歌ってみた, or utattemita, was something I discovered last year. It roughly translates to "to try singing", and it's the category on ニコニコ動画(nico nico douga) where people record themselves singing popular songs. So it's like karaoke, basically. Supposedly in the old days, most people on utattemita did anime song covers, but nowadays it's mostly Vocaloid songs.
I'm actually not a fan of Vocaloid at all. Well, I really like Megurine Luka, but I can't stand hearing any of the vocaloids sing because well... they're computer programs. No matter how good the songs are, it sounds terrible to me whenever that robotic voice is singing. However, Vocaloid is remarkable because it allows people with a lot of talent to create songs and share their works with other people when they normally wouldn't have been able to, either because of the composer's own inability to sing or the difficulty in finding a person willing to sing. Similarly utattemita is great because it allows amateur singers a chance to shine with some really professional sounding works(it's not hard at all to record yourself singing and then layer it over an off-vocal track).
So I first discovered utattemita last year when I watched a really good Toradora Ami MAD, which can be viewed here. The song used in this video is "World Is Mine" sung by Usa. I was really interested as to who sung the song, so I did some research and the rest, as they say, is history.
Some of my favorite female singers in utattemita are:
ちょうちょ (Choucho)
Easily my favorite nico singer, she has a really pretty voice, amazing range, and she's quite cute to boot. Her most famous cover is Miku Hatsune's Last Night, Good Night, but I think the best cover that she's done is Hatsukoi.
うさ (Usa)
Another fairly famous singer, her range isn't on the same level as Choucho's, but she's a great singer and has some really good material. Her singing voice(which is somewhat high and cutesy) is actually really different from her normal voice(which is really deep), but there are some songs where she sings in that deep voice. She does doujin music work under the name Hana, and also has a band with Yamai, Tolie, and other singers called Usa Colony. Her most famous covers are of World Is Mine and Dear.
ヤマイ (Yamai)
Yamai is another very famous singer. She has a nice deep voice, but her range is pretty good and the image I get from hearing her voice is that of the beautiful older sister. She's done a lot of Meiko covers in the past, which might be the reason why some people call her the real-life version of Meiko. She and Usa do radio shows together pretty often, and they act pretty yuri together. Whether it's real or if it's just teasing the fans will never be known, but it's definitely delicious~ Yamai's blog is also really cool because she puts up lots of WIP pieces of her songs, so you can hear how much they change in the final product.
ガゼル (Gazelle)
Gazelle is a legendary nico singer that unfortunately doesn't upload any more covers because of some drama. She has a clear, beautiful voice, and has covered some great material. Her most famous cover is Melt, both the original and the 3M mix. Even though she's quit nico, she still does work as a doujin artist under the name Yanagi Nagi. But most notably, she's actually somewhat broken into the mainstream, being the vocalist for the group supercell. Bakemonogatari's legendary ending theme is sung by her.
ヲタみん (Wotamin)
Not much to say... she's a great singer, has covered A LOT of material and releases new covers pretty frequently. She seems to like singing Luka material. Her most famous song is actually a duet with clear on the song ggrks.
As for male singers
I don't actually listen to male singers, for whatever reason... it might be because I don't like any of the songs that were composed for the male vocaloids, and it feels weird to hear a male sing a song that was composed for a female vocaloid. So basically, all of the male singers I like are ones that do parodies or come up with original songs.
ヒャダイン (Hyadain)
Linked his user profile because there's no mylist that contains all of his songs. Hyadain is hilarious and mostly creates songs based on existing videogame pieces. Most of his works have become wildly popular everywhere, evidenced by the sheer amount of Youtube vids of his works with foreign language subs in them. He's a very good singer, and is also really good at singing as a female as well. His most famous song is his original composition about Street Fighter II, which incorporates various sound effects from the game and has him singing as every character in the game.
recog
recog is another great singer that mainly does parody songs. My favorite recog piece is Nico Nico Kansoku, a song about the life of a nico addict, parodying Bump of Chicken's Tentai Kansoku.
=O You seem really informed about this! Can I ask you a question? If the singers are mostly on the internet, why do they do concerts and release CDs? Wouldn't that make them professional singers then?
ReplyDeleteBeing a professional singer generally implies that someone has 1)signed up with a major record label and/or 2)making a career out of it. Some of the really famous nico singers are actually professionals now, like Gazelle who I mentioned in this post and halyosy.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you don't need to be signed up with a major record label to make CDs. A lot of the famous nico singers, like Usa and nayuta, make doujin music and are with independent record labels. Many of these albums are not available in stores and pretty much have to be obtained either online or at fan conventions like Comiket and M3.
Similarly, anyone can do a concert too. There are also concerts that are specific to nico singers too, and they usually get streamed live, which is pretty cool.