#utaulog

Name

Their name is Hanabi Shiro, by the way.

Hanabi Shiro is written as 花火シロ in Japanese. Hanabi is the surname, and Shiro is their given name. The word 花火 (hanabi) means firework. It's made up of the kanji 花 (hana), flower and 火 (hi), fire (P.S. hi is pronounced as bi due to rendaku). I chose this surname because I like the word and its meaning. My online name is Fire, so I wanted to include a word that has the kanji for fire in it.

While I didn't initially realize this, flower is my favorite Vocaloid, and hana means flower, so... LOL.

シロ (shiro) is written in katakana. This is similar to how Hatsune Miku, Megurine Luka, Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len, Kasane Teto, Sukone Tei, Yokune Ruko, etc. are written — a two kanji surname, and a two mora given name in katakana. You may know Hatsune Miku means "first sound of the future." The ne in her name (and Megurine Luka's, etc.) means sound. I chose not to occupy the second kanji slot with ne because I'm a narcissist and I need to insert myself everywhere. Oops.

In Japanese, shi means four and roku means six. I like to think their model number's 46.

If you're familiar with Japanese culture at all, you'll know that 4 is an unlucky number in Japan since it sounds exactly like the word for death, 死. This is why I chose shi; it's a reference to their personality. I chose ro for the goroawase, so their name could be shiro (reasoning explained above).

Shiro (白 in kanji) means white. This is a reference to their mainly monochromatic design. The word shirokuro (白黒) means monochrome!

Maybe you're now wondering, then, if Hanabi Shiro is so good, then where's Hanabi Kuro!?

…I am thinking of making another UTAU named Hanabi Kuro. But that's far off into the future. I only have a vague design and vague personality, but I imagine him (he's a guy) to be perhaps even stranger than Shiro. He's mysterious, and isn't even related to Shiro at all. In fact, Hanabi Kuro is nowhere close to his real name. Maybe next time I get sick, I'll record him.

I call them Hana-chan or Shiro-chan in my head and with my friends.

Design

I've went through a couple of designs.

First, let me outline their design philosophy. I wanted their design to:

be easy (for me) to draw

be relatively monochromatic

kind of look like me!

The second requirement is there so I can sketch their design with a pencil accurately. I love doing pencil doodles when I'm bored. That's why the first iterations of their design were completely monochromatic.

This was drawn on April 30, 2026, my birthday! These are very early sketches, but a lot of the design still stayed — namely the heart ahoge (or as I've written, heart antenna).

I don't remember how I came up with the heart ahoge. I probably just thought it was cute. And it is. My interpretation is that it's an exposed nerve (wire?) ending or an antenna that transmits subliminal messages to people.

This was drawn on May 14, 2026. They're supposed to be wearing a nightgown-esque thing. I'm in my pajamas like 99% of the time, so I wanted them to be in their jammies too. They are also wearing flip-flops because I like wearing flip-flops.

Their original design has a mole on their left cheek, because I have a mole on my left cheek. Unfortunately I'm prone to forgetting to draw stuff like that, so I removed it.

May 22, 2026. This was supposed to be for my website! You can kind of make out their hands holding headphones… cute.

May 31, 2026. I thought of changing their iris shape for a little, but I decided I didn't like how it looked. So that's why it looks weird here. By the way, they're eating paper with a bunch of words on it to absorb the information.

As much as I enjoyed their monochrome design, I thought it'd look odd if they were next to other UTAU or just other characters in general, so I decided to add a little pop of color. I gave them red glasses, red eyes, a red jacket, and red flip-flops.

I'm sure you're familiar with my art, and if you're not… I don't know what to tell you. Anyway, you'll notice I have a very limited color palette — often red, white, and black, which are the same colors Shiro has in their design. (And gray for their shirt.) It's a reference!

Also, red = fire. Right?

I absolutely love megane characters, so I knew Shiro also had to be a megane. Even though they don't wear their glasses properly.

One of the first ideas I had for Shiro was for them to have completely white skin. It's also a reference to how I draw, since I tend to color everything in except the skin color (for characters with lighter skin tones). I do this because there isn't much of a difference between #FFFFFF and whatever the hell Eito Aotsuki's skin tone is. Seriously, he's as white as paper, dude.

