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Ujiie here!
Pocket Miku!
Gakken NSX-39.
It's out.
You saw what I was doing just now?
Here.
I used this stylus,
it's kind of like a pen,
and this part here
is a keyboard! Spot on!
I played 'Hotaru no Hikari' just now.
Perfect. And slides too.
The top part here is a ribbon controller.
This is really built well!
These buttons here do a variety of things,
these ones here are A, E, U, I, O.
Press the A button...
Or press I...
Or U...
E...
O...
So she can sing the five vowel sounds.
Back to A. And this button is for vibrato.
That's good.
Can you hear how there's a nice bit of reverb on this?
The chip that's being used inside the NSX-39
is the chip called the NSX-1,
the ultra high-performance Vocaloid LSI.
It's in there.
And they've got reverb in there too.
Digital reverb is in there.
And they've tinkered with the EQ to work well with Miku's voice.
Right? Great!
Also, while holding down the vibrato button,
you've got volume up and down buttons here,
so if you press the up button while holding vibrato down...
Or the down button...
It acts like a pitch bender.
This is a good idea! Surprising!
Something else,
ready for this?
If you hold down the shift button, it does neat things too,
so while holding shift down,
and then press the A button,
She starts talking.
Actually,
If you have a look inside this, the user's Manual,
lots of detailed info in here,
open it up and what do you see?
"Singing Synthesis Chronicle"
You've got the history of talking computers and formant synthesis.
Just reading this is neat. Look, formant synthesis.
The history leading up to the creation of Hatsune Miku.
And here it shows how to use this unit.
And here it lists the preset lyrics.
Preset lyrics!
If you press Shift + A, she says 'Konnichiwa' and 'Arigato' (Hello' & 'Thank you')
Shift + A. Here we go.
The long 'o' sound is in there.
Shift + I gives you
the complete lyrics to 'Cho-cho' (Butterfly, a popular childrens song)
Let's try it.
Shift + 2. No wait, Shift + I.
Here we go. Let's play 'Cho-cho'
Isn't that great?!
Shift + U and you get
'Sakura, sakura' Ah, just the right season now!
(Sakura means Cherry Blossoms)
Add some vibrato.
Use the slide too.
They did a good job!
Shift + E: 'Hotaru no Hikari' (Japanese rework of Auld Lang Syne)
Great.
And Shift + O is really neat.
'Iroha'... (Google please, can't explain here...)
Wow. This is something else!
Actually,
It will speak the words in order.
But the truth of the matter is,
uh what am I trying to say,
Gakken has provided an editor on their homepage!
So if you go there and make use of that,
you can load your own lyrics into the unit!
So you can make it say what you want.
How's that? WOW! Very cool.
And you can use the USB port
as a power source too.
Get your power there. Actually, right now,
I've got it hooked up via USB to this computer here.
Hooked up to this guy.
Let's have a look.
Ok, what can you do if you hook it up to a computer?
Ok, MIDI.
So here in this MIDI slot,
one look and you'll get it, it says NSX-39 here.
It's automatically recognized by the system. I'm using a Mac.
Lo and behold!
Where's the sound coming from?
Change the octave...
The sound's coming from THIS!
You can play it via keyboard!
Of course, pitch bend...
..and vibrato, via the mod wheel.
And you can make her talk as we did just before.
This is FUN!
In my case, I've got Cubase here,
so you can take this as it is,
and uh, let's input some notes.
Let's just go with 'Butterfly.'
Here we go.
With a backing track. Let's record.
Oops! Changed the melody!
OK! Playback!
This is great!
It works perfectly as a MIDI sound generator!
This. Is. FUN!
And it's just connected via USB, that's it!
A mini-USB port. It's got a line out too.
You can record the audio from the line out.
It's got a speaker too!
I'm really surprised with it!
As you can see, you can do quite a lot of things with it!
The Pocket Miku. But you really should read the instructions!
So you can really get the most out of it.
Now, the chip that's inside this, the uh NSX
NSX-39 (39 can be read as 'Miku' in Japanese)
the designation is Gakken's by the way,
but the chip inside is the Vocaloid NSX-1,
high-performance LSI chip.
It's a great chip, so why not take a closer look at it?
Ok, the NSX-1 chip that is inside the unit,
is the Vocaloid sound generator chip.
Of course you can use it just as a Vocaloid, for singing.
BUT!! It's got a GM sound generator inside too!
WOW!
Ok? I'll play it for you. The sound's from the unit.
It's got the typical GM drum set in there.
You know, this... I mean, WOW!
You can play stuff like this, no problem...
Not bad, right?
Fantastic! The sound is GOOD!
Ok so how about bass and...
electric piano and...
acoustic guitar.
And drums.
Let's use these and record something.
Let's start out with the drum track.
Bass next.
Electric piano next.
Guitar next.
No problem!
Now let's get Hatsune Miku singing.
This one.
Let's go with 'Sakura'
Hold on a sec. Let's raise the octave.
Ok. 'Sakura' it is.
Here we go.
Ok, an "altered melody" Sakura.
Something different.
You can jazz it up. Neat!
And it's all coming from in here! No software synths!
It's all coming from the NSX-39!
Fantastic!
I gotta throw in the towel!
Gakken really did a number with this one!
OK. The Gakken NSX-39.
It's great!
It's got a GM tone module inside.
Reverb too.
As a sound module, it's quite complete!
Excellent!
You guys need to get one of these and get your DAW going,
and get busy with the Hatsune Miku sound! Really!
The Gakken NSX-39!!!
Translation & Captions by:
SWCreativeJapan.