General Music Thread

glennmagusharvey

Cliff Edge's "Sayonara I Love You"'s refrain starts with almost the same tune as FFI's "Dead Music" (the game over theme).

Expressed in terms of scale degrees, in the minor key:

"Sayonara I Love You": 1 1 2 3, _5 _5 _6, 5 4 3 2 3 2 1 _7

"Dead Music": _5 _#7 1 2 3, _5 _6, 4 3 2 3 2 _4 _5

 

And yes, they both share the same harmony; it's a half-circle of fifths.

fourteenwings

fripSide and ALTIMA both seem to share a similar musical niche.

Dear GMH,

ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS I AM ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT THIS ALWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYS

glennmagusharvey

That's how I know I'm in finals week.

glennmagusharvey

Also, that unidentified song is "kimi ni okuru uta", sung by Sayuri Sagawara.  h/t to someone named Treize on IRC.

Raydere

Been listening to BlackY for the last few hours while making final pushes to study for exams. Among other things, he has a trance remix of "Aquatic Ambience" from Donkey Kong Country.

glennmagusharvey

Going through a list of my favorite songs.  I decided to, instead of just keeping a list, make a spreadsheet, so I can also easily keep track of the composer for each song, as well as a bunch of other data.

I'm having too much fun right now filling in the "keys" section.  I'm remembering this more easily than I remember artist names.

 

There's a LOT of J-pop songs I've been listening to lately that have chromatic-third-relation key pairs between verse and refrain.

Examples:

Nana Mizuki - MUGEN (E minor, G minor)

Cliff Edge ft. Sally Miura - Aishiteru (C# minor, E minor)

Cliff Edge ft. Maiko Nakamura - Endless Tears (F minor, D minor)

Nana Mizuki - Synchrogazer (F# minor, D# minor)

Nana Mizuki - Yakusoku (Eb major, C major)

ALTIMA - Burst the Gravity (F minor, D minor)

This isn't new, though:

Melocure - Pop Step Jump! (F major, Ab major)

Melocure - so far, so near (C minor, A minor)

Megumi Hayashibara - Infinity (C# minor, A# minor)

Nana Mizuki - Take a Shot (C# minor, A# minor)

Minami Kuribayashi - Shining Days (D minor, D major/B minor)

emiko - Only Your Friend (A major, F# major)

 

See, stuff like this just doesn't show up if I'm just listening to stuff and passing it by.  But apparently, putting it in spreadsheet form and sprinkling big data magic on it can do wonders.

glennmagusharvey

speaking of favorite music, i have something new to add to it --

oh my gosh, i am loving this

it's like Beethoven's 8-bars-of-3/4 32 Variations in C minor was crossed with Handel's passacaille in G minor with its greatest chord progression of all time, the full diatonic (8-chord) circle of fifths

(pardon my inflation -- i'll have to do something about it later -- but the earlier list of "favorite" songs is more like "songs i actually enjoy listening to" rather than actual "favorites")

glennmagusharvey

AKB48's "Sasae" is ...a bit weird.

It sounds really nice, but at the same time it sounds overdone.  Like, overly sappy, or something.  And that's coming from someone who likes sappy music.

In any case, I think my taste for it has been superseded with a taste for "Sakura no Ki ni Narou".

lrdgck

glennmagusharvey

Thanks to Pandora, I've been listening to random songs sung by Megumi Hayashibara the past day or so, and it strikes me that the style of her songs (such as "Just be Conscious", "Infinity", and "Sleepless Night"/"Nemuranai yoru wa") seems to be a sort of predecessor to the style of some of Nana Mizuki's music.

fourteenwings

the two most popular seiyuu of their time have similar musical stylings

say it ain't so

Though I guess Hayashibara was still around when Nana took over, but she'd long lost her popularity by then.

glennmagusharvey

So my favorite music list actually came in handy.  I went and inputted every song on it into Pandora.

Basically nothing from Japan came up.  Unless there are a few that I'm missing because I couldn't be arsed to dig through all the songs with really common titles (e.g. "Wishing" or "Meteor"), the only two songs I definitely found are "The World" (from .hack//SIGN) and "Canta per me" (from Noir), both by Yuki Kajiura.  I did notice that it recognizes Megumi Hayashibara, AKB48, and Porno Graffiti, but I don't think it got the songs from them that I listed.  (For example, it lacks "Infinity" (from Lost Universe), "Beginner", and (probably) "Yo Bailo".)

But...no Nana Mizuki, no fripSide, no angela, no savage genius, no JAM Project, no COOLON, no Cliff Edge, no Aoi Eir -- and of course, nothing more obscure than that.  To be fair, I guess it had some AKB48, Natsumi Abe, Yuki Kajiura, Megumi Hayashibara, Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada...maybe I've just been listening to too much anisong...

It also didn't get any of the Chinese songs I listed, though I only had a few.  It did get both the Korean songs, though that's partly because one of them is Gangnam Style.  The other is a Girls Generation song...and it recognized that artist -- then again, one of its genre stations is "K-pop radio".  Which kinda pisses me off since I'd want a J-pop radio and a C-pop/Cantopop radio before I'd even bother asking for K-pop, and I've been a bit resentful of J-pop ever since I went to two anime conventions where there were huge K-pop booths and barely any (if any at all) representation for J-pop...

On the other hand, it got the vast majority of the European and North American songs I listed.  This included both a bunch of dance-type songs, general pop, one track of Christian pop, and such.

