I Welcome Our New Vocaloid Overlords! Hatsune Miku Concert in LA

Last night I went to the Hatsune Miku concert in downtown Los Angeles.

Yes, I have no idea what she was singing because it was computer synthesized and in Japanese. I don't know the names of all the Vocaloid characters, but I know of them. I don't know any of the songs, except maybe 1 or 2. I can't even tell you their names.

I'm totally a poser.

Still, Miku's energy and the energy of the people standing in the pit was something I needed.

We had VIP pit access so that meant we got to be next to the stage. It's standing room only. We came 2 hours early to stand in line for the VIP section and then the show itself is about 2 hours, so yeah, the downside you're standing for 4 hours, but it's worthwhile to see Miku up close.

If you don't know who or what she is, here's a quick primer.

She's the ultimate idol.

Everything about her is synthesized.

Hatsune Miku is the mascot character for a vocaloid software of the same name by Crypton Future Media. Musicians can use her voice along with their own digital tracks to create new music. Anyone can make pop music with her and many have and they're good (if you love j-pop and maybe even if you don't). You can get MikuMikuDance (or MMD) which is an animation program that allows you to pose and make videos with Miku characters. You can buy her music. And you can attend her concerts.

For a corporation, she must be a godsend: an idol that doesn't act out or cause scandals, she never changes or ages, and will produce new music and stay current with each new generation of fans.

I suppose that's not totally true, technology will age her faster than anything else especially in this nascent age of machine learning. She will always be evolving in a sense.

I watched Miku on a livestream in 2012 and their projection technology has gotten better. In her 2012 show she was low-resolution and a bit pixelated, but last night's show, she was in glorious HD. In the 2012 show you could see the projector lights behind her, but, at least from the pit, you couldn't see any of that. The left side of the screen was a bit out of focus, but otherwise, she appeared as if she were on stage.

You know, like she was there. Real.

The above image isn't Miku, it's Kaito another Vocaloid, but with the smoke machine on and the lights you can see the edges of their world, a thin transparent sheet that they live, dance, and sing on. She can run all the way up to the edge but no further. Yet, she shouted out to us Angelenos. She pointed (at me). And for a CG character she whipped the entire Microsoft Theater into a frenzy.

You might want to think, as I did part way into the show, aren't you paying a lot of money just to stand in front of a large projector screen waving a glow stick at a video of a CG character?

You totally are.

But there's a live band backing her up. Cool particle effects. Confetti. Cosplay. Being surrounded by tons of her adoring fans and feeling their energy and the music thumping and passing through your body as you wave a glowstick in-time to the beat with everyone else.

The show was SOLD OUT.

And above all that, it was a damn good time.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this technology now that machine learning is on the rise. I know we like to paint this bleak picture of the future with Skynet, but Miku offers an alternate one. Google's new technology uses machine learning to blend artificial speech into something that sounds eerily human. We could feed a ton of motion capture data, idol performances and dances into a AI director and have it choreograph new dances one day. Could you imagine a machine that could write the song, lay the tracks, produce the album, choreography dance routines, then animate the idols (dance and lip sync) and auto post it on Youtube? Sure, it might not start out good, but like all new endeavors, give it time...

A little flavor of Miku, This is The World is Mine: