Growing up, I’ve always been the type of person to love singing. I was in choir all throughout middle school and high school, causing me to develop my skills. When I was using the internet, I came across this karaoke app called Sing! produced by a company named Smule. It was there that I became addicted. I could sing and record my vocals to complete a cover with another random person, and then go back and listen to how I did afterwards. It was so amazing to me that I could sing with all kinds of talented people from all over the world ranging from my next door neighbor to people from China, India, Vietnam, and all the other countries in the world! I thought to myself, that I would pay money to Smule to obtain VIP status so that instead of only being able to join others in their pre-recorded cover, people could join me in my pre-recorded covers of songs that I wanted to sing. Doing this everyday, the money was well spent as it was a weekly subscription. After reaching one thousand followers, I left the community due to being bored of singing the same songs over and over again because of the limited songs the app provided at the time.
One day, the app was introduced to me again when I was surfing through Facebook four years later. A friend of my was using the app AND showcasing their face at the same time! It was mind-blowing. I re-downloaded the app, and still today, have it with me. Not only do they now have video features, they so provided users the ability to input their own instrumentals, add lyrics, and manipulate part 1 and part 2 for what lines people would be instructed to sing. This meant that the song choices grew to whatever it was you wanted to it to have! I sang songs from Japanese cartoons all the way to old classics, disney music, and songs from video games. If a song wasn’t created and added onto Smule yet, I would do so myself. It was here that I found people were making Voice Acting scripts! My love for voice acting has bloomed ever since. Now I have a Voice Acting group that I am a leader to, with personally over two thousand and eight hundred followers.
This app has grown very, very important to me. It definitely won’t have any meaning or interest to those who do not like to sing, to voice act, or to create and write stories for others to perform. If you had no desire for any of those, you would definitely find that I’m, as well as many others, am way too overly obsessed. But I would disagree with those that think so, because this app is simply an app that allows me to do what it is that I love to do, which is singing and voice acting, and having the ability to share my work with others.
Due to having so much passion and love for a single app that I use daily, I definitely am a firm believer that there’s something out there that will interest you, and will allow you to connect to others who also have the same interests. I have made some amazing friends online through this app that I would have never met had I not re-download Sing!. It’s been life-changing. People have inspired me to improve myself and I have a ton of connections with people who are either in the actual profession or just simply do these things of things for fun like myself. I get critiques about my performance everyday, as well as encouragement and plenty of love. I can honestly say re-downloaded Sing! has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life because it’s impacted who I am and who I wish to be in the future. Being a leader of a Voice Acting group on this app has taught me management skills, social skills on how to handle tough situations, organizational skills, and just overall being someone that many others look up to and have respect for. It’s just overall impacted my life in such a positive way, I cannot but help to love this app and see myself using it for a long, long time.
Not only do I use Sing! to stay in touch with my friends that I’ve made through there, but the lack of chat boxes and messages on the app has caused many of the users to move to a third-party chatting app called Line, where it’s a lot like Facebook where you have walls, status, and chats you can have either individually or in a group. My group and I, as well as a lot of other friends, use this app as our primary way to communicate together. We get together and have meetings about what to do for our next group projects, and put together ideas and scripts as well as finished products to add onto Sing!’s songs list or voice acting list for the rest of the community to listen to and use for their own pleasure. This is the sole purpose of having a group in the first place for me: to have a group of friends who will voice act together and put things together to give back to the community. It’s really cool because this Line app allows us to make organizational notes and we can have group calls too so it benefits us and makes it easier for us to stay connected and up to date on what’s going on.
We’ve been friends for almost a year now (it’ll be a one-year anniversary in May), and we plan to all visit each other in a week-long summer retreat type thing in August this summer. I’m super excited. For me, these people have my utmost respect. They are like celebrities to me! We’re like a huge family, and it’s just so cool to have become this close to people I’ve never even met before in real-life. Being together with them for this long, I fully trust them and their intentions, and feel safe enough to visit them. Heck, I’ve felt that way for the past seven months now. They’re just amazing, talented people and I wouldn’t have it any other way.