Jakuon was the first UTAU I created and she uses pretty much my normal singing voice (or lack thereof, I’m not really much of a singer). Because I don’t need to worry about voice acting or changing my voice in any way, she has ended up with the most voicebanks and is usually the first when experimenting with a new way of recording.
When I first started recording, I had no idea what I was doing or went into making a good voicebank. Pretty sure I started with a pretty crappy headset while sitting in the living room, trying to stay quiet enough not to disturb the people around me. So, her first voicebank ended up pretty soft and quiet (and bad). Her name is a result of this first voice, though over time I got better at recording, got more confident, and actually set up dedicated recording spaces. First being recording in the backseat of the car in the garage late at night while everyone was asleep, and then later once I moved to my own place, setting up a makeshift recording studio in a closet and investing in better equipment.
Her latest bank, Solar, is what I consider her default voicebank now and it’s what I end up using the most. She’s come a long way from the soft and timid voice she started with. Below I’ve done my best to document her voicebanks and development, mostly for my own benefit. I wasn’t exactly good at documenting this stuff and it was over the course of a decade so there is a bit of guessing.
Feel free to check out the banks below, I’ve created new covers recently for most of them to serve as demos.
VOICEBANKS
White Letter
UST by Sango312
Japanese CV – Act 1
Recorded in early 2010
This is Jaku’s very first voicebank! Like most people on their first try, I had not idea what I was doing. Her name was derived from the bank, meaning something akin to “soft cloud sound.” I lost this voicebank years ago and never backed it up online, so it’s gone forever — which is also why I’m not sure exactly when it was recorded, just an estimate based on when I debuted it on Youtube. I did not plan on recording anymore after this, but a couple years later I ended up coming back to it.
Download unavailable.
Torinoko City
UST by utaureni
Japanese CV – Act 2.2
Recorded in January 2012
Jaku’s Act 2 CV is slightly better than her Act 1. Honestly, it’s a low bar. I think this is labeled as 2.2 because I rerecorded some sounds after I originally finished it, or maybe I edited the oto? I’m not sure, past me didn’t document these things. All I know is that I labeled the folder this way. This one I do in fact still have, so it is available for download.
Comet
UST by kyaami
Japanese VCV – Version 1
Recorded in January 2012
Looking at the dates on the .wav files that were recorded, this was evidently created soon after the Act 2.2 voicebank. This was the first VCV bank I recorded, thanks to Jaku being my guinea pig, so it’s not perfect. Because it was recorded around the same time, it has a similar tone to the Act 2.2 CV voicebank, retaining that soft and kind of young sound. The oto was done very incorrectly but there doesn’t seem to be much use in me spending the time to fix it now, so it’s being left as is.
Loneliness≒Egoism
UST by UtauReizo
Japanese CV – Strong Append
Recorded in March 2012
This is the first “append” recorded for Jaku. Since her default at this point was a soft and airy voice, I wanted to give her something a little more powerful. Honestly probably one of my least favorite banks because the use feels limited due to the tone of her voice. It feels less “strong” and more like she’s singing with her mouth full of marshmallows.
Strobe Last
UST by Kenji-B
Japanese CV – soft Append
Recorded in May 2012
Naturally the second append I would record would be a soft one, because I guess her core voice wasn’t soft enough. The consonants in Jaku’s previous banks, such as the “K” and “T” sounds specifically, were rather airy and drawn out which is amplified even more here. It can give her a bit of an awkward cadence.
Palette
UST by HaruVampire
Japanese CV – Act 3
Recorded in July 2012
2012 was a productive recording year, wow. I thought these were spaced more widely apart. Jaku’s Act 3 was her final core CV bank, and the first bank produced with multiple pitches, 3 in total. As a trial run, it doesn’t have separate folders for each pitch or have them well labeled, only indicating higher and lower with arrows in the file names. But hey it’s very usable still, since the prefix map does all the work.
Japanese VCV – Version 2
Recorded in December 2012
This is an overall better voicebank than the first VCV attempt, and even correctly oto’d to boot. The base pitch was originally recorded end of 2012, with two additional pitches later recorded in May 2013. The extra pitches were available as an add-on, but in the download below they are all packaged together so there’s no need to fiddle with things. The G4 pitch was I think my first attempt at doing a more “yelling” type voice which would be improved upon in her later voicebanks.
