assalaamu3alaikum!
!ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ
skeou here! thanks for chiming in to Arabic UTAU Resources’s first English blog post!
i’ll try to keep this brief, but it’s been quite the ride up to this point! i want to start by thanking all of the developers, fans, and friends that supported us in this early stage, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all of you!
The Initial Stage
when i first came up with AUR, i wasn’t sure how the idea would be received or even brought about. as a non-native learner with only a repetitious phonetic and reading fluency from studying Qur’anic tajweed for most of my life, i had just enough of a background to work with Arabic voicebanks and covers. it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a genuine curiosity about the Arabic language from beyond the Arabic-speaking community, Arabic UTAU as a concept had been on hold for a while.
since there were hardly any resources or individuals to refer to at the time, a lot of my early work in Arabic UTAU was done alone. i didn’t have much confidence in my work being of any use to other creators, i just knew that it sort of worked. a lot of that changed when i got in touch with 0O0 Studio Productions (@OStudioProductions on YouTube), the only other active Arabic UTAU creator at the time. they were genuinely the most helpful, sweet, and kind towards me on the first cover we worked on, and when I brought my thoughts about starting AUR to them, they were the first to cheer me on. to this day, i credit 0’s knowledge and belief in Arabic UTAU to the creation of Arabic UTAU Resources.
when i brought the idea to others in the community, i wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in working with a language they weren’t familiar with. it didn’t seem plausible to start a multilanguage group without a significant amount of creators natively speaking the language. to my surprise, however, the unfiltered excitement from my friends and others in my vsynth circles suddenly made it seem more than just plausible. it’s truly amazing to me how curiosity for a language and technology can bring about a whole new avenue of community, and i am beyond honored to take part in this journey with you all.
Phase 1, Going Forward
i have had the privilege of working with our talented development team on original covers, project files, reclists, tools, and guides this past year. there’s been pockets of inactivity on my end due to other commitments, but i’m so grateful that the support from the team still continued onwards. this is just the beginning, there’s much more planned for the future!
as we prepare for Phase 2, i’ve been thinking a lot about who or what AUR is meant to serve. the betterment of the greater vocal synth community is a given, but the nuance in language integration is still significant. i think of my own work as a means of achieving “Arabic in UTAU” rather than “UTAU in Arabic”, that is, just using the program to synthesize Arabic singing rather than localizing the program itself for Arabic speakers. i still believe the latter is valuable, so i hope to transition towards localization projects in these upcoming phases to strengthen the floor for Arabic-speaking creators!
we’re also preparing the launch of an in-house vocalist series for UTAU and Diffsinger, alongside some more OpenUtau tools for ease-of-use. on our community Discord, we’ve opened applications for prospective developers and community moderators. please look forward to all of it!
thank you for reading this post! i’m so thankful for this community and all the things i’ve learned and got to create because of it. i hope that the work done here at Arabic UTAU Resources will continue to bring value to the community into the future. regardless of where life takes me, i hope you all know that i am forever grateful for all of you.
yours truly,
skeou
