Notes on obscure music tastes

“Vocaloid music?”

I often describe my interest in “Vocaloid music”. In multiple ways, this isn’t really accurate, but it’s a nice shorthand that communicates my intent well.

An expansion could be “music with singing provided by a character and computer program”. The best-known program is Vocaloid, so it’s become synonymous with the genre.

Fortunately, I don’t have to explain Vocaloid music itself, because the nice people at VocaDB already have a good explanation on their wiki:

Vocaloid music has some unique features. Instead of live singers, the singing vocals are provided by the software, and the role of those vocals is much more important than in conventional music. Most of the music is produced by individual artists, and self-published in doujin fashion.

‘Otoge’?

Otoge is a Japanese term which seems to have been adopted worldwide, and one I like to use. You will usually see it when I describe my interest in “otoge music.”

The term refers to rhythm games, but I believe it translates more literally to “music game.” I use it to refer to these games, and anything that comes from them, or the broad and diverse sphere around them.

I use it instead of, say, “rhythm game music,” as I think it captures my intent better, and it’s more wieldy than carrying around some long sentence to account for that.

It’s difficult to define what I think otoge music is, exactly. It’s not necessarily meant to be in rhythm games, and much of it is self-published, in a similar fashion to Vocaloid music. It mostly seems to be a thing in Japan, and ends up in Japanese games, but it’s reasonably accessible in other regions.

Musically, it’s usually of much higher BPMs than other music, which translates to higher difficulties in rhythm games. It’s often highly experimental, and you’ll see a lot of (slightly?) less mainstream genres, like EDM and hardcore.