Marie Ork is a female vocal worked upon by D Smolken. Her provider is the female vocalist for the group "Ennorath". Her download was made available on the 1st December, 2016.
She was successful upon release and gathered 666 downloads by 3rd of December.[1] On the 6th of December she hit 1,000+ downloads.[2]
She was originally entered into the KVR challenge and was one of 40 contestants. Users who wished to vote for her could link here.
History
Early development
D Smolken, under the name of pklima, discussed at talkbass about making a metal female vocalist. The interest was first sparked in 2014. Though there were plenty of free instruments and the like for constructing metal songs the vocalist was considered the final frontier. D Smolken happen to know a female death metal vocalist that they had worked with in the past. D Smolken also knew that Death Metal was a niche genre of music and was rarely explored by vocal synthesizers, lacking experience they decided to focus on this genre of music as it seemed easier to produce.
Primarily versions
They had been working on her vocal for a while. Before production had begun, research was made on existing vocal synthisers to find the most suitable one. Her first recordings were of basic midi samples which were later made available for download.
Another collection of recordings were made for UTAU, but due to the Japanese locale setting having to be activated, the software was never downloaded and this version abandoned.
Move into Alter/ego
At the same time the UTAU vocal was being worked upon, Chipspeech was released by Plogue. Later that autumn Plogue released Alter/ego more focused on modern vocal synthesizer technology.
Naturally, Plogue recieved many requests for vocal production. D Smolken got lucky having had released samples for Plogue related products before. D Smolken approached a member of Daisy's production team and asked about making a vocal and work began in October 2015. The it for setting her up was given to them such as a small section of the source data for Daisy. It took three or four sessions, including re-recordings of unsatisfactory results. The development was also a lesson on linguistics as they had to learn many new things about vocal sounds such as different types of consonants. They learnt things such as the human vocals inability to growl certain sounds, leding to some sounds such as a "fffffff" having to have two versions to see which was more effective.[3]
Marie was first made known in March 2016 by D Smolken when they asked about adjustments on a heavy metal female vocal.[4]
The first working prototype existed with only 3% of the needed data. At this point there was no way of knowing how Alter/ego would handle a Death Metal vocal. The early results sounded quite like the vocalist and those working on Alter/ego itself were satisfied with the results. On May 2nd when D Smolken was talking about this on talkbass, the results were then at 10% completion. At 17% it was noted that at 100% they would need to make corrections to the vocal. D Smolken did not want to post anything yet as they felt first impressions are important.
At 30% Plogue themselves made adjustments to the perimeters of Alter/ego to work better with growl vocals. They had some concept ideas they liked as well at this stage. The Formant Singer 2 version was brought in, though it was later also included in Chipspeech, at this point the new engine version was not known to the general public.
At 50% it was noted that they hoped to have everything working for October in time for Halloween. At this stage the prototype sounded more like a horse whisper then a growl. They were tweaking the vocal to see how hoarse they could make the vocal still. D Smolken had also managed to find a way t make pitch easier to recognize, which was useless for clear vocals but useful for swirly ones. Information on consonant clusters later came.
89% of the vocal was completed in September with hope of being in alpha stage by the end of the week. Finally the full data was completed after 11 months of work. later on in September.
For a long time she was not named. However, during a conversation over creating a name based on "Merry Oaks park", D Smolken said they would speak to the provider. The name "Marie Ork" was unveiled in September 2016. Though a beta vocal was ready and the voice was growling, D Smolken mentioned they were entering the KVR Developer Challenge, therefore no demo could be made available until December due to the contests own rules. This also delayed demos and release until after the competition.
The KVR Contest Preparations
When she was announced as being a entry into the KVR contest, public development ceased and work on a completed alpha had become the main focus. The original intention was to hold a contest for design entries, this also could not occur. FlyingCarParts offered to do the graphics after D Smolken mentioning the need for graphics still at http://www.vocaloidotaku.net/ Vocaloid Otaku forums].
The recording of some broken phonetics and mispronunciations took several weeks to do. A week and a half before the KVR deadline they had the graphics and voicebank nearly complete. Plogue was asked to produce the signed off version to send to beta testers. A decision was made to make two voices from the same data. Presets were made, this took D Smolken about half an hour to do while the developers cleaned up the XML data. D Smolken went over the data a number of times during November an did not take a single day off during this time. He also did not go out in the evenings so he cold work on her during this time also. Her data swelled to 4.9 GB from 1 GB of data by the time of the deadline.
The last week was focused on fix-ups and documentation clean-ups to make things easier for users to install her. Minor tweaks to the GUI were also made.[5]
Description
Character
She is meant to be a goblin character rather then a human one.
Her name is a play on "Merry Oaks" and was a suggestion from a fan. The name "Merry Orcs" was put forward to the provider and the name "Marie Ork" was settled on.[6] The name "Marie" came from ewe's milk cheese "Flower Marie".[7]
In regards to the character of "Marie Orks", the provider did not seem to want to come up with a character for her vocal. D Smolken did not want to decide anything without her. Originally they had intended to come up with a concept of a character once the vocal was complete though at 89% they had come up with a full concept.
FlyingCarParts originally wanted to design her with a wood staff, but dropped it as the Vocaloid vocal "Avanna" already was depicted as one. Though the intention was not to portray Marie as a "wood elf". Marie is designed with a cyborg-goblin-witch direction in mind. They originally thought Orcs and Goblins were the same thing and admitted they knew little on fantasy classifications. While no set personality has been established for her, FlyingCarParts depictions direction was to aim to portray her as "confident, brave, and passionate. And possibly a bit barbaric, if excited enough!".[8]
D Smolken's own notes noted that he personality did not want a character that looked "serious and grim" the vocalist herself asked just for longer ears. FlyingCarParts had originally come up with a cute and friendly sketch design. The bat-hair band and skull necklace were added later to make her look more "witchy". A friend of D Smolkens did the alternative designs and outfits in a different style.
Vocal
Template:Marie Ork Vocal
A supporting sample library can be downloaded of the female vocalist. This file contains 272 various sounds for creating words, though is not a completed vocal synthesizer library.[9]
It is also noted that a French vocal may be released at a later date as with ALYS came French vocal library support. Marie Orks vocalist happened to be able to speak French. They also discussed adding shrieks and normal singing results at a later date though are focused on producing the current vocal, especially if the ability to morph between vocals ever becomes possible.
There was consideration for a thrilled "r" sound, though a long R exists this currently is not viable.
Demos/Samples
Template:Demo table
Gallery
Poll
Reference
| Alter/Ego vocals |
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MASCULINE Voices — • Bones • |