“Going Pro” In Vocal Synthesis
Advice on charting a course for a professional career in the ever-unique vocal synthesis field.
Many people in creative professions have this idea of “going pro” at some point. For most, they describe this in a vague, wishy-washy sort of way, without a clear path on how to get there, or a solid idea of what they want to do when they do get to the threshold. Of course, that is completely fine. There’s no desperate need to clarify one’s dreams to a specific point, especially if that takes the fun out of it. But at some point, if you want to make it a true goal, you’ll need to break down what making it to the “professional” tier means for you. As a creative-driven industry, this is extremely true for the vocal synthesis community.
In vocal synthesis, there is not actually a rigid barrier between “professional” and “amateur”, or even between being a fan and a creator. To me, it is one of the most beautiful things about the vocalsynth space. There’s a constant push and pull between the business minded and the passionate, and a sizable overlap between the two. Most, if not all, of the business professionals working in vocal synthesis have a deep passion and appreciation for the field and for all of the creatives working within it. I see this myself all the time, as a professional in the space, I have also spent over half my life as a superfan. I have many fond memories of discussing new products or developments on the professional level, only to have my colleague or collaborator test the waters with a more niche reference. As if waiting for this, the surface tension of the business-minded discussion immediately breaks, and soon our conversation is more like one among friends and fellow fans than one shared between coworkers. However, there is a small complication to this ebb and flow of professional and fan-driven creations: if you want to break into the business side, where do you even start?
Credentials
Just so you know where I’m coming from: I’m celestrai of course, but my name is Taylor Hennessy, and I’m the CEO at Eclipsed Sounds. I work full-time in the vocal synthesis sphere, but I also have been a fan of vocal synth since middle school, and I have a degree in computer science. Despite my professional position, this piece is primarily being written for my own personal interest, as I would really like to help the incredible creatives in the vocal synthesis space chart a clearer course for professional work, if that is what they are looking for! The vocalsynth space has grown a lot in even just the last 5 years, and there are a lot of new roles opening up and new needs from the development and business side, so I hope this can help some of you in even a small way.
As a disclaimer: this is not about becoming a professional musician in the space (meaning, making your living writing VOCALOID/vocal synth songs), as I am just on the vocal development of things, and don’t really know anything about becoming a popular songwriter. Just a warning in case that’s what you’re looking for!
Getting Started - Set Goals
If you want to work in vocal synthesis, one of the first things you should do is decide what you actually want to do when working professionally in the space. Now - it can be tempting to just say “I’ll do everything!”, often that’s exactly what I want to say as well. But, you should consider that you will need to tailor your skills in at least one direction to start instead of just settling on doing “everything”, otherwise you may not develop the specific skills necessary to do anything.
Reaching out to hiring managers and development teams with an “I’ll do everything” mindset also puts the burden on your project manager to find a space for you, rather than showing that you have the skills to meet their needs. While that can work - some extremely talented folks come to mind immediately for me, it is much, much easier when the individual has a clear way that they would participate in professional work. For all of those reasons, at least start with a role that you want to develop capabilities in.
What are those goals you may want to aim your skills towards? Here are a few ideas based on what we typically recruit for at my place of work!
Songwriters
Demo song writers, product testing, vocal usage consultant, promotional audio production, mixing, arrangement
Vocal Synthesis Users
Product testing, demo tuning, user guidance writers, update change documentation, mixing
Visual Artists (Illustrators + Designers)
Key artwork, demo song art, promotional pieces, merchandise artwork, anniversary illustrations, character design, logo design, graphic direction, packaging design
Vocalists
Voice providers, recording directors, talent scouts, tuning reference audio
Programmers & Vocal Developers
Web developers, program script writers, vocal data curation, voice configuration, promotional web app development
Writers
Web copy writing, translation and localization, character story and development, email newsletter drafting
Moving Forward - Develop Your Capabilities
After deciding what your primary goal is, something important to do is to consider what skills you need to develop to make your goal possible. This may be somewhat difficult to visualize depending on what your goal role is, so I’ll mostly just give some examples based on my perspective from the business side, and I hope you’ll be able to draw natural connections for other roles as well.
