Hatsune Miku (Japanese: 初音ミク), sometimes called Miku Hatsune, is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a teenage girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).[2]
The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for first (初, hatsu), sound (音, ne), and future (ミク, miku[n 1]), thus meaning "the first sound of the future",[3] referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".