How is Splatoon's SQUID singing created? 

Let me know which of the three new idols is your favourite! Personally I'm a Shiver fan, I think!

Plot twist: Nintendo actually figured out how to make a squid sing and just didn't tell anyone

Simlish (Sims), Animalese (Animal Crossing), and Inkling/Octoling language (Splatoon) are the holy trinity of the most weirdest and fascinating video games languages.

imagine getting ready to do something serious and you're just given a piece of paper with gibberish and told to sing it

I'm surprised they didn't just drown the voice actors while they sung.

whats crazy to me is how the voice actors for pearl and marina actually resemble their characters. i wonder if that was a coincidence or not

To me off the hook sounds distinctivly more english as if it actually was

I wonder if in editing the vocals someone said "that's sounds more like a dolphin, do it again."

Considering the fact that the song is known as an Incantation (ink-antation in game) that can snap people out of hypnosis and seemingly magically stick around in listeners heads, it's really fitting that Mari identified it as a spell

One thing I love about inklings and octolings voices is inklings sound much more angular while octolings sound more round in their voices

It's really interesting to hear about this from the perspective of the voice actors! I never thought about how wierd it would be to be given a page of gibberish and told so sing it

I always wanted to know how to make a kid sound like a squid

I've been working on a Splatoon inspired album myself this year, and my approach to squidifying vocals were mainly a low pass & high pass filter, a rapidly automated sweeping EQ, tons of compression, a touch of ring modulation and some slight bitcrush, and a little more. Lots of fun experimenting with these kinds of sounds, there's probably dozens of approaches to achieve similar results! =D

fyi, the "Squid Sisters" aren't actually sisters, that's just the name chosen for their idol duo group. They're actually cousins, as revealed by the chat logs in Octo Expansion that is given to Agent 8 post-live texting.

I feel like mentioning that the majority of vocaloids are NOT fully synthesized, they take sounds from singing from recordings of the voice actors which can then be rearranged, like a digital piano, the end product ends up sounding robotic but it’s still using recordings from real humans. I get the point you were making however

I actually knew this. But there was definitely a lot of other things like the squid sisters voice actors who I had no idea about. I did know Pearl and Marina’s voice actors however

What I always found interesting was that Marina actually sounds like she is singing in english.

4:27 I'm so obsessed with the game that I knew what song it was just from the gibberish

the idol themes in each game are completely unique, splat 1 is J-Pop, Splat2 is a mix of rap and EDM in an American style, and 3 is a mix of traditional Japanese, modern India, with a little bit of Brazilian festival

It's so cute to see the to Voice Actors enjoying their lives while recording, they really could count as the humanization of the Squid Sisters

Imagine you go up for a singing audition and they tell you to sing a song in a goofy squid language

Seeing them dance while singing in the booth makes it really feel like they got the vibe of the idols and really embodied them

I think it is crazy how the voice actors for pearl and marina actually resemble their characters idk if thats a coincidence or not.

I always wanted to have my voice to sound like the Octo/Inklings but never could get it right due to the limitations of programs I had and the limited availability of tutorials (and tutorials that aren’t straight to the point, so there’s a lot of filler commentary)

i think we do actually have the demo, it's called "Shy-Ho-Shy (City of Color Demo)" (Shy-Ho-Shy in the lore is the Squid Sisters' manager/composer, but the name is similar to shio fuji's)

3:44 I think I know where Fujii's song demo went! A CD for the "Live in Makuhari" concert performance by the Squid Sisters has an extra song called City of Color (Shy-Ho-Shy Demo). This song was, in-universe, recorded "by the producer of the Squid Sisters." (Shy-Ho-Shy's real-world counterpart is very likely Shiho Fujii, both the "producers" for these songs.)

I cannot express how badly I’ve been wanting a video on this! You did an amazing job explaining how this is done! Bravo :)

11:50 I find it uncanny that the VAs for pearl and marina really look alike their respective characters, so odd but funny to see

4:33 i'd love to see their reaction at arriving at a place to record with no context at all and the lyrics to sing were non-sense squid noises

The music in Splatoon really sells the feel that the game has, from Japanese idols to Modern pop and lastly a mix of traditional Japanese/Samba/Indonesian (maybe?) They really sell the type of style splatoon games have

9:32 I like how Inkling Girl said something like “I agree” in her muffled and speed upped voice line...