When going outside, people probably just think they're really pale or painting their face.

It is also kind of like Homestuck. They do that in Homestuck, yeah.

June 12, 2026. This is a messier version of their reference on Art Fight. I liked this sketch so much I just decided to fix it up a little and use it for their reference. Additionally, their pen is on the wrong side of their ear. I realized it would probably be a pain in the ass to reach over to your left ear with your right hand, so I switched it. I also changed the hair direction.

I don't wear socks and sandals but I thought it would be funny if they did. I often wear socks or sandals but never both.

The current design reference I have on Art Fight! From July 3, 2026. How cute.

If you're wondering what's under their clothes — nothing. No nipples, no genitals, nothing. Asexual Drake vibes.

If drawn more realistically, I imagine they'd look Southeast Asian/Filipino, because I'm (half-)Filipino.

Personality

Their personality is based slightly off of mine, just like their design.

I don't remember a lot about how I developed their personality, because it's just a bunch of ideas I came up with over time smashed together. Initially, I wanted them to be a yandere UTAU who kills people but I didn't want to reheat Sukone Tei's nachos so I went with something different. Well, they can still be a yandere. To me, while it doesn't fit with their current character bio, they are a yandere.

One of the first things I came up with was them writing stuff down on their bandages and eating the bandages. It's funny. I still think it's funny, by the way. Or maybe it's just stupid and cringe, I don't know. If you don't like it, feel free to completely ignore it because that's the beauty of UTAU and Vocaloid.

And before I came up with that, I had the idea that they got fed so much knowledge they went insane. I still like that idea. They went insane and started killing people — that's a holdover from them being a yandere. Canonically their kill count is only one but I like to think it's way more than that.

Despite being very intelligent, they're nerfed from not being very sociable. Like me, except my intelligence is only average, high average if you're being generous. While it's impossible for robots to have neurodevelopmental disorders since they do not have neurons, they have a lot of autistic and ADHD traits. Because I have autism and ADHD. See, I don't know how to write characters without them being Myself Lite. That's why I could never be a fiction author. Nonfiction, maybe.

Factoids

Here are quick facts about them lifted straight from their Art Fight profile:

Birthday: March 14th Height: usually around 5'3 in (160cm). Age: 19 Gender: None Handedness: Ambidextrous, but prefers right hand Likes: learning new things, scented pens, random number tables Dislikes: people

Their birthday was initally May 1st, which is the day after mine. I changed it to March 14th, pi day, because of the number pi. I might change it back though IDK how much I like that one.

They're actually a little bit taller than me; I'm 5'2 or so. Yes, their height does include their ahoge.

I'm 19. So they're 19 too. But they were built around six months ago.

I'm nonbinary so they're nonbinary too.

I'm right-handed so they… oh, well, they're a highly intelligent robot, so I thought it would make sense for them to be ambidextrous. But they prefer their right hand because I am right-handed. I also know that handedness is an unnatural factoid to include for UTAU — it's mostly just birthday, height, weight, age, gender, likes, dislikes. I chose not to define their weight here but added handedness for Fun.

They like scented pens because when they eat scented ink, it almost tastes like the real thing. They like random number tables because they're unpredictable, and they're a fan of strings of information in general due to their totally possible autism. (But I only wanted to list up to 3 things for "likes," so it leaves more room for interpretation of their character.)

Umm that's it

So. I've said this like 50 times already. But. I truly do think I am almost done with the Japanese VCV. Besides re-recording and re-otoing a few more lines, that is.

I had to re-re-re-re-re-re-re...oto everything because I fucked up the first and second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh time. But! It was all worth it. Because it "works" with more resamplers now. Well, the best one is still wn4u but it doesn't produce strange distorted noises on others anymore.

