prevents glitching, and frees your consonants! Even if the difference between this and the previous method I had on here is relatively minute to the human ear, UTAU plays with this a lot better!

LEAVE A LITTLE SPACE IN FRONT OF YOUR SAMPLES SO YOU CAN USE THIS METHOD, PLEASE!

With that out of the way, let’s hop to it!

Overlap/Green Line:

Set every overlap in your bank to somewhere around 40-60ms. My preferred is 60ms. Whether you go through and add this to every sample manually, use “find and replace” in notepad or you use Setparam (my preferred method), just make sure everything has an overlap of the same number. It sounds weird, but trust me. I’ll do my best to explain.

After you’ve got this set up, you simply move the Offset (Blue bar) until the Overlap is where it should be for the consonant type.

On hard consonants, leave a space of approx. 30-60ms after the overlap.

On soft consonants, it should be at the beginning of the consonant. If you have extremely long soft sounds, it’s acceptable to have the overlap on the consonant, but part of the beauty of this method is that you should have to do that even if you have long consonants.

On semi-hard consonants,leave a small gap of 10-15ms before the main bulk of the consonant. If you use spectrogram view, use that to find the real start of the sound (there’s often a small sort of buzzing/vibrating sound) and move the overlap to the start of that.

On the left overs and vowels, it goes at the beginning of the sound plainly.

Preutterance/Red Line:

After placing the Overlap, you can move on to the Preutt. This goes at the beginning of the vowel (so it will be in the same place as the overlap on plain vowels, and after the consonant on CVs). This is to prevent offtiming. If it’s in the consonant, the sound will start late. If it’s too far into the vowel, it will come in too early. Note- For CCV files, such as kya, it’s recommended to put the preutterance after the first consonant, not the second. However, if you’re using this method, the first consonant should not be cut off if you choose to put the preutterance after the second consonant. I have not put this to extensive testing, and what I have tested has been mainly in English.

Consonant/Pink Bar:

Anything covered by the pink bar doesn’t get stretched/looped on long notes. So it covers consonants, and any volume or pitch fluctuations after that. You can use your own judgement on how far into the vowel it goes, but remember; the less white there is to stretch, the more metallic it will sound. On looping resamplers (EFB-GT and tn_fnds), sometimes it’s okay to have less.

Offset/Cutoff/Blue Bars:

The front Blue Bar (Offset) is moved in order to move the overlap to the correct place without changing the overlap’s value. The back one (Cutoff) is to cut off any fade-out you might have at the end of your sound, and any silence.

So what’s the deal with this method? It sounds like it might sound jumpy with all that blank space on every sound… Basically? UTAU marks the area between the preutterance and overlap as “consonant”. And we don’t cut off random bits of out consonants, either. Oh, and on top of that, it’s better if the space in front of hard consonants is real. It ensures a smooth fadeout instead of a weird, artificial one. So this sounds more natural, albeit slight.

I implore you to try it on your next CV bank.

This is just a guide and by no means the be all and end all of good otos. If something sounds off, feel free to mess with it! Go crazy and please, figure out by yourself exactly what Overlap and Preutterance do, it’ll help you understand why I use this method, anyway. You can always put them back in place when you mess them up! I feel a hands on experience is required to understand the art of the oto.ini fully. If you have any issues with what I’ve tried to explain here, or any questions please take it up with me via Ask or Note or PM!

#oto #tutorial #reference #utau

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avytips · 12 years ago

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This blog is a little dead so I'm just gonna reblog this here!

UTAU ORIGINAL DISCOUNTS!!!

ONLY CATCH: It’s for a horror song series!!

For more information go here!!

#utau #utau original #discounts #point commissions

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avytips · 12 years ago

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how do you use the equalizer, and in wich program do you do it?

Ah, I’m just gonna do an explanation without pictures because I don’t feel like getting it right now haha..

I use the Acoustica EQ in Mixcraft and just slide them around until it sounds right. Some things I’ve noticed:

making the highest EQ settings turned down takes away some of the background noise

making the lower EQ settings turned up sounds better when trying for the instrumental sounds, but if you tweak the higher settings it makes consonants sharper

the middle of the EQ is best to tweak with for vocals, but I usually leave it as is

I know this wasn’t much of a tutorial but that’s just what I do with it haha OTL

#mixcraft #equalization #EQ #Acoustica #Acoustica EQ

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avytips · 12 years ago

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Designing an UTAU (Tutorial/Tip Dump)

UTAU Design Tutorial

So 38 suggested a design tutorial- or at least, how I design them. Then she sent me a sample of a bank she doesn’t have a design to for this~ yaaay~

Here’s the sample (it only has vowels recorded at the moment):

Before doing anything regarding the design, I just listen to the voicebank and think of words to describe it. For this one, I’d say the UTAU has a somewhat powerful voice, and I think it sounds a /little/ cutesy but not too much.

Then I associate some colors to the voice. I think of strong colors and not much grey. Royal purple, maybe maroon/orange colors. If I can’t pick colors, I make several color schemes.

Now I finally start the design. When making MY designs I usually base it off things I would want to look like, what I DO look like, or stuff that I have lying around. But since this is someone else’s, I guess I can’t really do that, haha. I just think of what kind of person I would expect to see with a voice like this, I guess-

If I can’t think of any clothes, I mostly just go to dA and browse around the fashion category. I never take someone else’s design, but I combine some of them and that gets the gears going.

When thinking about clothes, I think it’s nice to consider what kinds of clothes go better for different types of characters. When I think of soft voices, I think of long, flowy dresses, puffy dresses, or things with lace with a plain design (hence AV-02 IRIS (who won't be completed)). When it comes to sharper voices like these, I think of someone either with a short skirt, skinny jeans, short shorts, and maybe some flamboyant colors. In the case of this voicebank, I can’t see any flowy or puffy dresses.

For this voicebank, since I classify it as strong, I think of lots of detail and sharp colors. Softer voices go better with less detail and more dull colors, I think. Summer colors like yellow, green, and orange would probably go great with this bank.

Here’s a the design I came up with along with some color schemes (warning: messy and bad because how do art):

Basically, here’s my own personal guidelines:

-Don’t Cryptonize things (unless it’s a joke or if you’re only slightly implementing stuff [This means NO MIKU, NO RIN, NO LEN ripoffs, it’s really annoying])

-Don’t make things TOO un-human. My personal view on UTAU is that it’s a voice-in-a-box, and voices come from humans, so make it look that way. That’s kind of why I always make my UTAUs have natural hair (in this case, I gave her a small bit of dye because I thought it would accentuate her voice sounding strong)

-Do NOT look at other UTAUloids for ideas; chances are, those UTAUloids were based off of VOCALOIDs (unfortunately..)

I know it’s a bit of a messy tutorial and.. well, was more of a tip-dump than a tutorial, but I hope it helped you at least a bit..

#UTAU #UTAU Tutorial #Design Tutorial #Design #Fashion #Art

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