Our Metamorphosis.
:: Bennett’s Beginnings.
Half a decade ago, a moth’s wings fluttered, and two people started working on a side project for a free voice library. Bennett was a passion project that Sophie and I worked on for several years in our own time. Sophie was somebody who had dabbled in making voices for the open-source engine UTAU before, and I was a vocalist interested in preserving my voice via synthesis.
Our close friend Nindhia joined the project early on to assist with creating demonstrations. We hired and worked with others within our scene, but the bulk of the work was done by me, Sophie, and Nindhia. All three of us have a deep connection to and interest in Vocalo culture and singing, and those elements came into focus as we created Bennett.
By the time we were preparing to launch him in 2023, we’d discussed amongst ourselves what we hoped would be the outcome of his release. How amazing would it be if he could be a young producer’s first foray into creating their own music? We knew from experience that learning to use vocal synthesis software was not easy, and that there weren’t a lot of voices made with beginners in mind, especially not for free. Ensuring that Bennett had an easy-to-use voice and flexible license for creative use was a top priority for us, so it came as a surprise to us that by posting a short teaser on a newly made Twitter/X account, people were getting excited about the prospect of a brand-new commercial voice release.
Once the dust had settled and it was revealed what Bennett was, much of the feedback we received was that he sounded amazing as a free voice library, but they had been hoping for a commercial product. We were still very proud of our work, but it did make us think, “Maybe we could actually be commercial developers.”
:: Next Steps.
As exciting as a prospect like this was, we wanted to take it slow and prepare ourselves properly. Our other UTAU voice libraries – Esther and SHIRA – were created with the same passion that drove Bennett’s creation, but we were also working on honing our skills and expanding our connections. For Esther, we developed a new recording list to further smooth out her English, and SHIRA was made 100% out of sine waves and noise manipulated by Sophie.
Developing a commercial version of Bennett was our goal from day one of deciding to pursue being commercial developers. We wanted a name that communicated his versatility, so I suggested “Bennett Fantasia” very early on, and it stuck. We tested many different vocal and performance styles, refining every detail down to the micro. I began practicing more regularly, as I knew there were things I wanted to offer to make Bennett as versatile as we wanted him to be.
Between 2024 and 2025, we spoke to many different people working professionally in the vocal synthesis development industry who offered us their invaluable advice, and as we bounced between projects, we kept working on developing our pitch and concepts. During this time, we recruited our fourth team member, Katsi, who was a friend I’d known for a long time. She filled in a lot of blind spots for us when it came to development tools and technology, especially in the coding and AI department. VoCreatures would not be the same without her.
I want to shout out Taylor Hennessy of Eclipsed Sounds, Uta, Nachokuma and INFOHOLIC of Chorical for being some of our biggest supporters. We would not be here today without any of you, thank you genuinely from the bottom of my heart.
:: Production.
We clicked with Techno-Speech instantly, as they were very enthusiastic about our project and worked with us to devise how the voice library would be structured. We had already been discussing elements such as incorporating my operatic singing, but now we could finally devise an exact plan and finalise our list of songs.
We also told Techno-Speech that we wanted an Australian English dictionary, and we spent a lot of time going back and forth to make sure it fit our specifications. It was also suggested to us to record additional data to make the voice bilingual, and we agreed to the additional workload.
Recording and editing Bennett Fantasia was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was a grueling three months where I was spending six to eight hours every day alone in my tiny home studio, and it felt like everything that could go wrong did. Several pieces of equipment had to be replaced, but all of the other preparation I’d done in the pre-production phase stayed strong, and by the end, we had a solid several-hour dataset spanning four octaves and multiple singing styles.
Thankfully, editing was not solely handled by me, as Sophie and I split the work. You learn a lot about your own voice listening to and staring at spectrograms for hours at a time. It was my first time using tools such as RX, and by the end of the development period, I felt extremely confident in doing so.
Though it took several revisions with Techno-Speech to get Bennett Fantasia to his final form, every single update saw him sounding better and better. We made the choice to push back his release date to ensure we had time for this, but it was absolutely worth it to get the version of the voice we’re showing to you now. We are extremely proud and excited to finally be sharing him with you after all these years of work.
:: Announcements.
Now that we have officially announced Bennett and released his first product demonstration, “Daisy” by Staircatte, his demo rollout has begun! Please look forward to several more demos to be released all the way up to his launch on September 27th! These demos include product showcases created by the VoCreatures team in-house as well as the traditional song demos you’ve come to expect from voice library releases.
We’re also currently preparing promotional materials for the limited-run physical copy of Bennett Fantasia that will become available for pre-order on September 27th. We thank you for your patience at this time, and look forward to sharing more details with you as they come.
:: Final Thoughts.
Thank you for supporting us all this time; we’re so excited for the future of vocal synthesis and our company. It feels incredible to finally show the world what we’ve been capable of all this time. VoCreatures, first and foremost, is a company built by musicians who want to support the needs of our fellow artists, and this has been our mission statement as far back as the first Bennett release.
Fantasia is just the beginning, and we look forward to sharing new projects with you in the new year. Thank you all so much from the very bottom of my heart.
Daniel
CEO, Vocal Director
VoCreatures 