I also want to add a few Extra Phonemes/Special Phonemes/Omake Phonemes.

at the moment, these are the only ones I can think of but I may add more. Or not...

the first one: glottal stop /ʔ/. You may already know what those are, but if you don't it's the dash in uh-oh.

second one: rest phonemes. These go after notes so it sounds more, like, realistic.

third one: "dark L" in English /ɫ/. The "l" sound in "feel." In General American, "l" is usually considered dark. Yes, there is also a "light L." Both light and dark L are allophones of each other in English, meaning we think of them as the same sound even though they are (slightly, but still notably) different sounds.

fourth: the voiceless dental fricative /θ/. This is the "th" sound in "bath" or "thin" or "think."

fifth: the voiced dental fricative /ð/. This is the "th" sound in "this" or "then." Wait a second, we think of the voiced and voiceless dental fricative as the same sound, too, even though they're really different sounds! Indeed... they are allophones of each other.

sixth: breath inhale

seventh: breath exhale

I have yet to record any of these because as of writing it is 4:05 AM* 4:41 PM this post took like 40 minutes to write. But as soon as the time becomes normal, I will be recording these.

Today's Shitty Cover

This song is Replacement of the Hex by IDONO KAWAZU! The UST is also by IDONO KAWAZU. Sorry about the really gross lip noises I haven't re-recorded those lines yet. But I hear it too. And I promise, they will NOT be in the final voicebank! Okay, so don't be mad. (I think you can remove the lip noises in post but re-recording and re-otoing is a lot easier than you think. I've just had to do it a lot.)

I haven't really touched the "r" sounds recently, so that's why they sound the worst. The "Japanese r" /ɾ/ and "English r" /ɹ̠/ are very slightly different. The "Japanese r" is pronounced with your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, while the "English r" is pronounced by hovering your tongue over the roof of your mouth.

You may ask, are those allophones of each other? And, no. /ɾ/ exists in English, but not for the letter r; it's used in words like "ladder" or "better" as the "dd"/"tt" sound respectively. You can also tell because I used "Japanese r" and "English r." If they were allophones of each other, there would be no reason to make this distinction.

Anyway. Since the phoneme exists in English, it's not hard to pronounce per se, it's just hard to think of it as an "r" sound. I have more success pronouncing it on accident than on purpose. I'm probably thinking of it as an English r too hard when I'm trying to record.

I think I did a pretty good job pronouncing it up there, but unfortunately it's not in the correct pitch. So I'm going to suffer for a little bit longer.

The song is sung by Adachi Rei, who is a CV voicebank. The song (and by extension .ust) is likely better for other CV voicebanks, but I really like the song. I wanted to see how they would do, okay. Also, I have a bunch of .ust files on my laptop, and I forget who made them a lot... so it's just easier if the person who made the .ust also made the song...

Oops I went on a linguistics rant in the middle of all that. Haha. Oops. But what can you do? I can't help it; that's just who I am, and there's no point worrying about things you can't fix.

No actually I tricked you the whole reason I made this post was to go on a linguistics rant.

But wait, there's more!?

So.

After I'm done with the Japanese VCV, what will I do?

My next idea was to create an English CVVC. And I most certainly will make an English voicebank and I will release it at the same time as my Japanese one.

But I've never oto'ed a CVVC before. Or any voicebank before this one. It looks to be super complicated. So I decided I would definitively also create a Japanese CVVC as CVVC practice.

Then you may be like what the fuck is the point of making a VCV when CVVC clearly fucking mogs VCV? And sure. It's more realistic and stuff but I think I just really love VCVs. It's simple, and intuitive, and makes sense, and other synonyms.

I also keep thinking about making a CV, even though there's no point since all VCVs are already CVs if you put "- " in front of the hiragana. But It Would Be Fun... the ongentoro youkai...it's consuming me.

Another thing that scares me about doing an English CVVC is that the reclist is a little confusing.

Is this math class? Those are literally numbers..! I was always bad at math in school, you know. I was also bad at English even though it's my strongest subject because I have ADHD that went undiagnosed for 18 years BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO. No point worrying about things you can't fix.

I've been trying to familiarize myself with X-SAMPA, which is how this reclist depicts phonemes. There are reclists that give more intuitive depictions... but I think X-SAMPA is more precise, and I've already chosen this reclist so there's no backing out of it now.

I re-rerecorded a bunch of files because I fucked up the pitch. It's supposed to be around F#3 but it wasn't... it wasn't. But now it (mostly) is. I don't know why I chose F#3. I thought it would be easy since my voice naturally lies around there but I Guess It's Harder Than I Thought. I should've went for F3 or G3 or something but it's too late now.

