[Album] Winter Acoustic “Kalafina with Strings”

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^ it may be rude, but it's also an opinion? just uncomfortable for others to read is all.

as someone who became a fan of kalafina through wakana, i have to agree with ritardando that she does sound quite bad in this album though (imo), as does hikaru lol. it's easier to hear once you take off the fan goggles. that being said, i actually quite enjoyed fairytale and yasashii uta. call me a bad fan for saying this, but i dislike "new" kalafina... all of their recent releases are underwhelming for me so i'm not really looking forward to what's to come. i do respect their harmony work though and will always love keiko's voice with all my heart. i hope kajiura finds inspiration again.
 
Yeah, of course, but "bad" is not the same than "shit". That's my point. Whether you like this album or not is just personal. I respect that.
 
I will say one reason why HIKARU andWAKANA don't sound as good this album is the terrible mixing.

HIKARU's voice is very loud and can be ear piercing if not heard at the appropriate decibel.

WAKANA's voice sounded amazing in "from heaven above" because the appropriate reverb was applied to her voice so she sounds like an angel (gosh that ahhh at the end was magnifique). But in "ring your bell", that hellish head voice at the end was plain unbearable because of how raw it was. At the same time, to hit those notes, you HAVE to push enough air out of your abdomen to get the clear tone. She accomplished that but in absence of appropriate reverb, and being too loud, even YURIKO KAIDA would sound like shit.

KEIKO's style of singing changed a lot for the recording of this album. That is why I feel like she doesn't sound "bad" compared to her counterparts. She also has the luxury of being low tone, since deep tones are IMO more suited for acoustic styles as they are more mellow on the ears by nature.

Also, the whole HIKARU skewing towards the left channel and WAKANA skewing towards the right channel was cute to give a "live" atmosphere but just straight up contributed to their voices sounding bad. KEIKO is always centre channel, therefore sounds "better" because it's more clear and evenly distributed.
 
I don't think Keiko would be happy reading what some people say about her companions :( it's unnecessary repeating the same thing dozen of times. I understand it's an "opinion"...

About the new cd, I haven't listened all the songs yet, when I'm done I'll comment.
 
with this album being not that polished as their usual releases, you can clearly hear what a weak pitch control Wakana and Hikaru have. Wakana is inconsistent, one time she sounds great and then bad. Hikaru is just plain weak (which she actually wasn't before. Her sprinter/ARIA recording session on Kalafina Utatane showed that she USED to sound WONDERFUL and their Hongkong or was it Shanghai documentary on fotw DVD showed that she can still sound great and relaxed when singing sprinter). Keiko on the other hand mastered her various singing style and sounded wonderful in whatever tone she used even without reverb applied. She's always great whenever she didn't have that much fun singing live and interacting with the audiences - i'm still not over her performance in Mezamashi 2016. Each girl still has their own flaws, Keiko only has less flaws and she conceals them better and that makes her companions sound much worse to me.
 
ritardando said:
with this album being not that polished as their usual releases, you can clearly hear what a weak pitch control Wakana and Hikaru have. Wakana is inconsistent, one time she sounds great and then bad. Hikaru is just plain weak (which she actually wasn't before. Her sprinter/ARIA recording session on Kalafina Utatane showed that she USED to sound WONDERFUL and their Hongkong or was it Shanghai documentary on fotw DVD showed that she can still sound great and relaxed when singing sprinter). Keiko on the other hand mastered her various singing style and sounded wonderful in whatever tone she used even without reverb applied. She's always great whenever she didn't have that much fun singing live and interacting with the audiences - i'm still not over her performance in Mezamashi 2016. Each girl still has their own flaws, Keiko only has less flaws and she conceals them better and that makes her companions sound much worse to me.
Click to expand...

See this is why 'lol they sound shit' is a waste of a post. Why didn't you just start with this?

This kind of discussion is fine, you're saying the same stuff essentially but actually voicing your opinions and reasons. It's a lot more interesting and worth reading for you to make posts like this.

That said I can't comment much on the album as I haven't heard it outside of the initial Alleluia release.
 
I agree that Wakana had a terrible control over her voice and Keiko was just fine. Hikaru on the other sounded better than wakana but still a bit dusty.
I know its a repetition but wakana cannot hit the high notes as good anymore. End of story. Her falsetto is a mess and not improving the song at all. However, sometimes she sounds great but I can't recall right now because those instances are few.

Keiko's versatility has improved greatly over the years. She would sound great in jazz which is sth we've been saying for years.

Pronunciation was great though! It made the songs much better now that they can say things right.

