HEY we're back with a new thing!! This took about four months from start to finish (aka organizing the collab to uploading the video) and I'm very proud of myself here. Come get this fun little number stuck in your head~ (Odd Eye)
Welcome back to today's episode of "Zange is here with a new thing and also things they forgot to post earlier"
Today's new release is the gorgeous Namida Iro no Ketsui in which i get to sing as my kamioshi (aka the girl my theme is currently set to)
Today's bonuses that should have been posted earlier but weren't because I am really bad about remembering to post here are:
- Why Not? (in which I kill the whole dang song)
and
- Love to Hate Me (in which we actually sound like the real BLACKPINK, it's sorcery I tell you)
Boy, awards were a great time huh! And I have an excuse to shove the singing presentation here now :>(along with some other bonuses~)
Today's main feature is the exciting MB Countdown featuring the wonderful Silver and Pyromaniac (seriously, I could not have done this without either of them!!) (also for anyone curious - Silver did Phantom of the Bwahpera and Break Free, Pyromaniac did The Mario Rap and Do the Mario)
We have not one but TWO bonuses today as well!
First up, we have a song that I've been meaning to throw at the community for a while but never got the chance (Mafia in the Morning)
Second, we have a very fun song with crazy good blends that is WAY overdue (Moonlight Night ~Tsukiyo no Ban da yo)
Here we are with more regularly scheduled content ^^
Today's main feature is a song i SHOULD have done two months ago but was only just properly pushed to do it (Paint The Town)
psa that the stutter / glitch effect thing at the end was a NIGHTMARE so please forgive how it turned out
Today's bonus feature is probably one of the worst line distributions in a song known to man (SHOCK!)
kinda fell of the train of 'plugging things here' but this one absolutely needs to go here bc it's VERY IMPORTANT
This is my second time using Adobe After Effects EVER, and the first time that it's the only program I used to edit a video. This video is serving as the first cover / trailer for one of my first big covering projects and I am QUITE excited :> (overture)
We return with a song that I'm holding close as part of my personal philosophy for the year, featuring a bit of mixing experimentation. Also, guess who struggled in After Effects to make this again? Thankfully not as much as the last one though. (ICON)
Bonus cover: literally the fastest I've finished something from the idea to the final product, featuring some friends I love very much (Happiness)
I'm back with the second cover of my current covering project and honestly I am VERY proud of how this turned out. It's so pretty!!! You may remember Silver from MB Countdown - safe to say, she did an amazing job here as well ^^
June was chaotic so this got uploaded a few days later than I wanted it to be but here is the next cover in my current project! Honestly I surprised myself with my singing here as I don't usually sing in soprano tones ^^;;
Good evening! Awards is over and now I have an excuse to 1. post the one music presentation I did this year, and 2. change the thread title to better encompass anything else I plan to do that's music related but not singing (spoiler alert I am currently recreating kpop in the MIDI editor I used for this presentation)
As a bonus, the instruments I used for this...
Violin, Flute, Vibraphone, Rock Organ, Cello, Timpani, Distortion Guitar, Tubular Bells, Orchestra Hit, Synth Drum, Electric Bass (pick), and a type of Synth Pad
I've been doing a lot of covering and YouTube shenanigans since my last post here but that's not what this post is about. I just feel inspired to share a couple of the other things I've been working on.
Remember last post when I said I was recreating Kpop in the midi editor I was using? I did about a collective 1/3 of a song before I got really busy and left it be for a while, but this is as presentable as it's gonna get for the time being. I'm not sure if I'll pick this back up again or not, but I'll definitely be back when it's finished. (BOCA)
And this is something I just started last night but already have a decent amount of progress on, but I decided to recreate the instrumental for YOASOBI's song Idol (I was inspired by the stupid orchestra hit - oops) (Idol)
A couple of notes about both:
- There's no percussion on either of these yet, that's going to be its own beast...
- These were both entirely done by ear. I wanted to challenge myself by not using any sheet music as a reference, just a piano app to check if my notes were correct. I'll need sheet music later on for the piano parts in Idol just because I don't want to get those chords wrong but I haven't gotten quite that far on that song yet
Hey so awards were a thing that happened last month!
Unfortunately I only had one music-related presentation, but you can still listen to it here! (as a reminder, it's half acapella, half synth)
As a bonus, here's just the synth part by itself (no midi this time bc i could not get just the bits i wanted to export that way rip)
Unrelated to awards shenanigans is a solo that probably contains the most complex stuff video-wise that I've tackled in a while. (seriously, i learned how to animate text in my video editor for this...)
