Let's talk about Sounds

fourteenwings

I know that studios tend to pick artists that have close ties to their video distributors so maybe Xebec used to be distro-d by KING RECORDS. I know that there was a closer collaboration between flying dog and Xebec a few years ago though, but flying dog tends to switch who it's working with often since they only do music and not video.

glennmagusharvey

A post not about sounds but about pictures:

I wonder if I want to disable the album art display in foobar2000.

That's because I don't really like Nana Mizuki's album covers.  Like, those of Rockbound Neighbors and Smashing Anthems.

fourteenwings

That's because I don't really like Nana Mizuki's album covers.

ROCKBOUND NEIGHBOURS has that iconic gingham tux shorts look though!

Also I'm pretty sure I never figured out how to display album art in foobar in the first place.

glennmagusharvey

You can enable a box to display it. If you can't find such a box try looking in the layouts or something like that; I'll look for it when I get back to my machine.



Also that tux and the balloons and stuff looks weird!! and totally unlike the cool awesome flashy bright colorful things that go through my head when I listen to things like Synchrogazer or Sacred Force.

fourteenwings

and totally unlike the cool awesome flashy bright colorful things that go through my head

I guess if it is stopping you from fully enjoying the music, it can be a problem.

Sort of related; a few years ago I used to have recurring dreams that were always set to the same songs. There was one about a technomagical girl who had to leave her small isolated village in a post-apocalyptic world to fight off [don't remember] set to LAMA's Strawberry Burn and then there was one that was basically a paint-animation thing of the the Gallic Wars set to Vitalization which was even weirder because that's my least favorite Symphogear OP.

glennmagusharvey

I like how Absolute Duo's first ED "Believe x Believe" is in B-flat
major and leads right back into the OP "Absolute Soul" which is in
E-flat minor.

glennmagusharvey

ooh, this is interesting

the single release of Absolute Soul
includes an alternate version called "Absolute Soul -blade-", which is
less dance and more metal, and in C minor.

is this the first time I've seen something come in two keys by default?  it might be

bonus find: the first version of Absolute Duo's opening theme animation, paired with the "blade" version of the song

glennmagusharvey

hey fourteenwings why is the stupid ED of Mondaiji stuck in my head

edit oh wait i know it's because it's nearly 4 am

fourteenwings

I put on Ono Kensho's STORY the other day and I was surprised at how much nostalgia I had for it. Well, as much nostalgia as you can have for a thing that came out last year.

fourteenwings

a) The Girl and The Dreamcatcher are probably going to break up. I'm almost glad because now they'll never disappoint me, but I'm also sad because when I think about how much more I liked Sabrina Carpenter's second album over her first. Sometimes artists legitimately get better :P

b) GMH I went and edited your music list again for some reason

glennmagusharvey

I feel bad to say this now that you have but I actually miswrote MEMORIA -- I meant GLORIA.

...i'll fix it sometime.  Also to include the composers for Believe x Believe and a couple other songs probably.

Naas_Human

MEMORIA?

fourteenwings

Oh yeah GLORIA is a YUI cover wow that was a lot of caps.

glennmagusharvey

I'm listening to MEMORIA right now and it actually turns out to be pretty nice.

The only problem is that it has really jarring key changes.  The refrain is in G minor and the verse is in G# minor...which is actually the reverse of the usual gear-change relationship where the refrain's key is higher than the verse's.

Regardless of the direction of the key change, it's sorta like every time change between the two, the whole flavor of the mood/atmosphere changes jarringly.

Also the opening bit opens a bit awkwardly.

If only they made this all one key then I might love it more.

Also updating that doc now.  I need to keep myself from filling up those "year discovered" fields because if I start I could go on for hours.  Anyway I moved your comment about MEMORIA to its appropriate place since it's a multi-key song so therefore I listed it at the bottom of the doc.

Also when did you introduce me to Aoi Eir?  And when did you or various other people get me to watch AKB0048?  (I remember it was part of the first "trilogy" of shows I associate with you.)

