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About the Author

Hello! I’m Bailey, the Author of Vocaloid-Sparks-Creativity! I am a psych major who decided to do my English project on one of my favorite music genres, Vocaloid! Other hobbies of mine (other than listening to Vocaloid) include drawing, watching tv shows, and playing video games. I got into Vocaloid during 2014 and fell in love with all the different songs and styles that were out there. My favorite song was Hocus Pocus by Gumi and Miku and it still is to this day. If I had to pick a favorite Vocaloid it would have to be Oliver since so many of songs I love are sung by him.

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Hocus Pocus

The song “Hocus Pocus” is a duet that features the voices of Hatsune Miku and Gumi, which was composed by Shikemoku and uploaded on Oct 19 in 2012. When listening to the song for the first time it gives a very simplistic feeling due to the rhythm of the lyrics/instruments, the slower tempo, how the two singers interact, and even the limited number of instruments. However, as a creative piece, the song is much more complex then it lets on, getting its charms from the ability to do so much with so little. From an instrumental standpoint the song is pretty simple, using only a piano, keyboard, triangle, and tambourine. The piano carries the heaviest role throughout the song, at times acting as drums would to set the pace of the music, while the other instruments are used as accents throughout the song. The piano has a few simple rhythms that, throughout the song, build off of each other to create more complex rhythms. Depending on the lyrics the piano reduces to only one bare-bone rhythm to place more emphasis on the story, doing more by doing less. 

Up until this point I have purposely avoided talking about the content of the song. This is because I feel it’s worth listening to first (while reading the subtitles) so that you get the full experience. “Hocus Pocus” is very much a narrative, it explicitly tells a story that has the capacity to evoke an emotional response from the listeners. So if you have read this far without watching the video I advise you to go listen to the song now before I discuss the lyrics and story.

“Hocus Pocus” is song about a woman who finds a little girl beaten and bruised in a park and after realizing the girl is abused at home, she decides to kidnap her in order to give the girl a happier life. By “casting a spell” the two find an abandoned house where the woman seems to wash away all the girl’s worries (seeming almost like magic) for a short period of time until one day, the authorities find the woman and arrest her, leaving the young girl distraught. The woman’s arrest brought the young girl’s abusive home life to light, and ultimately got the girl into a safe environment. At the end of the song it’s revealed the the woman was also abused at home when she was younger but no one ever came to her aid so when she saw the little girl she knew she had to do something. This is the story hinted at within the lyrics, and explicitly shown in the official video. As the song lyrics pop up on screen so do the lines of the story. Each story line is placed thoughtfully with each lyric or lack thereof. In the song both Miku and Gumi sing from the perspectives of the characters in the story while the outside narration takes place in the video. Gumi sings from the perspective of the woman while Miku sings from the perspective of the young girl. Throughout the song Gumi and Miku take turns singing the lyrics and never sing at the same time as the other. I believe that the choice to not have the voices overlap one another was intentional to establish that Miku and Gumi are singing from different perspectives in the story and that the perspectives we see are  not happening at the same time.

There are a few more creative details of the song I would like to touch up on. 

Not only does the lyrics and story lines set up the setting for the story of the song but the instrumentation does as well. When Gumi first begins to sing all the instruments aside from the piano stop playing. And even though the piano is still playing it has a very simplistic repetitive rhythm. like its only purpose at the moment is to keep the tempo steady. As the song progresses and as we learn more about the characters instruments are added to that base piano rhythm. As conflict is introduced different instruments join in or stop playing.

The music and rhythms change according to what is happening in the story to put more emphasis on it. (Most songs do this its nothing new but, after listening to this song well over fifty times I have either picked up on some interesting patterns or I am analyzing the song too heavily). in the song when Gumi and Miku both sing the chorus, chanting “Hocus Pocus” and try to lose themselves in the happy lie they have created the piano has a small little rhythm that gets added to the base rhythm. It evokes a sense of hope, playfulness, innocence and naivety. Or in the video when the women is taken away the music comes to a full stop. These characteristics of the song help to influence the emotional value of the song and the story it tells.

In most songs there are lines that repeat throughout the song with slight changes. This mostly happens in the chorus but its not weird for it to happen in the verses either. One aspect of the song lyrics that I really enjoy, looking from a symbolic POV, is the parallels in the lyrics between both singers  even though that each singer portrays a different experience and point of view in the story. Specifically i think of Gumi’s lines “Since the day I made an enemy of the world / the world began to spin / Since the day I made an enemy of the world / We began making time” from the first verse, and Miku’s from the second verse “Since the day the world became a foe /  the world lost it’s color / Since the day the world forgave a lie / my clock began to tick”. The phrasing of Gumi’s and Miku’s lines are very similar but refer and show different experiences. I interpret Gumi’s lines refer to how when the woman takes away the young girl (making an enemy of the world) her life is thrown into a state of chaos and unpredictability (it began to spin) But, because of the woman’s actions she created a time in the young girls life where she could enjoy herself (We began making time). When Miku sings from the perspective of the little girl the lines “since the day the world became a foe” refers to the abuse the girl experiences and how she received no help. She believes the “world lost its color” because there seemed no hope to escape her home life, the world was unforgiving and unkind to her, so she didn’t see the joys the world has to offer. So when the woman took the girl away to live with her in secret,(since the world forgave a lie) she expeienced things that made her happy like, stories, hair ribbons, and a warm bowl of soup. But this new found happiness could only last for so long until the woman was found out (My clock began to tick). Even though the lyrics are able to be phrased so similarly but it’s meanings vastly differ is something that specifically fascinates me as a person who likes to see how smaller aspects of a story (particularly parallelism) come together to form the big picture and create an experience for the audience.

The charm of the Vocaloid software is that it gives the users free range to create whatever they want. The only limit being the user’s imagination. Hocus Pocus is a great example showing that to make a good song with the software, you don’t need to go above and beyond. Sometimes, simplicity and repetition can create an experience that is just as great, if not better, than songs with more complex instrumentation or sound.