If you are an artist who wants to create key art, it’s important to develop a vision for dynamic poses and showing off character traits while also being able to provide art with a transparent background. This is not because of some objective measure of the role of the key artist, but because of the way that key art is used. Often, the key art is shown on its own alongside the voice and used in promotional materials, meaning it needs to get across the sound and usage of the voice without the vocal even necessarily being heard. Additionally, character uniqueness and appearance across multiple vocals is often a concern for developers, so being able to draw unique traits is a huge plus. For instance, being able to draw different body types, ages, and characters of different nationalities is of extreme importance for our artist recruitment at Eclipsed Sounds due to our broad focus. This is also a plus in general in the industry as every company has their own vision and focus, so their characters will look different. Even if you can draw the types of characters that a company has currently shown off, they might pass over you if you don’t show enough range in your ability or style for their future plans. That isn’t true for everyone, but it’s important to consider! Maintaining a variety of skills can help you cater to the needs of professional users.
If you are a songwriter who wants to write demonstration songs, it is vital to consider not just the typical things you worry about for your works, such as the overall sound and emotional impact, but also what users need to hear to consider if a voice meets their needs. This typically includes things like vocal range, tone, and, for our development, the natural pitch articulation for a voice database. This sometimes means that you’ll need to sacrifice some of your own creative vision to fit a voice or properly display what a voice can do for users. Another concern is being able to use different types of voices - meaning those of different ranges, or in different genres. Many users find it harder to use masculine or feminine voices for instance, so developing the ability to write for either is a key concern that will make you more desirable as a showcase pick for a developer.
If you are a singer who wants to be the vocal source for a project, definitely see how your voice measures up to existing projects! Focus on highlighting aspects of your natural voice or developing new skills that go beyond what is currently offered on different vocal synthesis platforms or in different languages. Consider the gaps in the lineup of the developer you want to work with, and push in that direction harder than others. Crafting a unique selling point in your vocal tone or style while also developing your overall skill as a singer can help convince a developer as well. While every voice is unique, and the goal of even just adding more voices on a platform is generally positive, companies do often still need to make back their development costs, and that is more likely when the type of voice is missing in the overall market.
Each of the roles I described above has these sorts of considerations, but they essentially just boil down to the following thought process: consider what function those works have in vocal synthesis development and promotion, and consider what the developers and project managers might be looking for. This involves having a sense for what your fellow users and community members would like, but also looking beyond what is currently popular or typical in the vocal synthesis scene.
Taking The Leap - Show Your Skills
Quite possibly the most vital part of your whole process is putting together a showcase of your skills. For some roles, simply linking a well-curated social media profile is enough, as long as it is easy to see your own original work on this profile, that can work for professional purposes. However, you will have a significantly better chance at the role you are looking for if you develop a tailored portfolio for your desired role. In your portfolio, try to develop at least one or two pieces that would represent how you would perform in this role. For example, if you want to be a demo song writer, consider taking a voice and making a song that you would imagine would sell that voice to users. Or, artists could consider drawing “key art” style works for a variety of diverse characters so that developers would immediately see how you would represent their product. Singers would display the sort of output that they would want to provide as well, typically raw vocal samples if hoping for a voice provider position. Looking through a portfolio is much simpler than scrolling through a social media profile, and also lets you have full control over the way your work will be perceived. As a side note, it is also a huge plus for some businesses if you have a pricing sheet easily accessible from this portfolio as well. This is the case because margins and budgets can sometimes be very tight for certain projects. This may be a drop in the bucket as far as the work for a professional creative role in vocal synthesis is concerned, but sometimes a portfolio really does make all the difference, and I would heavily recommend it.
