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. Despite this, consumers complained that Leon sounded too muffled and almost like a woman's voice.

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 populaurity has never been as great as other vocaloids, of the english speaking pre-Vocaloid 2 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 deepth 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.

He was orginally 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.

Useage for Music
He is mostly used for techno, pop and digital music, but was sold as a soul singer. Leon can reach a similar notes to Kaito, but his voice favors more deeper notes then Kaito, although arguly most users aim for a higher pitch. Ultimately though, he tends to end up sound affeminate at times (just as how some describe Lola as sounding like a man), but this is simply due to the Vocaloid engine.

Due to his dated voicebank, there is no escaping the robotic sound caused by the Vocaloid software engine and both he and Lola are guilty of having the worst robotic "twang" of the Vocaloid 1 era voicebanks. Essentially, one can hide this robotic notes simply by using simple notes and not varying the lyrics too much, but this limits the depth of the lyrics in the song. With much editing he can produce realistic sounding songs as seen in the song "Video killed the Radio Star" and "The Phantom of the Opera". Other users play on his robotic sounding voice, making no attempt to hide it as seen in "Something About Us".

A Place in 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

Under the Darkness
Covered by U-P


 * YouTube broadcast

Hoshi no Kakera/星のカケラ
Covered by Nagato Miku ruP


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube

Mask/仮面
Duet with Kaito Leon Covered by Leo-P Kaito Covered by Nya-P


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Monoke Hime/もののけ姫
Covered by Leo-P


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Mr.Lonely
Covered by Giuseppe


 * YouTube broadcast

Pop Keyboard
Music by KotaroP


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Magnet (Lola duet version)
Covered by Leo-P


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Magnet (Kaito duet version)
Covered by Leo-P


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Longest Time
Covered by 愛レオンP


 * Nico broadcast
 * YouTube broadcast

Video Killed the Radio Star
(With Miriam and Lola as back up singers)

Song by The Buggles Cover by Daifuku-p


 * Youtube broadcast

Something About Us
Song by Daft Punk

Cover by BeginsWithTheEnd


 * Youtube broadcast

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
Song by The Police

Cover by ChoiWARU-P


 * Youtube broadcast

Yest Tolko Mig
Song by JMT Song, here Leon sings in Russian


 * Youtube broadcast

Love is War

 * Youtube broadcast
 * Nico broadcast

Longest Time
By 愛レオンP


 * Nico broadcast
 * Youtube broadcast

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.