A Banana in Need

I know guys its been a long time since I updated this blog and I am sorry. Its been a rough and hectic year and I’ve still been uploading and recording covers and they are all still on youtube. Been dealing with a lot of personal stuff and school and work and well its been stressful to say the least.  I’ve steadily improved in my mixing and singing though and I am proud of that.

But anyways I am here today to ask you to help a banana in need. The banana being me. So after this tumultuous year I decided my previous major of Graphic Design wasn’t really for me and after meeting a special guy to me I found the place I wanted to be in and where I felt like I belonged. That was in Europe. I want to go back to my roots of what I previously thought I wanted to study which is history and languages. I found a program in the Netherlands in Amsterdam and I just passed the first round of admissions. So its very real I might be accepted. But the tuition for an international student to study there is very expensive. I would love to do my full degree abroad there. To be in the continent I love with , close to a person I love a lot , learning things I like would be the best experience.

I have been looking into scholarships to no avail and my family is poor. Even here in Canada where I live I am struggling to go to school because my family has been really hard hit. I want to invest in me and my future and I want to avoid taking a huge loan if possible since I don’t want to be debt for the rest of my life plus the government is not offering any assistance in anyway.

I started a GoFundMe campaign to ask for help. I am not asking for a lot of money for any one person. The total goal is huge but in like every person donated $5 it would add up. But its completely up to you. I am really not the type of person to ask for anything. I’d rather work it by myself but me working full time at my job right now for minimum wage isn’t giving me enough funds especially not in time for February. I worked hard to make the best application to the school I could and I didn’t really think I could get it but I really do have a shot! I will continue to work hard so if you can spare anything I would be so honoured and grateful truly.  Also please share this with others if you can.

Thank you so much guys for reading this and the link is below.

https://www.gofundme.com/helpAnnastudy

Pierrot

Playing catch up on my blog here! Sorry its been so long , i regularly keep posting videos on my youtube but not here since writing takes time and too much life keeps getting in the way. So I have since improved since I uploaded this but I still enjoy this cover none of the less.

Pierrot is actually a french word describing a specific clown in the early 19th century I believe. i am such a history nerd I love useless facts like this.

 

I sang this beautiful song called Pierrot for my fellow youtaite friend named Kazu. This is one of his favourite songs in the whole world. I was going to sing it in Japanese but someone named Panda wrote these amazing translyrics which I thought fit my friend perfectly. I would always try and cheer him up when he felt down and I thought these lyrics really represented that! So I just hope he understood that message LOL.

Kei is an amazing producer he writes great pop rock songs.

So I remember recording this song because it was quite difficult to do and I had lot of takes to do it. I am actually impressed my voice didn’t die while recording it since I was belting consecutively for so long.  The middle section in the musical interlude was done in one breath that was super hard to do , I kid you not , I am so glad I had some of that vocal training back in school to help me do that. My harmonies were hit and  miss but its all another step in the learning process. Learning through trial and error I guess^^.

But I really love any and all versions of this song , it just has so much passion in the music and lyrics so i love hearing covers  of it. Also the pv that was made for Senka’s cover was so heartbreaking and the art was beautiful!

Anyways vacation time soon I hope to update more , I have like 8 million covers to finish and upload. Enjoy the cover today and look forward to more! Thanks for reading guys.

 

 

Starduster

Hello my blog readers. It has been another long time since I updated. I feel like I disappoint you all when I say I am going to post more often but don’t. I am very sorry but you know when life gets busy you do what you have to do and some things like a blog get put on hold.

But on to more pressing matters! This week’s post I am writing to you from a cafe , since I just finished my class for today. Busy Busy i tell you!

So the cover I am writing about is called Starduster. Its one of JimmythumbP’s most beautiful sogngs and yes its vocaloid.^^ You expected no less I know. I seriously love JimmythumbP’s music. He has such an intersting and almost surreal feel to a lot of his music. Quite dream like. The song itself is about loving someone even if your far away in space or so I gather ahahahaha.

This is one of my all time favourite songs so when i finally decided to cover it I was extremely happy. I first heard this song at a vocaloid movie screening I went to at a con last year. All we did was watch a dvd of taped concert from japanbut it was worth seeing miku on a giant screen with a bunch of other vocaloid fans out there.