I’ve always wondered how people can just make up a language It seems difficult

This video makes me appreciate all of the singers/VAs even more.

finally been waiting how to do this voice for years

I find it funny how similar some lyrics sound to actual words sometimes, that there’s actually a RU-vidr somewhere who primarily gives Splatoon songs lyrics based on their sounding They hasn’t touched it in a while since they’ve pretty much touched a lot of Splatoon 1 and 2’s songs already, but they did say that when the opportunity arrises again for 3, they might continue on it. I believe their name was Caitlyn Koi or something like that

I'm glad you acknowlegded the existence of the lyrics. Not many people know of their existence.

I cannot wait until we find out the voice actors for Deep Cut!

love how the chosen singers were Katie and Mari and voicing Callie and Marie respectively

Love how Off The Hook's VAs even resemble the characters they voiced (mostly the hairstyles)!

“She even sang while doing the dishes!” I feel attacked

When I think of the Splatoon squids, I imagine them wity walled eyes yelling SQUEEEG! at the top of their voices and loading a gun with real bullets. Regardless, it's interesting how supprisingly complex Squidish is.

Splatoon music rly be representing that feeling you have when you listen to a banger song with foreign language

3:21 deliberately avoiding french, nice

Looking back at Splatoon 1 clips makes me really appreciate how far Splatoon has come visually as well as audibly!

8:25 For me it sounds like more glitchy in the beta version.

God I love Splatoon

Gotta love how off the hook's VA's look like pearl and marina themselves.

So does that mean you could revert it back to normal...? 🤔 I'm quite curious and would gladly take this challenge. Even MAKING Squid voices sound interesting

2:39 your nonsense lyrics were sung so beautifully. Good job.

9:08 he sounds kinda like Alastor from Hazbin Hotel, theres a little difference between those 2 voices of Alastor and his but yeah

It's weird how every idol so far coincidentally resembles their VA

2:20 I was just listening to the video and I could I have sworn you said “she INSULTED fellow employees to see what they thought” and had to go back to double check and then saw it said CONSULTED LMAO

I liked the detail about the voice actors / singers a lot, but the part where the voice effect is explained is pretty cut short imo. There are clearly more effects used to give that squid singing like format filters, distortion, probably some phasing etc. Would've loved a more detailed breakdown of that

Ooh, this is gonna be really dang interesting! I kinda learned how to mimic Inklish on-command, essentially moving up my throat until I can make a Villager’s “Hrrrnnn” noise, and then gargling saliva with it. I actually did this to voice Futaba when me and the lads were playing through Persona 5 and my throat somehow survived. Another cool thing is that the Inklings and Octoling have different voices, likely because of the accents required for Octarian language! There’s so much detail in this series, I can’t wait to hear how it’s all done!

We would love to have Japanese subtitles. I think Japanese Splatoon fans would be interested in the content of this video!

3:33 MIKU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was literally wondering the other day how these squid vocals were created as I was playing through the final boss and credits of Splatoon 1, where the Squid Sisters sing 2 amazing songs. Now I know, and it’s extremely interesting to me. Many thanks for the video!

(11:49) they even look like off the hook...oh yeah huh

It's crazy to me how close to English some of the things they sing actually sound, while being a completely original language. It's Splatoon music that REALLY makes me wish Nintendo would release their games' songs online on RU-vid/Spotify/other

I was just wondering about this literally yesterday. Thanks for making this! ^^

Just in case anyone was curious, the two pages of song lyrics are of Calamari Inkantation (Squid Sisters) and Muck Warfare (Off the Hook) :)

6:35 Speaking from my own experience of teaching myself to sing A Red Apple Fell From The Sky, I feel for these girls.

Oh this was actually a really interesting topic, great job with the video!

Wow, this is crazy! That question had been bugging me for a while, as I love to listen to Splatoon music from time to time, so I was very enthusiastic to find this video! One of my personal favorite songs from Splatoon is Seafoam Shanty.

Fun fact: The voice of Marina, has her own RU-vid channel! You can find her here! ⬇️ ru-vid.com

Speaking about Deep Cut. I think Frye could very well have Pearls voice actress and Shiver has some Callie vibes in her voice and also a bit Marina like. I listened carefully and their voices sound similar to those 2/maybe 3 older Splatoon idols. So maybe they didn't recruit new people for Frye and Shivers part. Also congrats team Rock. I was also on Team Rock lol

Wow i imagened how the singing was without the filter and it sound rlly good bit with the filter, yes it is like a squid

For anyone looking for Splatoon-esque music, the Japanese band Necry Talkie has a very similar visual and musical style to in-game bands like Wet Floor. Their album Zoo!! Is a must-have!

This was a great video, thank you for sharing. Love to see the names and faces to all the singers. Excited to eventually see who our new idol voice actors all are.

