Kalafina 18th single "One Light" for Arslan Senki [confirmed]

^I just pointed out the piano. heh

Also just heard the songs (sort of) on record. One Light skipped so I have to vacuum out the player I think. But I like Mahiru a lot more after hearing it on the record. I think it fits better, but it's also a nice song to listen to and relax, like if you're reading or something. And I want to try and play it on the violin, I think it will fit the violin as well. Samidare was nice on the record as well. (For some reason those two songs worked and OL did not. heh) I can't wait to hear a full album on record! I am excited. It's really different now just listening on my computer. heh Now I have all day to fiddle with the record player. Also I love Yuki and always will, and that post that Hatou just wrote proves that she cares about her artists and I will always love her music for it.
 
I'm also picking up on a similarity between the two b-sides...it's as though they're musical "siblings" or something. Not so good from a "I want variety!" point of view, but it does give some continuity and feeling of a common theme.

Yes yes, that's exactly how it felt to me! It feels like Samidare is a continuation of Mahiru. I got my copy yesterday and listened to all three songs for the first time, to be honest I was pleasantly surprised. It's not THAT bad. Sure, it's no seventh heaven material but it's not so-bad-I'll-never-listen-to-them-again songs. Generic yes, but well, I think they'll sound good live. One Light grew on me on third listen. I like Mahiru's simplicity, and Keiko's intro reminds me of Enka-style singing. Samidare gave me a bit of a LOL moment because it felt like they are doing karaoke singing an old song, but it's still fun to listen to :ohoho:
 
^I do like the switch off in Samidare, and it is different for Kala, I thought it maybe similar to neverending, with the lalala part, but listened to that song and then Samidare after and they are completely different. And OL is growing on me. It seems like it's going to be a hard one to sing live, since it's so fast. I just don't want them to get out of breath.
 
I'll give it another listen later and see if I can pick up on the mixing issue that @Daiima mentioned.

Ya know what? I've accidentaly listened to it one more time, and knowing that the beginning was going to be bad, I covered my ears (yeah, yeah... I know...).
And there I found back the good ol' voice of Keiko.
 
Okay, I gave another chance to Mahiru.
I finally understood what isn't fine with it: Keiko's track has been recorded in mono. Or something like that. But that's nothing natural in it, I won't change my mind about it. (Or, if there is really nothing artifical in it, then they rushed the recording, allowing only one pass with no warm up, kinda that). Anyway, I'm not afraid to say that this is her 35 worst seconds of recorded singing ever.
For instance, her "furui kanashiiiiiii" sounds terribly bad to me, substancially too high, it really hurts me to hear this, especially coming from her. When you listen to Kaze no Machi (h)e, her voice has absolutely nothing to do with that. I am absolutely no expert in sound engineering, still I know that you can modify the sound so as to make it sound higher or lower, an octave higher or lower, trim the highest or lowest frequencies, and so on, but I seriously think that someone (a trainee?) failed at doing this. Hence I just can't at all like this song which, otherwise, would have been lovely – and I quite enjoy the remainder of it, Hikaru and Wakana are neat.
Hello, daiima! I have a question; how did you come to the conclusion that the recording was performed under mono?

I agree that KEIKO's voice does sound a bit off from her usual voice in this song. However, I believe it is rooted in the style in which she chose to convey the music.

As far as your analysis that her voice was "substantially too high", it will not be able to be modified by the engineers - it is solely dependent on how she delivers the line. It sounds to me as if she is just straining her vocal cords too tightly to hit those high notes, kind of like her line in Alleluia "kitto mogaite nando MO NAITE" at "mo naite". Making the sound higher or lower would be a modification of the pitch; in terms of pitch, technically, you can modify the pitch to whatever note you would like to different octaves or different keys all together - but it will be incredibly obvious. Have you ever heard the "chipmunk" voice that is due to an effect from audio editing? It'd be that much of a drastic difference. They can also modify pitch by applying the infamous auto-tune, which would be obvious in nature due to its robotic tones.

The engineers can, however, modify how loud the vocal tracks are and modify the volume. I think what these so-called "trainee" engineers could have done was made HIKARU's lines a bit softer, because she is just shouting over the piano track at this point, especially at "minamo ni"...

I'm no engineer; I've just had years of playing around with Adobe Audition as an amateur, and I study music so I wanted to share my thoughts on pitch and volume :XD:
 
Okay, listening to another record on my brother's player and it does skip sometimes, but not as much as it does for One Light. The records are the same size, and I am using the same weight on the arm (there's a quarter on it to make it heavier) and so far it's only skipped once. With OL it starts off okay, then gets to the singing and it starts skipping back and then forward. Anyone else have the record? I am going to get my own record player soon, I hope. I hope this solves the issue, as it is kind of an old player. I just find it funny that OL is the only one that doesn't play right, Mahiru and Samidare play fine (with only one skip in Samidare) and sound awesome. OL instrumental even does this. I thought maybe because it's a bigger record, but this one that's playing now is the same size and I started it at the beginning too. Anyone else have this issue? Martin could you maybe help me since you are used to records? My brother is coming Sunday so I hope he can help too.
 
