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Vocaloid is a music program, its first commercial release being in 2004. This series of programs allows a music producer to create a fully voiced song all on the computer. The producer types in the lyrics they want sung as well as a melody and the program synthesizes a voice for the song so no real singer is involved in the process of creating the actual song. Each ‘voice bank’ originally started with a real singer pronouncing all possible syllables which then can be used over and over again to create a huge number of possible songs.
I don’t know much about computing to change sounds, but I would imagine there are certain factors that allow the program to change the pitch, vibrato, etc of each syllable. I just think it’s really cool technology, and could be good for those who want to make music but lack the singing ability.
Many of the voice banks have animated ‘personas’ which have led to a large fanbase for the program. You can see this illustrated below in vocaloid “Hatsune Miku’s” inclusion on the popular video game Just Dance.
Queen Miku performs her iconic song ‘PoPiPo’