Samson and Delilah

Not the whole thing, just a short (under ninety seconds) aria from Saint-Saens' composition, titled Mon Coeur S'Ouvre (My Heart Opened), performed very well indeed by operatic vocaloid Prima.

This is one of those special performances you need to hear at least once in your lifetime – while ignoring the rather odd image of, well, I don't know who it's supposed to be, but it certainly doesn't even closely resemble any of the looks that fans have designed for Prima, varied though those are...

Go West

This is a little different: the Pet Shop Boys' very catchy Go West performed by operatic vocaloid Prima with Miku used singly and as multiple voices for backing vocals – almost as a set of textures, in fact, in the innovative way it has been done here.

It's actually quite good, and is one of the earlier uses of Miku, dating from early 2008. Despite the boring still image, which I suggest ignoring altogether, I feel it is worth a handful of minutes lending one's ears to this...

Scarborough Fair

Actually, it's a different (though similar) song called Romeiro ao lonxe, using the same tune, and here performed by Prima in the Galician language, no less!

It's quite an achievement, demonstrating yet again Prima's great versatility, and it seems to work very well – not that I'm an expert in that language, you understand, but I have some idea about the Hispanic-style languages; and yes, I can read the subtitles as well(!)

Sail Away

Here's the operatic vocaloid Prima showing some of her out-of-target-genre versatility, with Enya's Orinoco Flow.

It's not a clone of the original, and was never intended to be, but is good enough to stand in its own right as a slightly different interpretation. The more I hear it, the more I am impressed with this version, and I have also checked out the original just an hour or so ago for comparison...

Princess Mononoke

This well-known (to those familiar with the genre) song from the Japanese animated movie Princess Mononoke here receives the Prima touch, which works particularly well. It's almost as if the song could have been written expressly for her – which it wasn't, but it does give that kind of impression. I'm sure you'll feel the same just four minutes from now, assuming you play the video below.

Just a still image here, but that's all it needs on this occasion...

Voi che Sapete – Prima

Here, as I promised a few weeks back, is another Prima performance. This time it's of the well-known Voi che Sapete from The Marriage of Figaro (Le Noce di Figaro), and again shows the sheer operatic quality of Prima's voice.

Incidentally, there is no official 'characteristic' for Prima, and the picture on her software box is simply a stock image. Various people have come up with their own designs for her, not all of which seem to reflect the nature of her singing character(!)

Anyway, this time we simply watch how the software operates in playback mode, which is interesting if you haven't seen it in action before, and merely a pleasant background if you have...

Ave Maria

This is just right for a Sunday, especially with the images and film scenes accompanying the singer...



You might be surprised that the singer was a Vocaloid named Prima, who was expressly designed to be able to handle this and other what tend to be called 'classical' genres. Prima is I think still the only vocaloid to be able to match Miku's highest notes, and has the widest compass of any of them.

There aren't all that many Prima performances around, mainly because (a) the software was considerably more expensive than the other vocaloid packages, and (b) it was far from easy to use successfully, especially by those who are not professional composers or musicians.

Even so, those that exist (and I intend to feature at least some of them, over a period of time) are valuable contributions to the wealth of material nowadays readily available on-line.