Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application software developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by just typing in lyrics and melody. Yamaha announced its development in 2003 and in January 2004 the first application software product was launched. It was not released as a Yamaha product, but a software package of Vocaloid Singer Libraries was developed by third party licensees which included Yamaha's Vocaloid software. Leon, Lola, and Miriam have been released from Zero-G Limited, UK, while Meiko and Kaito have been released from Crypton Future Media, Japan.
In January 2007, Yamaha announced a new version of the software engine, Vocaloid2, with various major improvements in usability and synthesis quality. Zero-G and others have announced plans to release products powered by the new software engine in 2007. PowerFX have released the first English package that is powered by Vocaloid2 named Sweet Ann. Crypton has followed and announced a series of character Vocaloid2 packages to be released, the first being Hatsune Miku. The second package Kagamine Rin/Len is slated to be released on December 27, 2007, while a third will be sometime in 2008.
Hatsune Miku is the first installment in the Vocaloid Character Voice Series released on August 31, 2007. The name of the title and the character of the software was chosen by combining Hatsu, Ne, and Miku. The data for the voice was created by actually sampling the voice of Saki Fujita, a Japanese voice actress. Unlike general purpose speech synthesizers, the software is tuned to create J-pop songs commonly heard in anime, but it is possible to create songs from other genres.
A Hatsune Miku manga called Maker Hikoshiki Hatsune Mix will begin serialization in the Japanese manga magazine Comic Rush on November 26, 2007, published by Jive. The manga will be drawn by Kei, the original character designer for Hatsune Miku.
