VoxWave and ALYS : My experience as a lyricist Do you know ALYS, the first frenchspeaking virtual singer? If you're not into japanese pop culture there isn't the slightest chance. Well, I know her. I've always been really interested in that kind of technology, because of the exceptional social phenomenon it created. Just imagine, thousands and thousands of artists all around the world creating together, without any borders! I love that. Well, friends of mine decided to found a society called VoxWave and to produce the first frenchpseaking virtual muse : ALYS. Their project is focussed on the cultural and artistic branch of the virtual singers that I loved so I proposed to help them. Soon, I became a lyricist for them and part of their closest crew. Writing lyrics was so complicated! I've been an amateur writer for years and thought it would be like writing a poem. I was so wrong. When you write lyrics, you have to think about... The music! It's not as obvious as it seems. Each word is important. You have to respect the rythm, the strong times, the pronunciation of each word have to recreate the melody even acapella. And I wasn't used to that at all. My first try was really poetic an lyric but for a song it was useless. I was so happy with it that when the compositor told me he couldn't use them I almost cried. In the begining, I didn't saw the problem so I tried to sing my lyrics by myself, with the music and I couldn't. The syllables didn't respect the melody enough so it was almost impossible to respect the text while singing. So I learned to write while listening the music or humming slowly the words I use. Now, I'm even prouder of thenew lyrics I gave them because being a lyricist is such a challenge!