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Introduction

Two bits of advice before you start reading:
Use this to help you enjoy the song lists, especially if you're having trouble accessing NND.
And take this slow! Read bite-sized bits at a time! This guide is really long... I don't expect anyone to sit down and read, watch, listen to large amounts of this guide's contents all at one time. Read one section or listen to one song a day or something! Go at whatever pace you like! The world is your oyster!!

Why do i care about vocaloid so much

The purpose of this guide is to inform people of what Vocaloid really is. Maybe you know nothing about it, or maybe you're under the impression that it's about vocal synthesizers. It's actually more than that. It's about people: a lot of people, who together have created something new and very interesting.

An iceberg is actually a pretty great allegory for vocaloid/vsynth as a scene and subculture. The surface of the iceberg, what can be seen above the water, what most people see, is trendy anime characters that come from these nifty voicebanks and so they're prime meme making material. From what i've seen... a lot of people only care about Miku and Teto (and sometimes Neru) as these "iconic" and memeable characters (i see this mostly from communities on tiktok, instagram reels, etc) but they don't understand WHY they ever got popular in the first place. for one example, I saw WAY too many people call the project sekai movie the "miku movie" when that came out, and getting confused when they understand none of what was happening in the film, because they just know miku and only care about miku, but they don't!! Know what Miku really is!! Ahh!!!

Anyway, the second layer of the iceberg, under the water, is when you start acquainting yourself with the music. Now I am going to insert here the entire lyrics to PinocchioP's 2009 ballad "Vocaloid no Uta", because they describe all of "vocaloid" very artistically and succinctly. (Below is an amalgmation I made of the two versions of the song from 2009 and 2019. Both translations were sourced from the VocaloidLyrics Wiki.

Rocked back and forth by the evening train with one earphone in
You let me listen to
Strange music with poor articulation

On a certain video site that wastes every moment of free time
That day, I casually took a look
At that strange music illuminating the dead of night

Cold and weak, it was a Vocaloid song
With words difficult to make out, it was a Vocaloid song

The music in the miniature garden lost its power
And the magic began to scatter to other places far and wide
That "beginning" was,
as if to bury loneliness,
as if to shake up personal expression,
Shoddy music made by an unfamiliar someone
who poured their whole heart into it

Those fragile, uncertain days and Vocaloid songs
Those kinds of Vocaloid songs, known by nobody but you

The fun, heart-pounding songs and the passionate songs that make your blood boil,
And the songs that squeeze out your tears, are Vocaloid songs
The bright, chiptune pop songs, and the loud songs that bore out your lungs,
And the stylish and cool songs, are Vocaloid songs

The magnificent ballads, and the embarrasing love songs,
And the sick trauma songs, are Vocaloid songs
The songs that don't hurt anyone, and the songs that hurt someone,
And the songs that saved someone, are Vocaloid songs

The songs that carved themselves into the present, and the songs that look back on the past,
And the songs that looked out onto the future, are Vocaloid songs
The songs designed to be big hits, and the songs that were a way to get noticed,
And the songs that coexist with people, are Vocaloid songs

The songs that humans can sing, and the songs that are physically unsingable,
The masterpieces everyone knows, and the masterpieces no one knows,
Are Vocaloid songs

Cold, yet warm, Vocaloid songs
Hard to catch the words but even so, beloved, Vocaloid songs

Where will all of these songs go from now on?
What I hear coming
are two timbres mixing together
A bored melody of resignation,
and a continuing sound of pure curiosity.

Now let's go to the deep depths below the iceberg. Miku, and any vocal synth character, is really made of love. Behind the cute anime characters and wonderful songs are real thousands of people who compose music, illustrate artworks, animate music videos, craft cosplays, translate lyrics, use whatever their skills are to be creative basically. All of it is independent music, and though lots of artists got signed with record labels in the 2010s, the scene sprang from hobbyists, and is still mostly that way today. But anyway, a vocal synthesizer isn't just some cute character, these characters become catalysts (just like musical instruments do) for the users who input their lyrics and melodies and craft into them. A vocal synth becomes more than a lifeless voice and an illustration; it is now a very specific voice that came from the user. That voice and character is now carrying the thoughts and feelings of its users with it.

These characters like Miku typically have very little official characterization. This lets artists freely interpret their vessels however they wish, creating bajillions of Miku variations, for example, that are simultaneously all her. Characters like Miku unites thousands of artists, from all over the globe who all make completely different kinds of music and other forms of art, at all different skill levels, all together. These characters like Miku aren't really fiction anymore... they're not created by just one person, but rather every one who creates a piece of art for them contributes to the character itself. So a character like Miku... she is made of everyone that has ever loved the art that she's made of! She is made of love and creativity... And in a sense... it kind of brings her out of the fictional world, because her being is a collective of real people.

