LEON

Leon was the first male Vocaloid to be launched along with female Vocaloid, Lola, at the NAMM show on the 15th of January, 2004, and was eventually commercialized on the 3rd of March, 2004, at the price of 39,800 yen. He is a "virtual male soul vocalist modeled on a real professional singer" and was created for the English speaking community.

History
Leon was released along with fellow Vocaloid, Lola, by Zero-G Limited. They were one of the exhibits at the Zero-G Limited booth during Wired Nextfest and the Vocaloids won the 2005 Electronic Musician Editor’s Choice Award. Leon and Lola failed to impact the Amercian market due to their accents.

Leon did not become popular with the public until a relatively unknown Nico Nico Douga user posted a video of him singing "True to my Heart". This featured Leon in an unusual looking fan design which soon struck the funny bone of Nico Nico users and the video eventually received over 50,000 views.

While his popularity has never been as great as other vocaloids, of the english speaking Vocaloid voicebanks, his has seen arguably the most usage. For a while, he and Kaito were the only male voices available and though Len was released, he lacked the vocal depth that both Leon and Kaito could reach. Furthermore, until Big-Al was released Leon was the only male English speaking vocaloid. After increased interest began to occur in vocaloids and high demand, Zero-G began reselling Lola, Leon and Miriam from their own website via their virtual shop. According to Zero-G, the 3 may also get a redesign in the future.

Usage for Music
He is mostly used for techno, pop and digital music, but was sold as a soul singer. Leon sings with a softer tone compared to Kaito, but his voice favors more deeper notes than Kaito, although his voice is not as soft as Miriam. Ultimately though, he tends to end up sound affeminate at times (just as how some describe Lola as sounding like a man) because of how the engine removes the greater extent of his masculine tone. He also sings with a brittish accent.

Due to his dated voicebank, he often has the robotic sound. Users accept his and Lola's voicebanks digital sound, Leon's strongest aspect is that perfection is not necessary when creating a song using his voicebank. With much editing he can produce realistic sounding songs. Other users play on his robotic sounding voice, making no attempt to hide it. Leon also has been used in the most varied of ways amongst the english Vocaloid era voicebanks and he has been shown to be a highly versitile Vocaloid.

He was originally sold using the Vocaloid 1.0 engine, but Zero-G provided a link to update the program on their website (via his product page) that would update the vocaloid program to Vocaloid 1.1.

A Place under the Sun
Leon is featured in this CD with 14 modern dance tracks. The lyrics are in both English and Russian.


 * Participants of the project:

Music and Russian lyrics - Alexei Ustinov Arrangement and recording - Alexei Kosolapov English lyrics - Alex Yakovlev Lead and back vocals - Leon Drums - Pavel Panfilov Sax - Nikolai Panchenko Bayan - Evgeny Zimin Mixing and mastering - Anton Ilyashenko and Vassili "b0zill" Antypkin

As it was noted when Leon was used for this album, 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. The creation of this album led to the later creation of Big Al to fulfill these roles.

32bit Love
Is an album known to contain songs that use Leon for the vocals and was created by Muzehack, the album features 13 tracks.

Trivia

 * It was Lola and Leon's appearance at the NAMM trade show that would later introduce rival vocaloid studio PowerFX to the vocaloid program.
 * Because of the promotional video, "The Farthest End" (Saihate), Leon is often depicted with tulips which eventually became his character item.
 * Leon and Lola are often regarded as siblings by fans due to their similair names, boxart logo style and their release date and they are often regarded as the English Vocaloid equivalent of the Kagamine Vocaloids. At the time of their release, media coverage of them also often called them (and later Miriam) "siblings". Even those producing the studio software also often regard the pair as "siblings".
 * The most famous fan depiction of Leon is of a young blond haired man with a deep blue shirt. This image has become so popular that Leon is now almost always depicted as a blonde or light/fair young man haired in fanart.
 * Prima, Leon and Lola's release dates were celebrated in the "Zero-g Garnet Festival" (also referred to as "ZGF") on Nico Nico Douga. This event celebrates the release of these Vocaloids and songs were uploaded during this 3 day event.