Always glad to see the talented composers and musicians at Nintendo get some more recognition.

When I was in middle school back in splat 1 days, I somehow got the idea that the VAs put their heads in water for all the voice lines… 💀💀💀… I started telling my friends that like it was trivia 😭

And i thought they just dunked their heads in water. 😂

“By introducing undulating tones, I made the music reminiscent of the imaginary squid world” *In short terms, she wrote banger music*

I'm so slow. I had to hear "Callie and Marie" about a dozen times before I finally understood the "calamari" pun.

great video once again! i am SO excited for splatoon 3 😭😭

Good job uncovering how the voices of the inklings and octolings were made. When I listened to the soundtrack of Splatoon, I truly loved the vocals of some of the songs. So much that I felt like singing what felt like cephalopod gibberish, and enjoyed doing so. Given Shiho Fuji's strategy of wanting songs like these to get hooked onto people's minds, all things considered, I'd say it actually worked! Thanks to you, Tom, I got to know how the undulating tones of the voices (which is perhaps the part of the vocals that got me hooked in the first place) through the use of a pass-noise filter that changes back and forth rapidly, making human voices sound like they're underwater. And it felt surreal to see all this gibberish written down to read. I can just hear what the songs sound like by reading them. I'd say that all the work done by the singers/voice actors was brilliant, but we mustn't forget Yuki Tsuji, Splatoon's sound designer who provided the voice of all the playable common inklings and octolings. Also, fun fact: the devs at nintendo also used this strategy of undulating tones in a previous game; you might not have even realized it. And that game is the Zelda title Majora's Mask on the N64. In this game, protagonist Link can use masks to transform into various creatures-- one of them being the Zora. This is where undulating tones are actually used-- Zora Link's yells are just regular Link's yells, but edited to sound underwater. Given what you said about how the main cast of Splatoon's voices were made, it is most likely that nintendo used this same trick for Zora Link in Majora's MASK.

Am I the only one who thinks the pictures of the voice actors together is just the most wholesome thing ever? 😄

Team Rock ftw! The creation of these voices certainly seems more complex than what they do at studios when making the voice of say the smurfs, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and other fictional characters who have voices different sounding from most humans. Quite interesting stuff indeed!

Loved this vid! Such a rich lore and production with the Splatoon series. There’s a reason the directors always showed up in white coats 😂

this is very well done. you are really selling that those two woman spend a lot of time, energy and dedication to a game. Their work is both a big part of the whole, but also just subtle world building: That what they did feels in universe without sticking out - this perfect seamless fit shows their skill.

I'VE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THE VOICES. THANK YOU SO MUCH- THIS ACTUALLY HELPS A LOT

2:07 Caitlin Koi: 😱😱

I'm glad that the music quality has been consistent throughout the whole franchise. I absolutely love the rock and roll remix of the splattack

12:41 big man schlatt

9:26 I think that how similar it sounds is impressive either that or im just stupid

In the song Every Planet We Reach is Dead by Gorillaz they have the Splatoon singing style kind of. So if there's a behind-the-scenes on how that song was made then we can kind of know how they changed These Girls singing into the squid versions. The Splatoon singing style pops up specifically at 3:57 within Every Planet We Reach is Dead and ends at 4::29.

All the effort and love that goes into this game's music is awesome.

Holy crap, this was an AWESOME video!! Honestly, this was so fascinating to watch, thank you for this!

Thomas I love ur videos! Thank sm for uploading keep up the great work

Your videos are incredible! Keep up the good work.

This was so cool to watch! Great Video!

I always wondered how they sung it, I thought they were just really good voice actors.

I assumed it was random sound effects and digital synthetic music But it’s actually more along the lines of like the sims That’s neat

Splatoon music just makes me so unreasonably happy, I even pick up the game to listen to the final minute music. It's so good

man watching this after playing the 3rd game you can tell the difference in the quality. I love this series

HALLELUJAHHHHH THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR VIDEOS THOMAS. You really make great videos and i remember watching the luigis mansion video when it came out! You've really improved from video to video and you make even the most boring topics sound interesting!!! Cant thank you enough

Awesome video! Love your videos! They are great!

Another Banger Video Thomas! Great Stuff!

Great job going over not only how the effect was done, but also the story behind the characters and 'genre'! I was actually trying to figure out how the squid voice effect was made so I could recreate it, now I know how to do it. I can't wait to get Splatoon 3 and enjoy it as much as I did the second game. (oh, and maybe I'll finally try the original Splatoon since I never actually played my copy of it lol)

3:38 miku :)