Hope I explained that well...

To illustrate the enthusiasm of what vocaloid fans like me are like (if you know me in real life, you KNOW this is how i act at every opportunity i can), here's a cute excerpt from an interview with Shiba Tomonori, the author of Why Did Hatsune Miku Change the World? and Hachiouji-P, a renowned Vocaloid artist, translated by vgperson:

Tomonori: "Come to think of it, last year, I had a chance to give a high school lecture as an alumni at my alma mater, and I put 'Tell me your favorite artists' on a survey I gave at the end of class. And while most named people like Official Hige Dandism and Back Number from J-pop and rock, there were a few kids who very passionately listed Vocaloid producers. Maybe not everyone in the class would like them, but the fact those few were so passionate about it made me very glad about youth culture."

Hachiouji-P:"That couple percent of kids were true Vocaloid lovers."

Tomonori: "They really wrote a lot of them, like DUSTCELL and Tota Kasamura and Harumaki Gohan. I even had some new discoveries, where I went and searched them and listened to them, and was like 'Hey, this is good!' I felt deep in my heart how no matter what generation it is, teenagers have all the answers."

And here's a passage from Hatsune Miku - The False Idol and Her Fandom as a Body Without Organs (which you can read here, though I only really care about this passage): (italics for emphasis added by me)

"Miku's fan culture in particular raises questions of whether fandoms such as this can even be considered 'fans' in the traditional sense, as in reality, they are not focused around a media text, they have developed so far outside of this that they are more accurately considered fans of each other and themselves."

Important Notes

I want to explain the way this will work because it might be a little confusing for you if I don't: The format of the MAIN part of this (beginning at "2007: The First Sound of the Future") is basically a list of all of the notable/impactful vsynth songs. Every time a new character is featured in a song, at that chronological point in the list I interrupt the list to introduce them and provide necessary context right before the song's place on the list, and the list returns to listing and I just add songs with the character to the list from that point on. That is how this experience will go.

The songs I have linked to in this thing are chosen by me, solely based on which ones I consider to be especially notable/impactful

Some things I factored in (not important unless you're curious):

  1. Because duh obviously, it's iconiiiic~~~
  2. In the Vocaloid community, there are three "halls of fame" that notable Vocaloid songs can be placed in based on the amount of views the song's video has accumulated on NicoNicoDouga (I'll explain what that is later in Context). Songs with 100K+ views are in the "Vocaloid Hall of Fame", songs with 1M+ are in the "Vocaloid Hall of Legends", and songs with 10M+ are in the "Vocaloid Hall of Myths". Video views on NND used to be a way bigger deal than they are now. If a pre-2015 song is the Hall of Legends or Myths, that factors into notability.
  3. The song is in Project Diva. I did NOT include all Project Diva songs though, because NOT ALL OF THEM are that important. Or, other games like Typenist, Maimai, Chunithm, or similar.
  4. The song has an extraordinary amount of YouTube views/Spotify listens. Usually that's around 10M+.
  5. i keep seeing it on a bunch of peoples' own lists of classic vocaloid songs
  6. If it's over 12 or so years old and has 1M+ views on youtube
  7. If it has its own article on the Vocaloid Wiki

I want you to know that (despite how factor #1 could make it seem) I did NOT just list every song I like. That would be thousands of songs. I put a lot of songs on here that I dislike, or don't care for. I removed many songs after rethinking if they should be on here. I will not be letting you know which ones I like and don't like because that's my subjective opinion and it's not relevant*, but I will be labeling songs that may have unpleasant contents, and I will specify what those contents are for you every time. You can choose to listen or not to listen to whatever songs you want. I'm not forcing you to do anything... Some songs on here are really atrocious. I'm not hiding anything or giving you a cherrypicked version! You can and should quit listening or watching any song that you're not enjoying.

*Okay teehee just for you

For all songs, I provide links to either the Vocaloid Wiki, the Vocaloid Database (better known as "VocaDB"), or the VocaloidLyrics Wiki. Please know my reasoning for doing this for you:

  1. Vocaloid Wiki: Decent background info on a couple songs
  2. VocaDB: Has accurate links and information, and if you make an account for VocaDB you, yes you, can keep track of the songs you like via the Like, Favorite, or Lists features. The VocaDB page that I link to should match up most of the time with the corresponding video in the YouTube playlist that I linked at the top of this Introduction because the VocaDB page I choose is the version of the song that's the most well-known.
  3. VocaloidLyrics Wiki: Has accurate, peer-reviewed lyrics translations, and like VocaDB has excellent and accurate information about songs.

