Sure, Miku's pretty well-known already...but how about VOCALOID (the software itself) and all the other voicebanks?
Sure, Miku's pretty well-known already...but how about VOCALOID (the software itself) and all the other voicebanks?
Considering the Daughter of Evil series as I've mentioned before isn't overall that good and none of the songs are good really as stand alones. The series is poorly mixed by todays standards and was not that brilliant in the past. To me its sad when fans get caught up in songs from the period only of 2007-9 because its clear they barely know vocaloid. This is lik the tip of the iceberg of what vocaloid is.
Angel Emfrbl wrote:
Considering the Daughter of Evil series as I've mentioned before isn't overall that good and none of the songs are good really as stand alones. The series is poorly mixed by todays standards and was not that brilliant in the past. To me its sad when fans get caught up in songs from the period only of 2007-9 because its clear they barely know vocaloid. This is lik the tip of the iceberg of what vocaloid is.
I'm curious. What made you believe that the aforementioned series is not overall good and that none of its songs are really good as stand alones?
I just wanna ask. Whatever you say, I'll respect it.
Pinkgirl234 wrote:
Angel Emfrbl wrote:
Considering the Daughter of Evil series as I've mentioned before isn't overall that good and none of the songs are good really as stand alones. The series is poorly mixed by todays standards and was not that brilliant in the past. To me its sad when fans get caught up in songs from the period only of 2007-9 because its clear they barely know vocaloid. This is lik the tip of the iceberg of what vocaloid is.
I'm curious. What made you believe that the aforementioned series is not overall good and that none of its songs are really good as stand alones?
I just wanna ask. Whatever you say, I'll respect it.
Well lets see, I've been in the fandom 8 years so I've got a vast comparison of songs to choose from and older ones generally don't tend to be as good as newer overall because technology moves on. You also have the issue with inexperienced producers and they get better over time, with later additions being better then original on technical terms. However, there is a risk of a musician burning themselves out and using all their talent up early on.
But that's a tip of the iceberg.
I've also enjoyed a lot of musicals over time and to me there is nothing special about the series. Within each musical you get songs who can and can't stand out on their own, but DoE doesn't really have songs that stand out as solo in my opinion. I'll give an example, even if you like the rest of the songs in Frozen, the BIG number is "Let it Go" and its level of vocal skills in display is much higher then the rest of the film. The song can stand out on its on from the song, because of this. The expression is great, the lyrics powerful. Even in Dethklok movie; "Doomster Requiem" the variety of styles of songs means that there are memorable songs suchas "Blazing Star" that stand out on their own. The same goes for MLP movie last year, if anything Sia's song "Rainbo" stand out among the tracks of the movie. Phantom of the Opera, the main theme tune can exist alone from the rest of the musical. War of the World... "Forever Autumn", "Parson Nathaniel" and "Brave New World" are 3 decent songs to stand out with the first being the one they released as a hit song. Off the top of my head, "Modern General"... Look it up, forget its musical but remember it...Oliver has "Food glorious food" and "Consider yourself" or whatever its called.
A lot of the problem is the music just mundane, its an issue I find with Cricus Monster, you want this BIG dramatic moment to happen... And you get in that song.... "aaaaah" and then it plonks on with barely changing itself. Likewise, DoE has similar issues with not one song really breaking out into something you can go "wow" at. Its the curse of musicals and TV shows with a lot of songs in, or bands who stick to a single style of music. It tries to do that, but... I don't even remember the songs most of the time except DoE and Haku's song. Yet a lot of other musicals there are bits that stand out even when you can't remember much else.
The vocaloid/BGM mix is not 100% mixed well, part of that is to blame on the vocals being LQ or V2 era vocals. I mean, DoE was started out with the Act1 Kagamines I believe, which were hard vocals to work with and both them and Miku were LQ. The series basically pre-dated the Miku Append so didn't get the HQ range of the Vocaloids out. I have a funny idea that even when Act2 for the Kagamines came out they weren't use, Act2 had issues with expression that Act1 had but sacrifice clarity over (and its overall quality). So there was some producers from the older crowd who had Act1 who didn't want to use Act2 because of it.