There is another story associated with this song for me and that at school during lunch one day last semester my friend was like “have you heard the song starduster?”. I immediately replied yes and bam on the weekend I decided to do this cover. I had been practicing this song forever but never actually got around to

Do You Want To Build A Snowman

Long time no write again. Sorry blog followers , I keep saying I will post more regularly but man I keep being so lazy when I’m not busy dealing with work and school. I have so much I want to create but no time and when I do I just want to sit down and watch movies or anime.

But anyways on to the task at hand. I’ll try and keep this post short! At the time when frozen was its peak I was on a mission to sing all the songs. I got around to most of them except for Olaf’s song , I should of done it but yeah I don’t want to hear frozen songs for at least a year now ahahahaha.

This was a really fun song to try and do. Since I had to sing/act as Anna while growing up. Its really hard to manipulate your voice to fit different ages but I somehow i managed to pull it off. I have to middle school aged Anna was easiest cause she was the boyish sounding one and I natural have a boyish toned voice. Little Anna was the hardest cause I don’t know how to be so cute and high sounding. That’s probably the highest voice tone I have ever sung in LOL.

I even did the speaking part for Elsa (one line ahaha) and I was surprised when i played this song after the mix was done because I really can’t believe this is my voice.

The beautiful mix was done was my friend 4@4 , he is so talented and I was hoping to work with him again but he’s so busy which makes me sad cause our voices blend really well together. But hopefully one day we will sing together again!

Anyways there isn’t much else to say , I hope you enjoy the cover and like my attempt voice acting/singing.

I hope next post won’t be so far away and by the way to any fellow Canadians reading this , happy Canada day! Have a wonderful day/night everyone^^

Time Machine English/Japanese – HBD Eban!

So look time no blog! Annami is alive -mostly. I’m at school with time to kill before class , i mean I could do homework but no motivation and I am so sleepy so yeah. Procrastination always wins it seems.

Anyways I’m trying to get all these blog posts about my covers up and written. I’m slowly moving up the list. Very slowly it seems. Hopefully I’ll get it all done soon and maybe I can write some different content and upload some art work to here too^^ (if you didn’t know I’m studying art in college and I just got into my graphic design program for next year wooo!)

But on to the pressing matter at hand , lets talk about the linked cover above. This is the 2nd birthday cover I have ever made. I really love making presents for people who make me happy and my friend Eban certainly does. He is literally my best friend in the youtaite community. I mean we’ll only been friends for under a year , 8 months to be exact or close to that ahaha. I still remember the first time we talked through email it was fun! We are like the same person so of course something like this was bound to happen.

So I decided to do some good old 40mp , since my friend likes his music and I have always wanted to sing this song. There is something so very special about this song and I immediately fell in love with it. The english lyrics written by Lucy are always so poetic and really capture the essence of the songs so it was a pleasure to sing. Also this lyric arrangement made by Ashe (which he used in his own cover) was very interesting and it was fun to do though a bit tricky as well.

As far as singing goes I definitely don’t think its my best work. I was also rushing trying to get this done quickly , life was getting in the way as usual and I didn’t have much time to record or mix for this cover. I think I had a really strong main vocal line and it sounded great but the harmonies were pretty bad. They w ere a mess and all over the place which is why in the mix I tried to lower all the volumes and put effects on them to make them sound a bit better. It was a brave attempt but sadly I think ultimately will have to rerecord this cover and make it better.

I’m not sure what else to say except that my friend told me he got a bit teary eyed listening to this since no one has sung him anything before and I was his first friend in the community. Well anyways class is starting soon , have a great day guys and thanks for reading/listening.

How The West Made Manga (And Anime): A Sensationalist Headline

Short and sweet and very insightful , Nathans posts always teach me a lot

IntrovertJapan

But a true one. The word manga was coined in the 1800’s by Katsushika Hokusai when he released his work Hokusai Manga, a 15 volume collection of his woodblock prints. (As a manga fan, it’s nice to know that an artist, not a company, invented the word.) Hokusai’s manga, however, had little in common with what we call manga today. Much of that came from outside Japan. Let’s take a look an the art form itself, to see how the world helped create the medium now considered distinctly Japanese.