If it's linked for a song, I want you to read it.

As for song titles, I almost always provide both the romanized Japanese and English versions because in most cases both are known and referred to by English speaking fans. In the case of the romanized Japanese being absent, the title is originally in English OR it's just that nobody calls it by its Japanese title, which mostly happens when the song is only popular on the English side.

If you're viewing a video on NicoNicoDouga, here's some things you need to know: first, overseas (non-Japanese) users cannot use the site anymore unless you have a VPN or something. Once you figure out a way to access the damn site, be sure to change your site language to Japanese. This way, you can actually see the comments on the videos, and sometimes they're very interesting and fun even if you don't know Japanese, you can still see people making pictures and whatnot. You can change your language by, only on a channel/profile's page for some reason, scrolling down to the bottom and then the language change drop-down menu will be there.

If you like a song, keep an eye out for the name of the producer again on the list. A ton of producers are recurring! It might be fun to see them come up again and again, and to cheer them on throughout Vocalo-history through this.

My final message: The songs that I'll list are NOT the entirety of Vocaloid. Remember how those lyrics I shared mentioned "the masterpieces no one knows"? I am just presenting the most notable impacts... the "masterpieces everyone knows". It's going to give you an impression of the values of the time, which characters were popular, what styles of music were popular, what people thought was cool... If this guide is your introduction to Vocaloid, then you will be introduced, not fully immersed. You should look for Vocaloid songs on your own sometime! If you really don't know where to start? Try reading Eletenshi's really good blog post or exploring my YouTube playlist of random accurately subbed songs. The way I started with exploring songs when I was first getting into Vocaloid was just clicking on songs that the YouTube algorithm would give me, so that works too! It gave me all sorts of songs, not just popular ones.

Nonessential History of Vocal Synthesis before Vocaloid

Feel free to skip this nugget, it's just a chance for me to share some fun knowledge!

The very first vocal synthesizer (if you don't count the vox humana) was called the Voder (Voice Operating DEmonstratoR), invented by Bell Labs engineer Homer Dudley in 1937. The user would "play" it by using the fifteen piano-like keys and the pedal. Here is a demonstration of the Voder.

Homer Dudley (October 1940). "The Carrier Nature of Speech". Bell System Technical Journal, XIX(4);495-515. -- Fig.8 Schematic circuit of the voder

The first computer to actually sing was the IBM 704*, actually a speech synthesizer. It was assisted by the Vocoder, another Homer Dudley invention that was built for voice encoding, emulating, and encryption. The IBM 704 synthesized the words of the song and then the Vocoder put it into music notes. Together, they sang "Daisy Bell" by Harry Dacre in 1961.

*Some sources, like Wikipedia, say it's the IBM 7094, not 704, but I'm pretty confident that it was the IBM 704, as the sources I've read that attest to the singer being 704 tend to be more specific in how the vocal synthesis process actually occurred, so I trust them more. But I'm not a professional, so of course take my word with a grain of salt when it comes to IBMs.

IBM 704 central processor and front panel

A photo of IBM 704... isn't she cute? o((^w^))o

Important Context

General Context

Doujin culture. Read about it here or here if you are unfamiliar. (Note that the word "doujin" has an implication of pornographic content for most people, but while that is a deserved reputation, that is not always the case.)

But if you want to talk about generally, the Vocaloid phenomenon was able to be born in Japan thanks to the nation's unique collectivist culture, which doujin culture stemmed from, and then Vocaloid stemmed from that.

Vocaloid Itself

Vocaloid is a vocal synthesis software created by Yamaha, the very same company that made all those pianos and motorcycles. The characters that represent the voicebanks in anime girl form are licensed to third party companies; for example, Miku's is Crypton Future Media, Inc.

Miku was not the first Vocaloid–she was actually the seventh. Yamaha had previously created the voices "LEON", "LOLA", and "MIRIAM", before creating "MEIKO" and "KAITO", both of whom had mascot characters, Meiko and Kaito. These cool characters made the products sell astronomically better. However, Kaito was initially deemed a failure by the company for underselling their expected goal, and the reason is most likely because he is a male/masculine voice and the main market for singing voices is with female/feminine singers.

