Tutorial: UTAU for Beginners

Basic UTAU Functions
by Ani (PuniPudding)

Hello~! In this tutorial I’ll be teaching you the very basics of voice synthesizer UTAU.
Grab it here.

Basics; Voice banks.
Before we can sing we need a voice.
Go grab a voicebank – the official site (above) has Teto’s voicebank.
Teto is very difficult to make sing, but there is a way around this.
More on that another time, though.
First of all, download and unzip the voicebank wherever you like.
Then go to the seventh menu across, (T).
Open that and go to the sixth option down (O).
A box will pop up. Click on the second tab.

Here we can input the locations of our voicebanks.
See the fields there? There’s one longer than the rest, with a button next to it that ends with ‘…’.
Click on that and find where your voicebank is and open the あ file, or whichever sound is first.
No need to input every single sound, only the one.
Now that we’ve done that, you see the first, shorter field?
That’s where you can type the name of the UTAUloid.
So type that in, and press the first button next to it.
The voicebank location with name then appears in the box above.
Well done! You’ve imported a voicebank.

Basics; Loading Voicebanks for use.
So, we’ve imported the voicebank, but still, Defoko sings!
What do we do? We load the voicebank.
We go to the fifth menu across, the first (P).
Open that up and select the last option, (R).
The first field you can input the Title of the UST.
The second field, you can input the name of the WAV that you’ll export the audio to.
The third field is a drop-down menu for selecting the voicebank to load.
Click the drop-down menu and select the name of the UTAUloid you wish to use.
The ‘info’ button next to the menu brings up a window where you can view an image, info, and hear a voice sample of the UTAUloid.
Alternately, you can go to the first menu at the window we have up, (G), and then to (S) to select a voicebank.
The last fields are for the Appender and Resampler, do not edit these unless you know what you’re doing.

Okay, so. Once you’ve selected the voicebank you want, just click okay.

Basics; File Menu.
First option is New, second is Open, Third is Save. You know this already.
The sixth option is to import MIDI’s and Vocaloid VSQs.
I’ll say about about this later.
The seventh option is Export.
This is to export to MIDI or VSQ.

Basics; Edit Menu.
I don’t use this alot. Undo and Redo are…kinda were Undo and Redo always are.

Basics; View Menu.
The first two options are for zooming in or out.
This can also be done with the + and – magnifying glass icons at the top of the window.

Basics; (S) Menu.
I’ll cover this another time.
Not too sure of it, I’ve never needed or used it.

Basics; First (P) Menu.
The last option, (R) is for Loading Voicebanks.

Basics; Second (P) Menu.
The last option, (S) will export whatever song data that you have in your Temp files to WAV.
This means you have to play your song before you can export it, or you’ll end up with an empty file.

Basics; Tools Menu.
First option, (S), is for viewing and editing voice samples within the voicebank.
Last option, (O), is for Importing Voicebanks.

Basics; Help Menu.
Readme.txt and Software version.

Basics; Importing and Exporting
Okay. So say you’ve downloaded a VSQ or MIDI and want to use it.
Go to (F) and then to (I).
Change the file type in the dropdown menu according to what you’re importing.

Basics; Fixing Unusable VSQs and USTs
Okay. So you’ve imported your VSQ, and made your UTAUloid sing it…
But the UTAUloid is completely out of tune!

This is most likely an incompatibility issue between UTAU and Vocaloid, but either way, to fix this, press Ctrl+A to select all.

Export it to MIDI. Go to (F) and then to (N) to open a new project.
Press OK at the window that comes up, then import the MIDI.
Remember to change the singing UTAUloid to what you want. (Refer to Importing Voicebanks and Loading Voicebanks.)

The same method can be used for unusable USTs.

Basics; Importing MIDIs.
The same method for importing VSQs is used for importing MIDIs.
Select, Cut, New, Paste.

Composing Your Own Songs.
The new version of UTAU allows you to record MIDIs from a keyboard.
It is impossible to make a song from scratch with UTAU; human lifespan isn’t long enough.
You’ll need a MIDI to work off, even if it’s one you’ve recorded yourself.

MODE2
So. In the newest versions of UTAU you’ve noticed the ‘Mode2′ button, right?
You click it and…not much really happens.
Utau’s Mode2 is used for stringing notes together and adding vibrato.
It’s not as difficult as it sounds, so here we go~!

First of all open your UST/MIDI/VSQ.
Add your lyrics, adjust it, do everything you must to make the Utauloid sing.
When you’re done with this, click the Mode2 button in the top-right corner of UTAU.
The buttons ‘Trace’ and ‘Render’ will appear.
I’ll explain those a little later on.

Now to link notes together.
Right-click on a note, then go down to the eighth option, click on it.
A window will come up.
The first checkbox is for notelinking; the second for vibrato.
Once you’ve activated both you’ll be able to click and drag to adjust them; be careful how you link the notes, or it could end up sounding weird, and don’t put more vibrato than necessary.

Render Button.

You know in MODE2 The render button shows up?

Press this when you’re done and it ‘renders’ the links and vibrato to the singing.

Finally…
Select notes and right-click, then choose the first option to play them, the second to replay what you played last.
Also, there’s the Play, Pause, and Stop buttons on the newer versions of UTAU.

I think that covers all of it. I hope this helps!

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