@Atlas Star thank you for your analysis!
Well, when I wrote about "mono", that was actually merely to describe the feeling I had. I have absolutely no pretention about being able to recognize mono from stereo sound ^^
Nevertheless, I'm a bit surprised by what you say. Of course I know that any sound effect will sound weird, but if it is consciously applied, it can be less obvious, isn't it?
Anyway, sound effect or not, this changes nothing: it sounds awful.
 
One Light commemoration event at Odaiba Venus Fort, 2F church stage, Tokyo :)

http://newslounge.net/archives/177688
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20150815-00000003-mantan-ent
http://www.sponichi.co.jp/entertainment/news/2015/08/15/kiji/K20150815010941670.html
http://www.sanspo.com/geino/news/20150815/geo15081516260012-n1.html
http://mantan-web.jp/2015/08/15/20150815dog00m200005000c.html

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setlist:
1. One Light
2. Mahiru
MC
3. Symphonia
 

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That is a pretty nice venue.

Does seem odd that they didn't sing Samidare at the launch event of the single. Guess that means it'll be yet another abandoned b-side :omgz:.
 
not necessarily. they only sang lapis in believe release events, and they sang it only that time. in every nothing, on the other hand, was performed on their 7th anniversary live.
 
Wow, no Samidare?! :omgz: Since they're supposed to be promoting the single I was sure Samidare would be there. I guess I haven't been following these type of events since they've done this kind of thing before.

Seeing those dresses in better lighting makes me like them much less. The top part of the dresses are okay, but I don't like the bottom half of them.
 
Darn, they're beautiful photos. I really like the dresses too...apart from the bits around the hem. Not sure what to make of those.

Gorgeous dresses ladies, but lose the tassels plz!
 
thanks for the mezamashi live setlist. all wakana tracks, hope she sounded fine. not interested in the collaboration because: a. i think memoria is shit, b. to the beginning isn't much better either.

if anything i need the connect live collaboration from mezamashi live two years (or was it last year) ago.
 
Those dresses look like garbage bags *runs* The design would work so much better if the fabric wasn't black, plastic-looking and shiny. The girls manage to pull them off though.

I listened to the full single and I agree that One Light is the best song which is... well, a little depressing. I don't mind One Light anymore because I already forgot what HB sounded like and I kinda like Believe :ohoho: yes, it sounds like a standard anison, but the girls are really bringing it with their performance and I like the energy in their voices, and like the feeling of urgency I hear in them.

Samidare is OK, I don't find it as weird or as horrible as everyone else, so I guess I'm in the minority here, but I also don't feel like it has a lot of replay value. It's just a nice feel-good tune with nothing much going on with it.

Mahiru is so horrible though. I swear it's my least favorite Kalafina song ever. :hide: Frankly, nightmare fuel for me. Especially Hikaru's parts :omg:

Look, I'm probably the biggest Hikaru fan in this forum, she's my favorite Utahime (yes, I like her even more than Ito Eri or Hanae or *gasp* Yuriko Kaida) because there's something about the sweetness of her voice and the passion in her delivery that really moves me. I especially love how she conveys so much emotion through her voice, even though I know that most people here are at best meh about her and at worst think she's nasal and horrible.

So yeah, what I'm trying to say is that for me Hikaru can literally do no wrong. I love her angsty faces, her over the top dramatics, her nasal voice (I think it's sweet and it's probably my favorite voice in the entire world) her attempts at doing the Oblivion intro with varying degrees of success, her shouty vocals when she gets too excited. But this is some next level awfulness, I mean, I'm honestly concerned for her voice right now :touched: not to turn this into the "Wakana must have busted her vocal cords" v. 2.0 but seriously, Hikaru sounded ROUGH in this song. Her breathing was super choppy, her voice was wavering, she wasn't smooth at all... And this is the studio version, which makes me so so SO worried for her. She sounded fine in One Light, so maybe she was having a bad day and they were in a rush and used this version but still :/

I hope it's just one badly sung snorefest of a ballad and that's it, but to be honest, I'm kinda shocked because even when people claimed that Wakana sounded horrible I still thought she was singing fine, so for me to think this about my dearest Hikaru is just :rain:

Oh well, everyone can have a miss here or there, and they've had some pretty tight schedules with this flurry of releases. I hope she managed to rest well for the recordings of Far on the water and regains her beautiful voice back. :cheer:
 
No sign of my vinyl copy today, so that means it won't show up till next monday at the earliest. :leaf:

I'll let you guys know if there are any issues with skipping/warping and such asap. My Linn player is still in storage (:cry:) but my parents have an old Garrard, which is really good quality and should bring out the best in it. Postage can be so slooow around here sometimes!
 
^Thanks, I sent a message to CDJ, but hopefully my brother can fix it as well. I hope they are not all like that, since CDJ said they would send a new one if it is in stock still, but I doubt there are any left. I hope it wasn't recorded like that, since you said ring your bell was fine right? Hmm.

And Mahiru is really growing on me, I actually think Hikaru is trying to put passion into the song, since she has been singing a lot of faster ones lately, but I agree she could have been better. I am trying to write out the notes using my violin, since it is pretty simple. I love Wakana in it, and I actually confuse her and Keiko at the end! I like listening to it on record better, but it's hard to pause it then for the notes.
 
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