Bokaro P ni Naritai, vol. 1

Hmm. You’d think that a company that sells books and stuff would WANT people to cross link to images in their bookstores, but no…

(Image used for review purposes only.)

Bokaro P ni naritai is a new installment series out from Shopro, the same conglomerate that operates the Weekly Shonen Sunday manga magazine. The title translates to “I want to become a Vocaloid P”, where “P” presumably stands for “Producer”. If you’re not familiar with the Vocaloid series (and if you’ve been reading my blog, you should at least know about Miku Hatsune), it’s a collection of “singing synthesizer” packages. You type out the lyrics, and instead of just having some instruments plus a singer on a separate voice track, Vocaloid sings the lyrics as well. There are several voice styles on the market now, both male and female, with Miku being the most popular in Japan.

The installment magazine from Shopro introduces a new Vocaloid character – Rana. Over the course of the 30 magazines, which are scheduled to come out every other week, you get to learn how to use the Vocaloid engine, Singer-Songwriter for Rana, and Miku-Miku Dance (a 3-D modelling program that lets you create your own dance videos using the Rana model). The first 10 issues bring you up to speed as a beginner on all three packages. The next 10 walk you through the writing process for different music genres (rock, j-pop, jazz, etc.), and then the last 10 focus on the finer points of the applications.

The first issue is 800 yen ($8 USD), while the rest are all 1,500 yen. So, the full series is going to be close to $450 USD, spread out over a little more than 1 year. You may be tempted to skip issues and only buy the ones you need. However, the idea is to clip the proof of purchase markers from the magazine covers and glue them onto the included postcard. If you collect all 30 issues and send in the postcard, you’ll receive serial numbers for upgrading to the fully-functional versions of the Vocaloid software (rather than the crippled “lite” versions that come with the magazine). The first 3 volumes have DVD-ROMs, and after that it’s just going to be the magazine by itself.

Vol. 1 comes with the DVD-ROM with the installers of all three packages (Vocaloid, Singer-Song Writer and MMD), with movie files showing how to do the installs and then dabble with the included demo data files. The movie for MMD is particularly necessary, since there’s no install wizard for it – you have to do some weird tweaking in Visual Studio by hand, instead. I haven’t tried that yet – it took over an hour just to get the other two done.

The magazine is part advertising for the installment series, and part Vocaloid history lesson. The only really necessary sections are those describing how to get the upgrade serial numbers, and the page on how to get the limited-edition (not free) calendar (end of October deadline). You can personalize Rana in MMD with a unique serial number that appears on her cheek, by clicking on the “Get Rana SN” button from the DVD-ROM menu screen.

It is possible to get a head start on each of the software packages – once you activate them with the included serial numbers, they’re ready to go, and the DVD-ROM also has sample music files you can play with. On the other hand, the volume 2 magazine is a step-by-step guide on how to run and use Singer SongWriter Lite, and that’s actually being released on Sept. 23. It should be reaching Kyushu by the 25th, and I’ll start seriously playing with Vocaloid at that point. Interestingly, the Vocaloid installer lets you pick Japanese or English, so there’s no language barrier there on that count.

If you live in Japan (to avoid the 2x’s import mark-up) and want to learn how to make music using the vocaloid system, and ultimately uploading your own dance videos to youtube (or the Japanese version, Nico-Nico Douga), it may be a good idea to get I Want to Become a Vocaloid Producer. It’s going to be expensive for what you get, since the commercial versions of the software might be closer to $300 for the total package, but the magazines act as a classroom study, and it’d cost more if you went to a school that teaches Vocaloid. Me? Personally I’m waiting for the volume on how to write house, techno and trance.

Posted by The Chief on September 25, 2014

https://threestepsoverjapan.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/bokaro-p-ni-naritai-vol-1/