Egomama
UST by avariajames
English CV VC
Recorded in December 2012/January 2013
This was recorded using CZ’s old CV VC English reclist. I think unlike most other recording methods, I actually attempted making my first English bank with Kei. I can’t begin to explain my reasoning. But I did make one for Jaku too of course, and it’s a bit better than my first go at it but not great. The oto for this one is off and could use a lot of tweaking, but I don’t imagine there’s any demand for me to fix the whole thing. It’s usable enough if you don’t mind having to make lots of little adjustments. Definitely got better results with her English VC CV bank, but at that point I was generally better at UTAU in general, too.
Eat Me
UST by UtauReizo
Japanese CV – Whisper Append
Recorded in January 2013
This was originally named Jaku’s V2 soft append CV bank, but I decided to rename it to her whisper append due to the, well, “whispery” quality of it (and for a rerecording of an original bank, it is actually worse quality). I think I used a different mic than I usually did and there’s a lot of extra background noise in the samples so your mileage may vary with it. It is a bi-pitch voicebank with some additional sounds recorded. It actually sounds a bit closer to her very first bank, so maybe it’s something of a spiritual successor.
Song of the Eared Robot
UST by Unknown
Japanese CV – FM Append
Recorded in June 2013
At some point I had to make a joke bank for Jaku. So there’s really limited use for this one, BUT it could possibly serve if you need some screamo, or that kind of deep-throated metal yelling?
Atomic Eyes
UST by Rokurin
Japanese VCV – Soft Append
Recorded in June 2013
This, obviously, is the VCV version of Jaku’s soft append. It’s pretty much improved in every way from the CV version; recording in VCV seems to have eliminated my dumb consonant pronunciation issues. This bank is also dual-pitch, so it has even more range!
Unhappy Refrain
UST by Unknown
Japanese VCV – Strict Append
Recorded in July 2013
This is a fun bank. The pronunciation was done with extreme exaggeration as an experiment, resulting in a sharp and energetic sound.
GLIDE
UST by BurritoChannel
Japanese VCV – MFPS Multipitch
Recorded in July/August 2013
This was an extremely ambitious bank, and also the largest in terms of filesize. I had done multiple pitches before, but this one has 6, which is still the most I’ve done in a single bank. However, the quality across the pitches isn’t super consistent. The lowest is more of a whisper pitch, and the highest if a falsetto that… just doesn’t sound that great. But this was my first true attempt at a “power” bank and it paved the way for its successor.
Villainous Self-Riser
UST by RenjiTakuma
Japanese VCV – SOLAR Multipitch
Recorded in July/August 2015
This is it, Jaku’s definitive bank. Recorded with the best microphone that I could afford at the time, having the best consistent quality and what I consider to be her default bank these days. Like MFPS, I recorded multiple pitches for a total of 5 plus an extra Growl version of F4 (yes, an entire VCV growl pitch. I had to record it in 2 mora so I didn’t completely get destroyed). So even if it’s technically less than before, it’s still better overall. There’s even more power in her highest pitch so she can really go wild.
My original plan was to record this bank, SOLAR, and a companion bank, LUNAR, which would be the the “soft version” and cover the same pitches (minus growl). Then the banks could be combined into ECLIPSE to form the ultimate voicebank! Unfortunately I only ever recorded one pitch of LUNAR and enough time has passed that I don’t think I could pick it up again without it sounding radically different, so that never came to be.
Pay no Mind
UST by TsukiHikari816
English VC CV
Recorded in September 2015
As of now, this is the final voicebank I recorded for Jaku. I was more than happy to beta CZ’s new VCCV English reclist, and then made a final English voicebank for Jaku after it was released. The cadence and pronunciation is far more natural sounding than the CV VC version, and is even smaller in filesize.
MMD Models
Model V1
Jaku’s very first model… she was a direct export from a game called “3D Custom Girl”‘s (which was a horny game) character creator. Ah, texture issues and dat boob jiggle. I no longer have the model but no one should ever have it.
Download unavailable.
Model V1.1
This is really just the same model as before but my friend Mole-chan made her look better. She also had her face replaced with TDA Meiko’s. And she still has those wacky boob jiggles.
Download unavailable.
Model V2
This one I modeled myself, and god I hate it so much. A curse upon this earth.
Download unavailable.
Model V3
Up until recently, this was the de-facto model I used for Jaku. It’s frakensteined from the bits of pieces of other models, aside from the clothes that I still made myself. Somehow it’s been 10 years since it originally released.
Model V4
The most recent and the most lovely and accurate model to date! I commissioned my friend at Moleworks this time instead of making it myself and this is easily the best of the bunch.