Shanghai, China, February 23, 2019 — The Chinese vocaloid Luo Tianyi shows up as holograph live in concert and joins pianist Lang Lang (朗朗) for a show that you don’t see every day at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai.
Artificial singers and made-up pop creations aren’t a new thing. One of the earlier examples are the Gorillaz who performed at the Scala in London in 2001, with more concerts following, making use of projection spaces for 2D animations to take place.
The concert with Luo Tianyi in Shanghai was a little different from that. They have used holographic technology to make it seems as if the artificial in its anime-esque style would be standing on stage, next to Lang Lang, while performing her songs.
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The premium ticket prices for the concert started at 1580¥ (RMB) which convert to approximately 235 USD and came with a limited edition light stick as well as a metal badge. The cheapest tickets known to us were 480¥ (RMB) to watch the show from way back in the arena, which is about 72 USD.
What is a vocaloid?
Vocaloid is a music production software developed by Yamaha and it was originally released in 2004. It’s currently available in the fifth version for 225 USD in the standard bundle. The purpose a vocal synthesizer is to get a singer for your lyrics that you don’t need to hire for big bucks. You can digitally compose songs and Vocaloid helps you tying in the artificial singing into the production.
The source data of the singing is derived from sampled human input. For instance, Luo Tianyi was developed by Shanghai HENIAN Information Technology Co. Ltd. and got her voice from the voice actress and singer Shan Xin. Next to the voice, a vocaloid will usually also receive a drawn persona which can grow pretty popular, as this concert in February showed us. Another popular vocaloid is the Japanese Hatsune Miku, developed by Crypton Future Media, who can even be found on Spotify with more than 174 thousand monthly listeners.
YouTube: [Official] Luo Tianyi & Lang Lang 《Jasmine 》Holographic Concert
YouTube: [Official] Luo Tianyi & Lang Lang 《Ballet: Raindrop 》Holographic Concert
Photo credit: The media shown belongs to their respective owners. The feature image is a still frame from the concert footage.
Source: Edmond Cormier (VNN)