Word Bubbles: English

It was only when Charles Wirgman, a British news corespondent and cartoonist, started his own publication in 1862 that Japanese manga started evolving into what it is today. Japan Punch was an English language Japanese political satire magazine distributed among the Brits living there. It used word bubbles in its political cartoons, which Japanese artists were…

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Confession Rehearsal English Dub

Back to update the blog! Finally , “Annami you should really update , your readers are waiting” is what I tell myself and thus henceforth that is why there is a new post right here. Anyways enough rambling on to the business at hand.

So I uploaded this before Valentines cause I had to work on valentines and go to school so I didn’t have enough time to post it that day. But I think it really fit the occasion.

Honeyworks are one of the most popular vocaloid producers around and for good reason. They create some incredibly cute and happy music with amazing pv’s aswell. So since there popularity is so huge over in japan there song series (like kagepro) ended up getting a light novel series so they made this little animation to accompany it and promote it. They got some big name voice actors to voice in it and held a contest for people to dub it and the winners would get there shown on tv as a commercial for the series.

So its originally in Japanese and I can’t speak Japanese so I decided why not do it in English which I can speak. I asked my friend Jeff to help me out and do the guys part. he sounds amazing since he’s trying to become a voice actor so it only makes sense he’d be good. I on the other hand am just some random amateur who did this for fun.

So I took the english subtitles and was going to make a transenglish script but the lines fit the video pretty well so i left them as is.

It was so awkward recording these lines cause I was basically talking to know one and I had to redo it or and or anything to to match the character mouth movements on screen. I made sure no one was home when I did this to be on the safe side. It was awkward that even when I was alone recording , I was like getting all flustered and nervous.

Timing this was literally the hardest thing. Especially cause Window movie maker wouldn’t let me get very exact for some reason and I guess I need more practice at voice dubbing. Or multiple screens to see the script and video easier. Thank god for the split screens function on windows 8! Very helpful.

Also I am so not girly and cute enough to sound like an anime character but I work with the voice I have LOL. This is actually a higher part of my voice since I usually talk deeper than this. That in and of itself was a challenge right there.

The video was so short so I added a bit of the original pv with me singing some english translyrics by Jubyphonic. They were such nice lyrics to sing.

Anyways please enjoy the short video and I want to try more voice acting it was awkward but fun! See you next time everyone!

For the First Time in Forever

Hi guys I am really bad at keeping up to date with stuff. I have been way too busy with school and work to have to update properly. I am very sorry but I’m currently on a bit of a break before semester 2. Yep going to be going to school all summer since I started my program in January. If I started in September I would have been done a full year of college already but welp whatever.

So here is another frozen song. Second favourite one after Let it Go of course but as many people told me they liked this cover best. I find this song fits my voice better anyways. I get to use the technique in singing called a “mix” a lot in this cover. A mix is a cross between head voice and chest. Its a lighter sound but its still strong like a belt but not as powerful. As for what head voice and chest voice and belting are that will be for another post LOL XD.

I had a lot of fun making this self duet. I am actually really enjoy making self duets. That makes me sound really lonely but its true. As much as I love collaborating I don’t have to worry about someone else getting me their half or keeping others waiting for my half as well. Its just me , myself and I meaning I can go at my own pace. Its also a challenge to see how far my voice can go. Its a good workout for how many voices/ how many facets of my voice I can use. For some reason I think its fun!

Can I just say 4@4 is an amazing mixer can he mix all my covers for me! I hope we together again , i love working with him.

This is was kind of tricky since for one line Anna stuffs some chocolate in her face so I decided I would do that to recreate it. I did some takes takes of this song stuffing cinnamon rolls and tea biscuits in my face. I had to sing this song and quickly grab the roll/biscuit shove it in my face quickly then pull it out quickly or swallow it very fast. Singing this wasn’t hard it was all the face stuffing.

These quirky happy songs fit me so well because its basically my personality in a nutshell. I’ve said this before but I really don’t have a princess type voice but I have grown to love my slightly boyish sounding voice its definitely unique to say the least.

I have some bloopers of me trying to record Anna’s part like I did with let it go. I get really weird when recording clearly.

https://soundcloud.com/annamibananami/for-the-first-time-in-forever

I’ll update again soon! Thanks for reading and I hope you all check out my youtube channel where I tend to update better and all my covers are there.