By the way, my voicebank actually works on other resamplers that aren't worldline! (in fact, wordline is kinda bad now.) Here, I'm using wn4u, but straycat-rs also works pretty well. Moresampler still sounds like shit though. So don't try it. Ahh, even though I would love to make them work on moresampler.

The song is Broadcast by Sasuke Haraguchi and the USTx is by gampyre! (BTW, love this cover, please take a listen.)

Do they sound better or worse than before? I can't tell. I've listened to their voice for so long it all sounds the same to me. Please help.

Some of the notes sound kinda weird, so I'll probably have to record those again. I'd say "unfortunately," but I kind of do like recording again. And otoing again. It feels like I was put on this earth to record and oto.

Making an UTAU takes a long time, but it shouldn't take this long! you may think. The reason it's taking so long for me is because I keep fucking up the recording and otoing since it's my first time... so I have to redo everything over and over again... but hey, we can't all be perfect first try, can we!?

I also started to work on the English CVVC a little more. They can even say their first word, now: fuck.

Sorry it's a YouTube Short. Tumblr won't let me upload more than one video per post. I tried to use filegarden, but it wouldn't let me embed. And then I decided I'd just upload it to YouTube, but due to the aspect ratio and video length it was posted as a YouTube Short.

But they grow up so fast. Wow. I actually used worldline for this example I forgot to change the resampler lol. So it sounds a little strange but that will be fixed later.

I'm super duper excited to record the English CVVC, but I want to finish the Japanese VCV first. Or at least get it 99% of the way there. Then, when I'm done recording/otoing the English CVVC, I'll look over the Japanese VCV with fresh eyes... or something.

My shitty cover for today:

This is "con-c-real" by Yomitan Akane. The USTx is from mothman but I've personally edited some of the lyrics to make it more accurate to the actual lyrics (the lyrics of this song have never been officially revealed unless you have the booklet thing that comes with the album's physical CD. which I have, so it's fine). (BTW: I'm transcribing and translating the official lyrics ATM so stay tuned for that blog post.)

Like I said before, it sounds kind of bad on higher pitches*. I would totally be willing to record and even oto a higher pitch (myself) but I like the simplicity of having a monopitch... additionally, the highest note (in general) I seem to reach is legit like D#4, which isn't that much higher than F#3 TBH (I have no range)... so what would even be the point!? I don't even think I can sustain a pitch that high to record, my voice is already gone from trying to sing even 5 seconds in D#4.

Do you guys know the song ongentoro? I mean, if you know me you probably do unless you've been purposefully ignoring like every single post I make... if you read my post about it, I explain that the ongentoro is a youkai that haunts the vocal synthesizer community and chants the spell "won't you record a voicebank, too?"

The reason I'm bringing that up is because I realized recently I had been infected/possessed by the ongentoro youkai. I'm recording a voicebank. I'm otoing. I'm drawing character art. It fucking got me, dude, hook, line, and sinker.

I'm so glad it did though. I love doing this. I'm surprised I never thought about doing this before until recently, but TBF I never really had the means to until now. (Well, I guess you don't need a microphone since your phone is also a microphone, but it's good to have a separate, dedicated audio recording device.)

And now I'm sad I'm almost done with their Japanese VCV honestly. It's so much fun. I cannot sing IRL, so I'm happy to have my UTAU sing for me. My voice at 19 has been immortalized in a voicebank!

BTW: I tested out more resamplers, but WORLDLINE-R and worldline are the ones that work the best. doppelter64 works okay, but the worldline ones are better. fresamp14, hifisampler, phavoco, TIPS, straycat-rs, w4u, WARP, and moresampler are shit so don't even try.

Today I went to therapy and I talked about how I've been making my UTAU to my therapist. She asked me if I was doing it for some sort of project, and I said no, it's just for fun. It made me think, wow, people spend so much time on their UTAU just to release it for completely free! The UTAU community is great. But all fandomites would be sentenced to death under my dictatorship.

Here are some drawings I did of them during therapy. Aww, aren't they cute!? Tell me they're cute.

Also, current tasks for me to complete IRT to my UTAU

finish the Japanese VCV (alllmost there)

record English CVVC

oto English CVVC

draw better standing image and portrait

figure out my website so I can put them on my website and release them to the world!