Every series needs 1 song that really stands out, and without it DoE is a forgettable series, but people love it for the narrative. This is literally the best part of the series and why its still got a following. Even I, while I think its a mundane series, basically know the plot and story to it and I haven't even read the wiki page in a couple of years (I stay away from song pages unless I want to know something about the song). With it being a iconic series, and I believe in the Project Diva and on the Exit Tunes albums (big deal in terms of Vocaloid), it pretty much isn't going away. But listening to other songs over time does make me note how DoE could have done so much more with itself.
Considering Haku's song is a highly adjusted vocal, one also notes that the song is actually likely in terms of vocal performance the worst sung of the lot. Never been a Haku fan saying that so I will be a bit tad bias towards Haku, its Miku Singing anyway most likely so who cares. I admit Haku's song is the only one I'm purely bias against because its the least impressive to me. So this the one song I'm not is love with for a much greater reason, this is also the song every fan thinks is so great and will misquote Haku as the singer or ignore that Haku was originally any bad Miku song so could sound no different to Miku… Basically, its a big player in the contribution to the issues with Haku and Neru at times.
When I tend to dislike something, I'm not shallow about it, and I do try and come up with a long explanation about it. But mostly, its because even in the 2007-2009 period... We just had better songs! I'd rather listen to BlackRock Shooter, which I think is a muchmore stand out song with more power behind it then the DoE of songs...
Edit; Also bare in mind DoE is 10 year old here...
Edit;
As I said on Appetite song page, I really want nerd-out song discussions but so few opportunities dorm, we don't really do this...
Ironically, mothy has had like no prescence in the games compared to how well known he is..... he's probably too dark.
My impression of The Evillious Chronicles overall, is the somewhat similar style to most of its songs.
Talking about mothy, he's probably most famous for Seven Deadly Sins (in which Story of Evil's a part of) in the VOCALOID fandom. Those others aren't appealing enough tbh.
Regarding Story of Evil alone, it's one of those early series sung by VOCALOIDs. As Angel have mentioned, Miku and the Kagamines were LQ vocals during that time, which led to badly mixed songs.
This is similar to Frozen's with 'Let It Go', or any other musical's case: Only a few songs stand out from the rest. In DoE's case, it's the first two Rin-Len songs that outshine the most; and then Regret Message follows suit. These three songs can really stand alone as a trilogy to me. (Don't know if 'Len's dead again' trope had anything to do with this lol)
Any songs onward don't seem to have enough charm. The songs aren't that appealing anymore (un-catchy tune tbh), the narrative might have you confused at some point. (Yes, I wasn't expecting Story of Evil alone to be more than 10-songs-long, but it was). Then it's related to 3-4 long-a** series (that became 'The Evillious Chronicle' as we know today). That's a huge chunk of story line to swallow. So, unless you're interest in its story telling, you would soon get bored in no time.
Overall, I found the series way too lengthy, and lack the charm in its songs.
Arrow+Pen wrote: Ironically, mothy has had like no prescence in the games compared to how well known he is..... he's probably too dark.
I admit I don't know the song list of each game but its been in Project Mirai, or at least the outfits have been.
I don't think its anything to do with darkness, and Magnet has been in before.
