Meiko | en

There are two artists with the name Meiko:
1) an American singer/songwriter
2) the first Japanese-language Vocaloid

1) Meiko (pronounced MEE-ko) (born February 25, 1982), is an American singer/ songwriter, born and raised in Roberta, Georgia and currently residing in Los Angeles, California. She independently released a self-titled album on September 1, 2007. All of the tracks from the LP have been featured in major network TV shows. Her second full-length album, entitled The Bright Side, was released through Fantasy Records on May 15, 2012.

Raised by her father in the small town of Roberta, Georgia, Meiko first stepped in front of an audience at the age of eight, singing “White Christmas” for parishioners of a Southern Baptist church. At eighteen, Meiko left her hometown to showcase her talents to a wider audience. After a brief stop in Miami, she set down in Los Angeles and began her career in earnest, playing venues all over Southern California and writing at a prolific pace. She performed (and bartended) at Hollywood's Hotel Café (where she still performs regularly).

Meiko is one-quarter Japanese, on her maternal grandmother's side; in an attempt to get in touch with their Japanese heritage, she and her sister, designer Kelly Nishimoto, adopted the nicknames Meiko and Keiko.

2) The name of the first Japanese-language Vocaloid released by Crypton Future Media, released in 2004. Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application software developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by just typing in lyrics and melody. Numbered Crypton Vocaloid 00, Meiko was the first female Vocaloid, counterpart to Kaito. Her voice is based on a Japanese female singer Haigō Meiko (拝郷 メイコ). Her voice is noted to be steady, straightforward, and suitable for any musical genre. She is fit to sing anything from pop, rock, jazz, R&B to children's songs. Since Vocaloid has some functions that Vocaloid 2 do not have, such as Resonance. Different users can utilize the voicebanks offered very differently and she can produce a wide range of different results from the same few voicebanks.

On July 24, 2003, an CCCD album "HISTORY OF LOGIC SYSTEM", which included a song using Japanese vocaloids commercially for the first time, was released. It was a duet song of "Ano Subarashii Ai wo Mou Ichido (That Wonderful Love Once More)" and it was covered by prototype version of Meiko and Kaito before their release. Meiko has been confirmed to have an Append on the way, but no data has been released on its progress. .