笑顔を取り戻せ！

We're getting closer to the day which will mark 5 years since my friends, together with many others, have been taken from this world, leaving a huge empty place in our hearts and minds...
Without them being these days near me, and while others are leaving me in their past, I still cannot forget them. I still want to show them that their efforts weren't in vain, and I'm still capable of making my songs heard. I will try to recover even harder, and compose even more songs, because we need to remember how to smile.

"Bring back your smile!" 「笑顔を取り戻せ！」 feat. 初音ミク, GUMI, Tempo-P & neutrinoP - Vocalekt Visions
https://soundcloud.com/neutrino006/gumi-vocaloid-2016

Another tribute to beauty

Because I felt like I had to do it.
Thank you RYTHEM, for the true beauty!

NND here: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm28172985

Confesie

Nu am scris de mult pe aici, si niciodata in Romaneste.
Insa acum scriu, pentru ca am ceva de spus.
Cu tote eforturile si ajutorul primit, in curand voi fi nevoit sa renunt la singurul lucru pe care-l mai pot face: creatie muzicala.
Am primit foarte multe donatii care sa ma ajute in momente critice, am primit de asemenea foarte mult sprijin, toate de la prieteni din afara tarii (exceptie un student roman care a putut sa stoarca din putinul pe care-l avea sa ma ajute financial), nimeni din aceasta tara nu vrea sa ajute un decazut, un zombi, un artist care a incercat o vreme sa aduca ceva frumusete in cotidianul cenusiu al acestei tari.
Dar deja sunt eu cel care m-am obisnuit sa intind mana sa cersesc, si asta nu imi place! Trebuie sa ma opresc din cersit, si daca nu reusesc sa ma redresez cumva fizic, atunci nu mai am ce face.
Te intrebi ce se intampla? Uite: sunt unul din cei pe care sistemul manelar de cartier l-a impins afara din sistem, mi-au fost taiate toate drepturile, dar sunt bun doar cand vine vorba sa platesc taxe, impozite si facturi de intretinere. Cand a fost vorba sa obtin si eu ceva pentru munca mea, am fost tratat ca voluntar, fiind nevoit sa platesc din propriul meu buzunar pentru ca am muncit, pentru ca sa mi se scoata ochii mai apoi ca nu am facut ce s-a stabilit, uitandu-se de fapt ca tot procesul de care eram raspunzator era munca depusa pentru a crea materialul ce urma a fi prezentat, iar prezentarea sa nu mai depindea de mine.
Uite asa, sunt de asemenea invitat in comunitati care au un punct comun: animatia Japoneza. Insa aceste comunitati, la fel ca si cele centrate pe vocaloid, sunt extrem de rasiste si de elitiste. Daca nu e Japonez, nu are ce sa fie promovat. Si daca e un roman, atunci trebuie sa fie redus la tacere absoluta. Felicitari, lume, ati reusit sa ma aduceti la tacere!
De aceea, eu voi inceta in curand sa mai creez muzica sau orice material asociat cu vocaloid, chiar daca inca sunt primul si singurul roman care a devenit producator oficial. Nu mai am nici stare materiala, si nici putere fizica. Nu mai pot continua astfel, si, in ciuda faptului ca ziceam ca "nu voi renunta, nici disparea, pastrand tacerea", voi disparea foarte curand complet. Nu stiu si nu ma mai intereseaza daca ceea ce am creat va ramane ca amintire a existentei lui neutrinoP, dar eu, sigur voi disparea. Si va incepe chiar de anul acesta: voi ajunge pe strazi pur si simplu, fara nimic, si voi sfarsi pe langa vreun tomberon cand nu voi mai avea putere nici macar sa caut prin gunoi dupa o coaja de mancare stricata....

The Contrary Man

Here I am, putting some effort to create something that I haven’t heard yet in the vocaloid circles. But it is definitely nothing new as genre, style, or elements used.
The song has lots of influences from lots of styles, including big names like Dream Theater! Yes! <- the band! LOL
It also shows what are my genuine style preferences, in which I should excel creating. But, compared to the other EDM song I created “Happy to Be”, which hit rapidly over 1000 views on YouTube, this song, for some reason, didn’t managed to reach to 100! The stats are differently though on NND, where (as usual) the number of views, reposts and comments are at my average level, showing a little more interest in this genre than in EDM.
The creation of “The Contrary Man” came in mind under a huge reprise of pain, in which I was thinking about showing the possibilities I have to play various instruments using only my old defective YAMAHA DGX505 keyboard. Yes, I haven’t used any guitars, and neither drums, other than what this keyboard provides. Everything else is about how to play the instruments, and how to process the sounds. Indeed, this is also a little show-off about my current skills as keyboard player, even with all the paralysis going on, I’ve managed to keep a very precise and complex rhythm, and to perform the other instruments with very high accuracy, which is specific in Progressive Metal genre. One cannot perform Progressive Metal without having high precision in playing the instrument!
Well, with this being said, let’s enjoy this ballad (it shows also contradictions happening currently in my own mind!), which has the lyrics composed by none other than Sir JWard-L!