Another few patterns seemed to emerge, regarding both my repertoire and Pandora's recognition of it:

1. Most of the music I listed from the United States has been a major hit of some kind -- from "Paint it Black" to "Graduation" to "Time After Time" to "As Long As You Love Me".  This kinda makes sense since I don't usually go to seek out American pop music but just run into it randomly -- and famous tracks are easier to run into since they're played more often on the radio and in auxiliary media (e.g. TV commercials and amateur music videos).

2. Many of the European tracks I listed are dance tracks.

3. Pandora seems to be able to readily recognize anything that I recognize as "famous", as long as we're talking about western regions.  On the other hand, Pandora has a poor ability to recognize anything that was never directly "sold" as music -- for example, it fails to find the Kidsongs' song "Water World" or anything from this album of songs to teach children good moral character.  It also fails to find "I am the Wind" (the ending theme of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) or even "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (the theme song of the famous TV show Cheers...though, ironically, there's a remix/cover of it that is recognized).

The only ones I was a bit surprised by were:

* recognized "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton

* recognized "Shadow" by Franki Love

* recognized "Baba Yetu" by Christopher Tin

* recognized "Ugly Bug Ball" by the Sherman Brothers

* didn't recognize Nana Mizuki

* didn't recognize basically anything from Japan...then again, I already saw this coming when I started doing this process...so maybe I'm surprised that it recognized anything at all

* didn't recognize Yanni's "Farewell"

* didn't recognize Tess (Tess Mattisson)'s "Stay" (after recognizing various other dance tracks)

Naas_Human

http://tokusatsunetwork.com/2014/07/22/voyager-to-release-first-album/ ;

I will buy this and I will die from overdosing on hope.

glennmagusharvey

For some reason, I think that Aoi Eir looks kinda like Yukiho Hagiwara on the AUBE cover.

lrdgck

edit: at the moment, this is probably my favourite rendition of "Layla". First, like, two or three minutes is talk, then they begin the playing.

RedEyedAbyss

http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsVSBhSwJg&start1=0&video2=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEmAHAs_rz8&start2=0&authorName=No+one+is+safe.

One of ARK Music Factory's "music" video abominations becomes a lot more appropriate and entertaining with more fitting music in the background.

glennmagusharvey

Anyone recognize this tune?

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0HePOLHokhy

It's a Russian folk song, and it's really catchy, and I forgot the name of it.

lrdgck

Also, sorry Glenn.

RedEyedAbyss

He was shot 6 times by a man on the run.

It's creepy that the precise number describes not one, but two recent victims of police brutality.

glennmagusharvey

Does anyone recognize this tune?  http://vocaroo.com/i/s1hkqzgiGYDj

Especially that second bit of it.  That rhythm and melodic shape.  I just can't remember where I've heard it.  I think it's a folk song of some sort, but it might just be some random soundtrack thing or something.

lrdgck

 

I tried to think of some way to describe it, but I guess I'll just let you see for themselves. You guys seem to like this kind of crap, so perhaps it'll be to your tastes. While one could say it's yet another case of Weird Japanese Thing, this time listening to it doesn't cause your brain to rot. I personally found it not bad (if still a bit of a guilty pleasure).

(Sorry Glenn. Sounds a bit like something that I might have once heard, but I can't put any name on it.)

DYRE

BABYMETAL seems to be like, the gimmickiest of all the super gimmicky Japanese pop groups.

They're apparently popular though so, uh, good for them, I guess...

glennmagusharvey

Not sure why you're apologizing, but for some reason I think I may have run across this some years ago.  It looks vaguely familiar.

glennmagusharvey

Also unrelated:

When I first heard "Only The Fairy Tale" from Mai-HiME, I thought it was an odd style for Yuki Kajiura.  Then again, I didn't know her style well back then.

Having heard the MadoMagi soundtrack, and both "Sis Puella Magica" and "Decretum", well I guess it's just a different facet of her style.  Both of those are also minor-key tracks with very lyrical melodies, three-beat rhythm, and modal tonality (especially heavy use of the subtonic in bVII-i sequences).

Naas_Human

Watch Fate/Zero. The soundtrack is plain Kajiura. Emphasis on plain.

glennmagusharvey

The next Kajiura series I'll likely watch is probably Elemental Gelade, actually.  Or maybe Madlax or El Cazador de la Bruja.  So I'll be running into her again.

glennmagusharvey

I HATE IT WHEN TRACKS ARE RELEGATED TO THE STATUS OF LOST TRACKS

 

by that i mean tracks that are not included in the soundtracks

glennmagusharvey

Song I was looking for earlier turns out to be "Makkura Mori no Uta", or "Song of the Dark Forest" (or "Song of the Pitch-Black Forest").

While it shares its name with various folk songs, and even sounds kinda folk-ish at times, it appears to just be an original J-pop composition written and originally sung by Hiroko Taniyama.  It was covered by Asami Imai (as Chihaya Kisaragi), and thus appeared in a Chihaya medley collection.  Which is how I ran into it.

 

And here I was wondering when iDOLM@STER started including Russian folk songs...

RedEyedAbyss

It's been two long years now, since the top of the world came crashing down.

Hey, remember when the Dixie Chicks said they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas? Good times.

glennmagusharvey

Someone posted this song in a welcome thread on another forum:

IJBM: the song is called "Prayer in C", but it is actually in A minor.