Every now and then there comes a time when you buy a pedal on a whim and hope that it delivers. The MIKU STOMP by Korg delivered something that no other pedal on Pedals And Effects has…laughs! I have to admit, when I first heard about this pedal, I was going to pass on it. Then every member of Deltron 3030 went on a social media campaign by challenging each other to buy it! So I bought mine, knowing that at least it would provide some entertainment to Pedals And Effects.

I was lucky enough to have two incredibly talented artists, Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Nick Reinhart, give us their take on the MIKU STOMP. I think what we didn’t cover in the review is an accurate history and explanation of why this pedal was built in the first place so here is some background:

Hatsune Miku is a humanoid character voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media. Hatsune Miku is a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise pigtails. She uses Yamaha Corporation’s Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 3 singing synthesizing technologies combined with Crypton Future Media‘s singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. The voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita and Hatsune Miku has performed concerts onstage as an animated projection. She performed as a hologram before Tupac at Coachella, and even performed on the David Letterman show! Crazy!

Now the MIKU STOMP is a pedal for instruments that let Hatsune Miku sing according to your single note playing (no chords!). Using your instrument to control Hatsune Miku’s vocals has a different audio character than when using step-recording or a keyboard.

As far as our take, you can watch it in the video but I would like to add that I probably have more faith in the MIKU STOMP than Justin or Nick. I can’t wait to put it on the next Big Sir record. Lisa is already a fan of the idea but not sure if she approves of the artwork on the pedal. It’s kind of corny and creepy where they put the foot switch.

-Juan

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Demo: Miku Stomp by Korg

Pedals and Effects