Lovely strings!! Want instrumentals of each song. It would be so relaxing. pls.
 
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Had to do Japan Rail Pass Exchange and ticket reservations this morning but still managed to get the last free seat on the Sakura 540 Shinkansen from Hakata to Shin-Kobe to be able to get to Nishinomiya Gardens by around 10am tomorrow for the mini live.
 
Nothing about this album really wows me. I do like the strings in fairytale but they pale in comparison to the original so eh. It's an OK album I guess.
 
The only okay tracks in the album were fairytale, KnGnN, dolce and sprinter. fairytale, KnGnN and dolce were just so similar to the original that these tracks could have been swapped out for something else. Sprinter suffers from being the same tempo as the original and Hikaru cutting her lines. I love the strings at "kimi ni aitai", though. Very pretty.

Ring your bell was much appreciated, though. I love this version perhaps slightly more than the original. I don't understand why the rest of the songs didn't follow a similar route in terms of arrangement and tempo.

The Christmas songs, unlike the self-covers, were excellent. All of them had me dancing and singing to them, and I honestly had wow moments listening to their harmonies. The arrangement wasn't overbearingly "Kajiura", and what really carried the album was the girls' beautiful harmony work. You could hear them in such clarity unlike previous studio recordings.

I don't mind the mixing, or lack thereof. It's raw, and someone said this, but this really was a live album recorded in the studio. In their previous releases, you could argue that Kajiura-sensei was the one carrying the tracks with her composition and arrangement, but for these Christmas songs, the girls, without a doubt, were the highlight of the album. Listening to these songs gave me a similar feeling to when I first discovered them.

I only wish there were more Christmas songs. Silent Night, Noel, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing...they would've been perfect for their voices.

My favourite of the album has got to go to Jingle Bells. Loving the arrangement! Hikaru's "bells on the bobtail ring" does take some getting used to, but once you do, the song is magical. I hate the original Jingel Bells, but this is awesome.

Yasashii Uta gave me similar vibes to sing a song, except more subtle and not as majestic. I really do like it a lot, and how it's not very Kajiura like a lot of people here have pointed out.
 
About 75 minutes to start, Sakurada-san is on stage. Doing a sound check on the keyboards.
1pm now and a few spots of rain, we are queuing for priority seating.
Rain stopped and I'm seated 5 rows behind Sakurada-san's keyboard (on the steps behind the stage).
 
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Kugayama said:
About 75 minutes to start, Sakurada-san is on stage. Doing a sound check on the keyboards.
1pm now and a few spots of rain, we are queuing for priority seating.
Rain stopped and I'm seated 5 rows behind Sakurada-san's keyboard (on the steps behind the stage).
Click to expand...
Great! Keep us posted!
 
Mobile phone battery was running low until I was back on the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

At one point in the sound check or what Hikaru jokingly referred to as a rehearsal, Keiko left the stage and walked up to the back corner of the stepped area used for priority seating to gauge the sound from the audience's perspective.

Kalafina were relaxed when they returned to the stage just before 2pm and the weather was overcast with the slightest breeze.

Songs were Ring Your Bell, Yasashii Uta and Have Yourself a Merry, Merry Christmas.

There were plenty of sharks in the audience which Wakana commented on.

To me it worked really well having Sakurada-san accompanying live without a fixed backing or click track. The singers set the timing and Sakurada-san worked in with them.

Have Yourself... showed Hikaru in a new and excellent vocal style.

After the songs, Kalafina posed in front of the first few priority seating audience members for professional photos then in about six locations in front of the audience for a staff member to take photos with a mobile phone.

One lucky girl in the front man row who might have been 3 or 4 received a high five on both hands from Keiko.

After Kalafina and Sakurada-san left, other staff handed out posters for those who had purchased CD's earlier.

There were about 400 people in the priority seating area and maybe 300 or more others, and myself and others who had received posters were able to get back to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi station in time for a train a 3:05pm.
 
Nice report, sounds cool. I want to hear this Hikaru vocal now.

In other news, just won an auction for a Winter Acoustic bonus poster, I did plan on trying to get one anyway once I knew what they looked like, but didnt expect it to happen so soon. Only needed to bid once as well :dote:.
 
I dunno why this happened, but thank you SME for putting this album (and Blaze) on iTunes!

Haven't listened to everything yet, but I did play Jingle Bells and wow yeah their English pronunciation is nice; they must've worked hard on that. Also, I'm in love Yasashii Uta. :hearts:
 
My problem with "Yasashiiuta" is that it doesn't really sound like a "winter" song to me.. I wouldn't put it on my Winter Playlist because it just doesn't sound like winter to me!
 
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