BIG AL (VOCALOID2)

History
An early demo song of Miriam and Big Al was personally requested by Bil Bryant and Alexei Ustinov, whom started testing Big-Al in January 2007 with "Help Me Understand You" for the MusikMesse fair. The female vocals were provided by Vocaloid Miriam, "Make Me Feel", was prepared by Alexei Ustinov for the Frankfurt MusikMesse 2007 fair and was made on the spot as part of a demonstration of the software. Big-Al's release was pushed back numerous times, though the demos of him were available and uploaded, examples ("I Feel Good" and "PowerFX") were uploaded in late April. Al's first voice bank was recorded by Michael King, a singer/artist and award winning Elvis impersonator.

Change of Voice
As the Vocaloid was in the editing process PowerFX tried to fix the pronunciation, and even though demos were posted on the net, they felt it was not good enough to be released. So in an attempt to re-record King, they found that he was too busy touring. Frank S., a professional voice over artist, studio engineer/owner and former PowerFX employee then did the voice over which was used for the program.

New boxart was done to match the new voice given for him. Because of the initial reaction to Sonika's noticeable anime influenced look, he was given a look split between anime and a more western style. The picture was done by artist Ash(Accelagirl), who also illustrated the Sonika comics. The artist stated that the color scheme (red and white) were chosen by PowerFX, while black was added to avoid looking like ChoiWARU-P's Leon.

On December 11, 2009, a demo of Big-Al's voice was leaked on youtube, the demo was Al singing small parts to the song "When the Saints Go Marching In", but apparently this demo was beta and not meant to be leaked, yet PowerFX did give permission to YT uploaders to post the demo. Another demo was also released on his day of release.

Downloading Problem
When he was first released, users were unable to download him, leading to complaints from both English and Japanese fans. The problem was corrected by PowerFX switching download providers and the report on his problem was that his file had simply been too big. PowerFX then put up a notice that they will make sure buyers received the program no matter what, even if the company had to post it to them. Those that had pre-ordered him were given a $50 gift certificate for the PowerFX shop as compensation for the downloading problem.

2011 Taiwanese design
On 04/01/2011 PowerFX's website went down. When it reopened on 04/06/2011, both Sweet Ann and Big Al were sporting a new look.

04/08/2011 A PowerFX employee noted that the designs seen on the PowerFx website of both Big Al and Sweet Ann were that of a Taiwanese distributor of PowerFx products and were not the official designs of Big Al or Sweet Ann.

The Taiwanese designs were removed during May, with Big Al's boxart returning to his original design during this period, later they returned to the new version of Big Al. According to PowerFX, they put the Taiwan boxart on their website to try the oblong shape as they preferred it and were thinking about switching to this shape for their Vocaloid products. The boxarts placement was temporay until they could run a Sweet Ann/Big Al competition, however they noted the fandom had insisted that boxart be on the page and had to switched back.

A 28 second demo was released for Big Al, however he was not featured singing in the demo. A second 60 second demo was released of the same song, the full "On the Earth" was then later released. Later Sweet Ann and Big Al were featured in the song "at your side 2010".

Voicebank Libraries

 * Contrast between Leon, from Vocaloid and Big Al, from Vocaloid2. 
 * Phonetic related suggestions to fix problems

Big-Al was designed originally to be "rough and harsh" as a contrast to Leon. As it was noted when Leon was used for the album "A Place in the Sun", some of the songs were designed for a male with a rougher timbre than he offered, and Leon was unable to provide the needed vocal results for the songs. So Big Al was originally designed to be just such a voice.


 * -|Big Al=