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Japan's Latest Rockstar Is a 3D Hologram
kkleiner writes "Hatsune Miku is a Japanese pop diva who's just started to play massive stadium concerts to sold out crowds. Her hair is blue, she dresses like Sailor Moon, and she'll only appear in concerts via a 3D 'hologram.' Oh, and did I forget to mention that she's completely fictional? Created by Crypton Future Media, Hatsune Miku and her virtual colleagues have gone on limited tours in Japan."
For those of you who don't know, this singing synthesizer technology is called Vocaloid. The impressive thing about Vocaloid is that it can synthesize the singing of a whole song without requiring a real human singer. Miku actually got popular by the vast amount of fan made viral musics spread in YouTube. This just show us the power of user generated content and the value of "open source" music, because anyone with the Vocaloid software can use Miku's voice to "sing" easily.
The technology may not be perfect yet, as the singing still sound a bit unnatural. But as technology advances, we can expect it to mimic human voice more closely or even make it hardly distinguishable. Combining this with the virtual intrument technology, just imagine how much creativity we will have when average joe can produce studio quality music with just a computer.
..the Japanese developed virtual artists like that. http://chinyankeat.tripod.com/dk96.htm (sorry for the double post, wasn't logged in)