A Side Case for Singers - Pitching Your Project to Developers With A Character
This may be a specific, niche consideration, but it is something I see often in my role, so I would like to address it. If you want to voice a commercial project, please, don’t lead your pitch to development parties with a fully-developed vocal character at the center. If you want to join an existing third party lineup, this is a surefire way to tip the scales so that your application is not fully reviewed. This is because leading with an existing character often reads as a singer saying that they do not want to be involved with the project unless it meets their branding demands, meaning, the pre-existing character. There is a small chance that a company would be willing to adapt a pre-existing vocal character to match their lineup, but in general this is rare, and the character is not necessarily an asset to the developing team. This is because your pre-existing character is likely not a full match to the creative vision the company has already built. When considering its existing vision, you have to look at the public materials presented by the company in question. And then, imagine an iceberg. The public promotional work and branding considerations for vocals that you see are just a tiny portion that has been revealed for end users. By pitching a “fan character” or pre-existing character in your appeal to developers, you end up making assumptions about the underwater portion of that iceberg. This is not usually a big deal, however, on the developer side, we can’t tell if it would be a dealbreaker for the voice provider if we were to change or refuse character details. Because of that, it becomes difficult to discuss development prospects for a voice internally and with the singer. If we don’t know what we’re allowed to do with a voice or its branding, it’s unlikely we will pursue a project. This may be counter-intuitive, as it may seem like less work, but in reality it is typically more difficult to adapt a full character pitch rather than to just start from scratch with our own creative point of view.
All of that being said, if you do take these considerations to heart, it probably does not hurt to offer those character ideas once you have your foot in the door in negotiations with a company. Vocal synthesis characters are a fine art, and if your idea is good, it will appeal to the developers as well. Generally, my recommendation is to focus on other areas, and bring the character portion in later if you are pitching to companies that have their own vocal character lineups. In short, lead your initial application with the thing that will draw the company to your project: your voice. I personally would advocate for heinous compromises to be made on our end for our (Eclipsed Sounds) branding if it meant securing specific vocal sounds, and I think other companies and my colleagues feel similarly. At the end of the day, the voice of a project speaks for itself, and if you focus on developing your vocal identity, you can be easily irresistible to sound-greedy, voice-craving developers like me.
What Was My Path?
I always wanted to work in vocal synthesis, but I’m also a person who plays it safe. Because of that, I decided to pursue a degree in computer science so that I could always keep an option open to apply for vocal synthesis industry jobs while I filled whatever niche I needed to in order to pay rent. However, I also got very lucky in that I had a friend (my co-owner and CFO at ES, Elijah/khanadee) who wanted me on as part of the pitch development for a vocal synthesizer based on the voice of singer Emma Rowley. In some ways, I think my then in-progress computer science degree probably played a role in this as well, but as part of the project I took the lead on a lot of management and development work, including the pitch process and crowdfund development. Working as a team player and staying on top of things as a partial manager was a huge part in our success, and I’m so glad that things paid off in the end. These days, I try to keep earning my place by focusing both on development tasks and big-picture work, such as additional vocal recruitment, company branding and materials, and of course, vocal configuration. I also maintain a pretty big focus on keeping an eye out for new talent that we would like to work with, and maintaining our internal standards for this talent, so I hope that it makes sense why I would also be the right person to come to for advice on this front.
Closing
Thank you for reading this all the way through! I wrote this piece up because I often see vocalsynth community members in a similar position to where I was years ago, and wanted to help be a voice to provide some direction for those who wish to grow professionally in vocal synthesis, in a business-oriented direction at least. If you found it useful, I would also appreciate it if you shared it with others! This is my first time using this platform, and I do intend to use it more, so if you want to follow or subscribe to me here I would also be very grateful.
If you have questions or would like me to follow up with more writing on this or other vocal synthesis subjects, please feel free to reach me on social media. I did write this out of my own personal, non-professional interest, but if you do want to work with Eclipsed Sounds, you should know where to contact us as well.
Now get out there and go pro!
celestrai.bsky.social | CEO of Eclipsed Sounds
All work here is my own, and made without AI, LLMs, etc.