@Lynn, its not that its by an amateur because amateurs can produce good songs too as well as producers with multimillion studios. A lot of the producer's work tends to be the kind where you sit there waiting for something to happen and it doesn't, least at this stage of their producer life when DoE came out. Bare in mind, each professional singer has on each album songs intended to be "fluff" to fill out a album, in short they have B-side works among their A-side works, and the term or behaviour behind this will exist even today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-side_and_B-side
Cendrillon is a song I'm okay with I mean. Its not its fast paced and jumpy either, it feels like it has a story to it because it has points it changes up itself to give you a moment to note the change. Even switching from verse to chorus, there is a pause-change where it feels like a page turning, It feels epic because it changes the mood when it changes the story. It feels like it has a beginning, middle and end. "Let it go" has a slow start, then build up to "relief" before ending on a re-assertion. This is why that song was a hit. You could hear the build up, the energy of the singer and the releas of chains and bonds that held them back. Even if you never saw Frozen you can get an idea of the songs purpose. This to me is similar to the Phantom of the opera theme tune. There is parts where it changes from female saying how the phantom mesmerises her, to the Phantom commanding her to sing. Even if you never hear the rest of the musical you get the idea on who the Phantom is, he is a mysterious figure that the main character is being drawn to.
And then you get back to DoE... And... You feel like the first couple of songs lead up to a song like this, but it never comes. Every song fills like a filler number leading up to the big epic on, but never reaching there.
Arrow+Pen wrote: Ironically, mothy has had like no prescence in the games compared to how well known he is..... he's probably too dark.
I don't think its anything to do with darkness, and Magnet has been in before.
His songs (DoE and SoE) have been played ona concert as well. But i think the reason that his songs aren't on PD is becasue the don't know how to present them. And mind you PDX had Hitorinbo Envy, Nounai Kakumei Girl, Lost One no Goukoku, LOL -lots of laugh- and DIVA in general has dark songs maybe even darker that the EC.
@Angel: I can agree with you on that. DoE started out well, but its onward is like a story lacking climax, where it just put the readers in expectation for the something epic that never comes.
This style of narrative should appeal to some people though. There must be some kind of charm to it, but we'll never know until we follow it, and spend time digging into the story line. I'm not a fan of the project, so I think I'm not the one to judge here.
Though serving as the intro part, I want to restate that DoE's first three or four songs can work out as a decent short story. The tragedy element is visible throughout the narrative. The main character (the Queen) brings out a feeling of rage, but also sympathy from the audience (fallen kingdom and sacrifice of her own twin, now she will have to live in regret till the end of her life). Haku's backstory works fine as well, where the character struggles between revenging and forgiving. The story could have ended at that point in my opinion.
I once came across footages of DoE's musical (the one where it isn't related to the chronicle or sth). The story played out the same, except it ended on a plot twist. It's surprising tbh, but still leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I'm pretty sure fans aren't gonna react well if the story ends like that, especially since most fans are youngsters and adolescences.
I would love to hear an opinion from a fan of this series.
@Angel
You're probably right about the presentation thing, but he is entirely absent from mainline Diva.
Wouldn't know much about Diva, I tend not to pay attention to the video games songlist so I'm guessing there, which is naughty of me as normally I look it up. I know a few things that's about it.
DoE has a good narrative, its the best thing about it, that's something nobody can disagree with. People like a good story. But the point of a musical is to put as much emphasis on the musical as you do the narrative. And as I just said, it could be much, much better. The problem is mostly though all those things goon in the storyline, you just don't "feel" the music displaying the emotions.
Some of that though, is Vocaloids inability also to correctly put emotions on display themselves, as their pretty monotone and we're talking about V2 vocals here that weren't ness. good when released. So the whole thing is impacted by this too. The real singers do a better job then the Vocaloids, but the songs still could do with more "oomph" to them.
I honestly don't have much else to say about the DoE series without repeating myself though. ITs a classic of Vocaloid and this won't change much, and a lot of new songs have trouble becoming known to fans so this means the iconic songs like DoE series tend to be popular because they've been around longer. Add to this the Vocaloid trend is over, despite Vocaloid still getting in the sales % its no longer the "newest craze", which makes newer songs harder to get attention.
To me this is also another thing holding back Vocaloid from getting mainstream as well... The audience isn't looking for the next big thing, their sticking with a lot of the old classics. When they do its often obscure songs based on our own fandoms "help me find this song" topics we've had in the last few months. Unless everyone collects around a common song, that song doesn't get the notice and fame. Then there is the fact on the CFM vocaloids are doing anything so other vocaloids are less attractive...