Hey, it's anime yo!

What do you get when a bunch of anime fans, who happens to know how to rap, have a lot of free time in their hands? They take the anime songs and add in their own groove!

Long ago, I was totally addicted to YouTube. Maybe I still am, but even less so than before. It all started with those Hare Hare vids. Whichever anisong I like, I'd try to search for its music video. Then came the crazy Lucky Star fan creations. Oh, and the endless list of Hatsune Miku and Umauma vids.

And let's not forget the japanese variety show segments and 80/90s TV show intros.

During the Hare Hare fever, I stumbled upon the rap version, among the many other remixes I downloaded. What sets that video apart is that the rappers would take the karaoke version of the song, and create their own rhythm and lyrics, and occasionally sing back the original tune.



These guys are not professionals, and they're doing it for, well, fun! They know how to make a song sound different and totally upbeat. Talented buggers.

Seriously, they have too much time on their hands. But then again, they're Japanese. We all know that the Japanese are passionate and crazy people.

It seems that this rapper group has made a name for themselves in the Nico Nico community. They call themselves Rap-Bit.

You can visit their blog here. Below are their other creations:


Naraku no Hana Rap. Unbelievable, they managed to make Higurashi upbeat! Below is the opening to the semi-boring 2nd season, click here to view the original OP.




Caramell Dansen Rap. Even the Umauma dance can't escape the clutches of rap! This is the famous Caramell Dansen song from Sweden, and the dance has been a super-popular meme in Japan lately.




Levan Polkka Miku+Rap. For those who lived in a cave for the past year, Hastune Miku is a cute girl associated with a software that you can actually compose lyrics and rhythm to create a song with convincing synthesized vocals.

Some dude went and composed Miku's voice over Levan Polkka, a traditional Finnish song. The result is really cute, and now it has been super-charged further with rap!




Hitoshite Jiku ga Bureteiru Rap. Alright, my 3rd fave OP of 2007 (remember the ahbonk.net anime awards?). This is the OP to the superb show Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and now it has been rapped! This is their latest creation, and it sounds great. I'm a happy man. Click here to view the original.





Now if I had more time, I wonder what I'll do...

A story of music and retro games

Once upon a time, there was a man named Jinja~ who lived in faraway place called Japan.

He was waiting for a package to arrive. He waited and waited. Finally, the postman arrived and gave him the package he truly longed for. Oh look, it's The Music Animation Machine!

The great Stephen of California wrote such a wonderful toy. He always thought that musical scores were hard to read. So he created a toy that enables you to compose music by setting an animated score. The position of the notes indicate the pitch and length, and each note lights up at the exact moment it sounds! Now even you and me can read the score!

Oh i'm sorry, let's go back to Jinja~. You see, he loves games so much, he wanted to express this interest by creating a retro game musical score using graphics. So he worked day and night to come up with a masterpiece.

"Finally fantasy, I finished!", he screamed with excitement. "Even if my listeners couldn't get the game the music comes from, they can always look at the graphical score!".

Hurriedly, he rushed through the jungle called the Internet and uploaded his toil and sweat on NicoNico Douga. Another guy picked up on his passion and posted his video on YouTube. Here's the result:



And that, my friend, was when a genius was born.

Jamming!

Ah, long time no see, people. I have been doing a bunch of stuff recently:

• Freelance work
• Various job applications
• Watching tons of anime (spring season has arrived!)
  
• Going to Timesquare Arcade
• Playing Rogue Galaxy on PS2
  
• Playing DotA
  
• Playing DotA
• Playing DotA
• Playing DotA
• ............Playing DotA.

All in all, freedom is good ;) But I need money though...

Last Wednesday, Adrian, Jason and I decided to go for jamming (it's been a while!). Yup, two self-taught guitarists and one self-taught drummer (thanks to Drummania!) going at it, surely you're curious on how we performed, right?

Well, fortunately (or in most cases, unfortunately) for you people, I brought my camera to the studio! To record our superb stellar performance!

The first song that we tried was relatively easy. It's L's theme song from the Death Note anime. I'd say we did quite okie. Unluckily, when I tried to record the second time we went at it, the memory card was out of space. We did very well the second time around! Oh well, you people have to settle for the first attempt:



There were some confusions as to how many times we play this verse and how times we play that verse. The second time around, it was pretty smooth. Too bad it wasn't recorded :(

Also, after the stop in the middle, I resumed a little too early. And too bad Adrian's bass couldn't be heard too well, but hey, we did quite okie back there. Jason's guitar playing is, as usual, excellent (as in "Excellent, dude!", said in the tone of a surfer dude).

Well the second song is tough, so tough that we can only play the song halfway. Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, a song I like as of late.

Now, how do I say this? Well let's watch it first.



Eh... well... Jason's words describe it nicely: "organized mess". Actually, Jason is just being nice; it's actually "freaking messy"!

I didn't do the drumroll properly and hit the symbal rather late at times. I even screwed up the beat after the first chorus.

Can't really hear Adrian's singing either (he's a good singer, really!). Quite funny how he tried to find the lyrics through the sheets towards the end. After that, he even bantai the lyrics (with some, eh, explicit words heh).

Jason did very well with little flaws, at least from my point of view. If you noticed, near the start of the song, he slipped on a note and glanced at me. Haha.

Oh well, at least we had fun. Wanna get better in my drumming the next time around. Daim just told me of a great place to rent a drum set, for just 8 ringgit per hour! Yosh, it's time to train my beat!

Whatever it is, I think we did pretty well for three self-taught buggers!