NND here:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm26433890

YouTube's new loudness normalizer

It seems YouTube indeed is 'enhancing' everything we are posting lately, so I decided to do a test to see which sound quality will remain untouched as loudness factor. Will not mention the other quality factors here, which are already altered, being compressed from PCM WAV to other formats which aren't lossless at all. But at least, the loudness factor to remain the same!
So I decided to remake the song "Hello Sunshine" feat. GUMI using what I should have used if it was about making a VINYL RECORD.
The results:

As you can see, the wave form show a clear high range of dynamics, clear sound, nothing hits the ceiling of a limiter, or the limits of the max audio range! Surprisingly, YouTube's encoders also aren't touching this sound either, being in the range of normal loudness considered by their encoder to be NORMAL.
My recommendation: since YouTube decided to hit the loudness factor and to crush the quality on the non-dynamic sounds, let's all start using the clever sound creation! Let's maximize the quality by rising the clearness of the recording and to increase the DYNAMICS at the normal or at least at the decent levels. On PCs it will be very obvious, but the mobile phones and other mobile devices are already having a bunch of compressors on their sound cards, but even so, the higher dynamics sound will definitely show up better on those devices too!
In the end, let's listen all to the test I made:

Vocaloid music and content producer

That title tells about what I'm actually doing these days. The 'content' term refers to the fan made concert production, but that will soon be taken down.

Now let's talk about being a VocaloidP, a "legit" one, and this is my personal statement about it.
It doesn't matter how good you are at, or what style you have, in the end you will find out that you cannot be a professional in this. You cannot be living out from working hard on composing your music, program the voices, sell the songs, because the hard part isn't to create it seems, but instead, the hardest part is to get noticed! Not just being noticed, but your works, even if distributed for free listening, are not shared at all, not spiking the curiosity of the people.

Recently I remade one of the best songs I made (being also the song that has won a contest as being the best production!) on the purpose of testing the new Vocaloid4 engine, using my favorite character's voice: Megpoid (GUMI). Both me and my partner were left speechless after hearing how it sounds now, the expressiveness and the POWER it gained made me personally loving this voice even more.
This is the DEMO:

But let's see what are the reactions: Despite of the normal expectations of seeing the view counters going up, they were all stuck below 100! No one wants to listen to this song, and I think I figured it out why: mainly because is not with Miku! This happens to almost all the good songs out there.
Also there it happens something else: by having a clean sound, as close as possible to the professional sounds mastered in home production unit it's still not good. It's not LOUD enough, it doesn't kills the listeners' ears while hearing the song on average ear buds of the phone, and of course, my works aren't getting through. I need to step on my all life knowledge, trash it, and use the ultimate over-compression method, with hard limiters, very hard clipping, tons of distortions, well... everything that is used today in EDM for example, mostly in the home made productions that would put the hardest compressed sound of an FM radio station to shame. And they are calling that "mastered" !!! Uhh-Ohh!

Ok, let me describe now the song a little.
You will hear there drums, bass, electric guitars, and some synths. Yes, the synths are there from my old Yamaha DGX505. But guess what! Everything else is also there because of the same DGX505! I wasn't using any other instrument. Just methods of recording, processing, editing and altering the sound that comes out from this keyboard. I think it sounds decent!
Then comes the voices set. The main voice especially needs a little attention. THose who have ever listened to Megumi Nakajima singing as Ranka Lee in the Macross Frontier series, will hear this voice clearly. Yes, it's my pride and joy to actually manage to program this voice in the way I desired it for so long, and being such a good quality voice (thanks to mr Murakami for capturing and preserving it this way!) when inserted in the new V4 engine of the editor, it comes out even better!
Of course, I have to learn more and more, to keep up with the development.
The way I've programmed the voice is a different story: I am not using any job plugins, everything is written by hand. The tendency in the fandom is to overdo everything: high rate of pitch bending, high rate of pitch variation on vibratos, lots of sliding that a real singer will never do, unless it's a really bad singer, and they call it "natural singing tuning".... WHAT!!!!!!!!

I will say about this "tuning" term in another blog, but now I am focusing just on this particular song.
GUMI literally sings it in here as a real rock star would do. Not excessive tremolos, nothing uncommon. Just SINGING! This is what I call "natural singing" for a VOCALOID. It's all natural by genre. And it's all natural by the song itself.

Will be back in another blog with something I have to spit out from my mind, but until then, compare the above version with the original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VggDodbFxLo 

Trying to keep the track of everything

Here I am again, trying to write about things I do.
It might be good if I would actually HAVE something put in order in this world, but like my life itself is, everything lately seem to follow the same pattern: messy!
That's why, I decided to write again a little, to have my memories put in place.

Some things are good, some things are bad, other things are worst. To me, these days, the worst is not the news about the evolution of the disease. Instead, I see the fact that I'm almost completely ignored by people (and that reflects on my works too!) as being the worst thing on this planet. That ignorance of the 'fandom' is triggering among the bad feeling of being already forgotten, the desire to not make anymore any Fan Made Vocaloid Concerts! Yes! you've read that correctly. Why should I pursue the presence of the virtual IDOLS on the stage in the affordable way, if on one hand I'm not allowed to at least live decently from doing it, because the team is putting me to do almost everything while receiving almost nothing, not even the normal musical sharing, and in other hand, there are no people willing to actually contribute with their works (talking about the part of creating motion data) at a decent level of stage performance.

For this edition, just to make it shorter, I will make one more event, the one in Sweden. I'm sure I'll be left all alone again in creating it, and putting everything together. But after that, I will reserve my time to create songs.