Meiko and Kaito also had one more difference than the first three; their target singing language was Japanese. Yamaha started making the switch from English to Japanese because Japanese has much fewer phonemes than English. And, in Japan, the land of mascots like Domo and Pikachu, they suspected that if they gave their products mascots, they would sell better...

(Hey! Here's a fun Vocaloid game...)

Producers and P Names

(Source 1, source 2, source 3)

When Vocaloid first kicked off on the Japanese video-sharing website NicoNicoVideo (also frequently called NicoNicoDōga even in English, or just NND, because people don't care for the official name in English) in 2007, there was a lot of overlap with the Idolmaster fandom at the time. Idolmaster is the most iconic*, maybe the original idk im not educated in this subject, idol-raising sim. In idol-raising sims, the player is called "(Player Name)-P" by the characters, for example "Steve-P". The "P" stands for "Producer", because in these games the player's role is the producer for these idols. So, Vocaloid fans started calling Vocaloid song creators "(Name)-P" as a fun nickname, likening them to being the "producer" of the Vocaloid character they were working with, which also strengthened the feeling of the camaraderie in the Vocaloid community.

*I cannot overstate this. I have even heard the trio of Idolmaster, Touhou Project, and Vocaloid be called "the big three" of NND a few times.

A producer (now the term everyone uses for a Vocaloid song creator (also "Vocalo-P" from the Japanese name for it but that's less common))'s P name was not chosen by them, but by fans. This tradition has since fallen out of practice, but it's still pretty common to attach a "-P" to the end of your username if you're debuting as a Vocaloid producer anyway.

Character Items

Read a brief overview here. But this does not even list all of the important character items (for some reason they don't mention Rin and Len's oranges and bananas??? This wiki...), so I will mention each important character item when I introduce a character.

MMD

MMD, short for MikuMikuDance, is a free 3D animation software developed by a Vocaloid fan named Yu Higuchi in 2008 so he could make Miku dance, but the program enjoys popular usage worldwide, even to this day, for tons of things other than Vocaloid, and is easily recognizable by the style of its 3D humanoid models. Chances are you've watched a MMD video before or at least seen one on your YouTube recommended and, if you're not a nerd, thought it was weird and cringey.

What's important to know about MMD is that it's an extremely common practice to share and download assets and data to make the animations online. So an MMD animation might use lighting data made by one person, a model made by another, a stage (virtual background world) made by someone else, and the motion data made by the person who actually uploaded the video, though motion data is commonly distributed too. And, of course, the song that the model is dancing to is a song that the uploader is a fan of. And, don't forget, MMD is a free software in the first place so any amateur can download and learn how to use it. MMD videos are a perfect example of early Vocaloid creation culture like you saw in the diagram in action, and these videos helped boost the popularity of the scene.

"-ttatemita" Culture

An “utaite” is a singer who covers Vocaloid songs with their own voice and posts that cover as a video to NND under the "utattemita" (Transl: "I tried to sing... (X song)") tag. Now utaites are mostly on YouTube and sometimes they cover human-sung originals. The most popular utaites include: Mafumafu, known for his naturally high voice and his incredible range, Miyashita Yuu, known basically for being mysterious and androgynous, 96neko (pronounced "Kuroneko"), Sou, Ado, whom you may have heard of her, especially from "Usseewa"; she is not-so-secretly a HUGE vocaloid nerd, Chogakusei, whom im pretty sure is only popular for his sexiness appeal, among others.

There are also singers who speak languages other than Japanese who try to make covers that change the lyrics into their own language. The most popular English ones are Jubyphonic, splendliferachie aka Rachie, Will Stetson, and Trickle, among others.

Not called utaites, there are also many artists who cover vocaloid (or human-sung) songs but with vocal synths other than the song's original. In my opinion, the best of these is 2cada, but there are a bajillion of this type of cover artist. The most popular one is definitely kyaami, also known as cillia.

But what im calling “-ttemita” culture doesnt stop there. Theres also “odottemita”s: “I tried to dance (X song)”, where the video uploader has choreographed an entire dance routine to the song and performs it in (usually) one take. Odottemita videos are the second most popular after utattemitas, but theres all kinds of “i tried to (verb) (x song)” videos. I have seen a lot of “MV o tsukuttemita”: “i tried to make a music video” for a song. This collaborative culture of remixing and remaking things, kind of like how i was talking about with mmd, is essential to vocaloid. No hate and only love… (mostly haha)

Media with Vocal Synths You've Probably Seen Even If You're Not a Vocaloid Fan

Please click on these even if you're confident you haven't heard of them, I'm basically 100% sure you will be surprised by at least the first one!

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