Also Forever Here (Fairy Tail ending #20) seems like a nice song.  But I don't feel like signing in again just now just to add that to my spreadsheet.

Zennistrad

I've been on a TMBG binge lately and this song feels more relevant than ever.



As someone mentioned in the comments, TMBG might be the only band ever that can manage to segue from hard-rock guitar to mariachi trumpets in the same song.

fourteenwings

I've been listening to MY LIBERATION/PARAISO (nano) and Tomo e (KiyoShun) this week, two really different singles by two very different artists, but I think both of these singles really capture what I love about these artists. With nano there's lots of "rah rah FIGHT THE POWER" in MY LIBERATION and then "Why does this signify so much pain when it's basically made of rock" in PARAISO. Tomo e was released as a digital single last year, but I had to wait for the full version like some kind of VPN pleb for the physical version.

Sometimes I think hearing the short version of a single builds certain expectations that can never be met, and then there are times when it's a hundred times better than you thought, that's how I felt with Tomo e. Apparently it was inspired by playing with ATSUSHI during [ATSUSHI]'s tour, and I think it's really cool that for like the first time in a while the lead song on a Kiyokiba Shunsuke single isn't overtly romantic (how long has it been, since Fighting Man maybe?). I ended up liking Rokka more than I thought I would, but the real surprise was Zutto Arigatou, which is is basic "just me and a guitar" type song. It really improves on that recipe.

glennmagusharvey

I used to complain about ClariS sounding really...for lack of a better word, "blatant", in that like two of their songs are basically just the progression IV V iii vi over and over again.  Those two songs are "Connect" and "Irony" (not to be confused with "Irony" by Scop).

However, I've lately been really liking two of the EDs used in Absolute Duo, specifically "Believe×Believe" and "Apple Tea no Aji" ("Taste of Apple Tea"), both of which extensively (to the point of near-exclusively) use this same progression.

So I've lost my right to complain about this progression, at least until I figure out what's going on here.

Earthlight_Ray

Hearing Connect always makes me cry.

fourteenwings

An NMB48 member is starting a rock band, hopefully her career won't go the way of YUI and Flower Power. They already have an agency and a debut lined up, which is better than whatever Flower Power had.

I wonder why more prominent members of AKB48 haven't made headways in the music industry. The only one with a music career right now is Itano Tomomi and despite leaning heavily into the popular dance-pop stuff she's less popular than like lol who were basically nobodies when they debuted a number of years after she did.

I know that there are a bunch of them who can't actually sing, and that probably means a good career.

After thinking about this a bit, I tried to compare them to EXILE, who are basically the male "idol" equivalent (maybe that would be Johnny's, but a) Johnny's Jimusho is creepy and so I don't want to like their music so I don't listen to it and b) Akanishi Jin was kicked out of Johnny's and he became an almost international movie star) and I realized that unlike AKB48 there are like... 10 people in every EXILE group and about 50-60 of them overall. AKB48 has like 70+ girls in the main group right now and each subgroup is about half that number.

In fact, I think Johnny's has like 60 guys overall too.

I hate to turn this into a thing but this basically buys into the culture that girls are much more disposable than guys and like, when a girl leaves AKB48 she's basically leaving the "idol" image behind and then her fans just don't care anymore? Whilst SHUN leaving EXILE was like a groundbreaking event and ATSUSHI has one foot out the door and people are dying over his solo stuff. Another thing that's unlike AKB48 is that LDH encourages the guys in EXILE to go off and form serious subunits with people outside the group and even do solo stuff whilst they're still in EXILE.

Then again I have no idea if that would work for AKB48 because their biggest solo artist is probably Watanabe Mayu and she does 50k which is terrible retention for a group that basically never goes below 1M. I seriously think they just don't support the girls' solo efforts, which is probably why practically everybody not Watanabe and KojiHaru from OG has left already.