Please enjoy ^^
eyyyy guess who felt motivated enough to work a little bit more on Idol!
Few notes:
- Still no percussion lol
- This now goes to the end of the first chorus hehe
- I only used sheet music to figure out the piano parts in the prechorus (and even then they might not be totally right bc i could not find good sheet music for this rip), everything else is still done by ear
- I miiiiight go back and fix the telephone effects at the beginning later? idk i kinda hate them rip
I was playing around with a new soundfont in Signal last night when I found a MIDI file on my computer that I wasn't entirely sure what it was. Upon opening it, it seemed to be the start of an original piece I was working on around 2017 or 2018, when I was first dabbling in MIDI editors. The only thing I know for sure about the piece is that I was likely inspired by Kalafina songs because I was listening to a loooot of those at the time.
I'm not entirely sure why I stopped working on it aside from the original editor I was using giving me problems. But I have decided to bring it out of the vaults today. (mystery piece - this is exported with the new soundfont)
On my own YT channel - not much, honestly ^^;; life is life-ing too hard at me right now eek
Elsewhere - quiiiiite a bit!
The Burger Trials
Tl;dr - this is a series of covering challenges hosted every so often by someone I know in the K-pop covering community. The goal is just for teams to do their best within the constraints of the challenge and to have fun - though there are points and small prizes involved, as participants have to vote on which teams they enjoyed most. (the prizes are mainly related to having some advantage for the next challenge, like knowing the song choices in advance)
This year, I participated in two of their challenges - the Emoji Challenge (where we picked an emoji combination upon signing up that would determine the song our team was allotted, and had about a week and a half to complete a cover of that song) and the 96 Hour Challenge (where each team had 96 hours - 4 days - to complete a cover of a song start to finish). I got to sing and mix the audio for my team in both challenges, and I'm pretty proud of both mixes ^^
This one holds a rather special place in my heart, for two reasons: First, I did a segment of this song for a covering competition last year, so I was very excited to be able to return to it. Second, this song is by my all-time favorite K-pop group, Dreamcatcher. This was a song they released for their fans in celebration of their one year anniversary of debuting, so it holds a very special place in the hearts of many of their fans. Plus, it's super catchy! Had a very, uh, interesting lesson in fixing EQ this time around as well (i don't know how EQ works please do not ask me)
So, fun fact: this edition of Burger Trials was the first one to use Japanese songs instead of K-pop. I almost didn't sign up for this one, but then I saw this song on the list, and I knew I HAD to join in. Some of you who have known me long enough may remember that I was a HUGE Love Live fan back in its 'heyday' (aka 2015-2017ish in my eyes), and this song came out during that time. I will say, the audio mix is maybe not my best work but I'm choosing to blame part of it on the time limits we were working with. I still think it turned out pretty good, all things considered. I also got to do the video for this one! I wanted to be able to add an audio visualizer as well, but my computer was throwing a fit and we were running out of time so it sadly ended up not happening. Anyways, don't be surprised if you see more Guilty Kiss from me down the line because my teammates and I were talking about making this an actual covering group lol
Covering Groups
Even though I don't have the time to do a lot of things for my own channel right now, I still find the time to participate in groups run by my friends and fellow coverists. One of my favorites, kkulKIDS, mainly covers K-pop from many smaller and not as well-known groups, but we find time to cover stuff from more popular groups every once in a while. I won't link to any of their stuff, mainly because I don't really do any audio mixing for the group, but if you happen to see us around, feel free to drop a comment ^^
Other Personal Projects
Recently I learned that in one of the Rhythm Toys in Rhythm Heaven Fever has remixes of a few other songs from the series, including a VERY cool remix of the song played in Rhythm Tweezers. Anyways, that has me wanting to return to doing some rearrangements of pieces in the MIDI editor I use, but not entirely sure where to start. I did have one piece I was working on a while back, but I'm choosing to keep it under wraps for now. I think I've mentioned in passing once or twice elsewhere that I would like to host a Killing Game someday where music plays a large part in the game, in terms of vibes and possibly even lore. This piece would be for that game if I ever am able to host it. I'm envisioning it as sort of an elegant final boss encounter theme... Maybe the rest of this year I will collect and put together more pieces for what I have in mind for it.