Palette Redo : 1 Years Improvement

Wow how long has it been since I updated , it feels like its been forever but it probably hasn’t been that long LOL. Anyways I’ll be adding another post to this blog about being another cover , surprise surprise. One of these days I will post something else , on what I have no idea but it’ll happen!

So I have officially been a youtaite for a year now and as a celebration I thought it would be fun to redo the first song I ever covered!

I uploaded on Jan.12, 2013 a cover of rock vocaloid song called Palette. This song is originally sung by Luka Megurine and was composed by Yuyoyupee. I remember hearing the utaite Hanatan’s version and falling in love with her voice and the song instantly. I also a fan of the piano version made by the popular fandubber Amanda Lee on youtube. though Hanatan outshines her in vocal power , she outdoes me as well.
Needless to say , this was like the 3rd song I ever learned in Japanese and so learning this song and being able to hit the high notes was a big deal for me. Also it was first attempt at mixing something so it was my first step into the youtaite community.

By the way this song is so loud , its impossible to hit the high notes without power so you have to be loud.
I really also like the idea of this song , describing life through colours so to speak.

This is the old version.

The mix was so bad , the vocals were loud in places and the and the instrumental was too loud. The harmonies were okay but competed with the main vocal line in volume balance. The use of effects though was really good. My vocals were really weak as well. I had barely managed to hit the notes.

Listening to the new version , the vocals are so much more powerful and clear. My pronunication more crisp and clear. I have expanded my range a lot , I also think I have developed my tone a lot more. I’m getting more distinct in each cover. The harmonies were perfect in this. A good balance between low harmonies and high ones. It all flowed so nicely and the timing was on beat. As for the mix , you can definitely hear the improvement. The balance is so much better from the harmonies to the instrumental! Also that last high note , it blows me away that I had hit it with ease.

I really enjoy the combination of this half operatic sounding voice with epic rock music. Its an interesting combination.

Anyways if you want the mp3 mesage me and I will send it. I will definitely be back to update soon with another cover. As usual enjoy the singing , feel free to comment. Enjoy the rest of your day/night everyone.Write to you again soon!

Let It Go

Finally updating the blog again instead of doing my homework and also eating soup. Hahaha random but yeah now you know exactly what I’m doing^^

So after seeing Frozen this song stood out as the best in the entire movie.

Everyone in the youtaite community had been covering this song so I jumped on the bandwagon and followed suit.

Idina Menzel being the amazing beltress that she is , made this song so passionate but so difficult to emulate.
The song starts out so low and ends so high.

I originally began singing this quite lower and sounded quite boy like and i didn’t really like that because it didn’t quite fit the character so I started using a lighter , higher tone. With the lower tone I hit the low notes better and was able to achieve a bit more emotion but the transitions to high notes was really hard and sounded very unnatural.
Singing higher made the high notes easier and the transition better but my character/emotion sounded flat because I was focusing so hard keeping the character voice.

Needless to say , this song was so hard. I had done at least 50 takes for this , no kidding. For some reason some parts would perfect in a take but the rest would not be so good.

Eventually I had sung this song enough I found a happy medium between the high and low and managed ti get some decent takes. I am also very sure no one in my house wants to hear me sing this song ever again.

So my friend 4@4 mixed this for as a favour I had asked of him. He did a great job making this sound so professional and I’m sure his ears died from listening to me belt so much.

I just want to point that for someone who doesn’t really know to belt , I did a pretty good job. All that time spent listening to Broadway music finally paid off XD

As far as acting goes , I tried to picture myself in Elsa’s (the character who sings this song) shoes. In a way I sort of understand this song this song as well. I can relate to it on a certain level. I mean we all have insecurities and this motivates you to open up and “let it go”.

Also I rewatched the sequence for this song so many times , because the animation is so pretty!

Hearing myself singing these songs just reminds me of how much I do not have a classically pretty princess type of singing voice. I tend to sound tomboyish and I like my voice it makes me unique but it also makes me wonder what would my covers sound like if i had a different tone.

So enough rambling , enjoy the song , I will keep making stuff and letting you guys hear it , I got some really good stuff coming and I hope you like it! Also I’m almost at 2oo subs on youtube what should I do to make it special?

Oh yeah and singing this song so much made me a little crazy so this happened.

https://soundcloud.com/annamibananami/let-it-go-opera-version