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Tag: Music

神的隨波逐流 (Shen De Sui Bo Zhu Liu) Lyrics English Translation

I’ve been listening to my go-to cheer-up song again, and realized all the English translations of it online are awful. So here’s my own. The song is 「神的隨波逐流」 (Shen De Sui Bo Zhu Liu), a Chinese adaptation of the Japanese Vocaloid song 「神のまにまに」 (Kami no Manimani), aka “As the Gods Say”. Chinese English 不知最近為什麼總是不隨心意 I don’t know why, recently things haven’t been going my way 坐下望著窗外只會討厭自己 I sit down, staring out the window, hating myself.

Vocal Music I've Been Enjoying in 2023

It’s the end of the year, which means my stories on social media are flooded with Spotify Wrapped posts and similar “lookbacks” from other services. Unfortunately, I don’t use Spotify (or is it fortunately?), so I’m missing out on the action. To deal with the fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), I thought I’d write a blog post about some vocal music, new and old, I’ve been enjoying this year. This is a rarity because most of the music I listen to is non-vocal, video game music, but on the plus side that means I appreciate the vocal music I do like a lot.

My Sakuracon 2023 Experience

I’m typing this the week after Sakuracon 2023, listening to my newly-acquired Touhou PC-98 soundtrack CD’s. For those that don’t know, Sakuracon is a very-large-scale ACG (anime, comics, and games) convention held in Seattle every year. This year was my first year attending. I don’t quite remember why I didn’t attend last year, but it probably came down to me just finding out too late. This post serves as a diary of how I spent the three days and my favorite moments of the con.

From the Archive: Band Poems

Hello dear readers. Today, I’ll be sharing two tongue-in-cheek poems I wrote in high school. They were written in Facebook Notes, which has sadly been deprecated publicly. You can still read your old Notes, but as far as I know there is no way to show them to others again. I’d like to archive these before I forget and they get lost to the sands of internet time. I’ve corrected some minor typographical issues and added some footnote commentary, but the poems are otherwise identical to their original versions.

Touhou 18 OST Rankdown

Another new Touhou game, another ranking of the OSTs. Lower Tier 15. Stage 2 - The Cliff Hidden in Deep Green Not very memorable, in my opinion. Probably because the stage is so short. 14. Stage 2 Boss Takane - Banditry Technology Not very memorable, but not bad either. 13. Title - A Rainbow Spanning Gensokyo Very long phrases in this one. I don’t like it as much as Touhou 17’s title theme, though.

Touhou CD Rankdown

In today’s post, I’ll be giving my personal ranking of the Touhou CD’s, as well as highlight a few of my favorites from each one. What Are the Touhou CD’s? Even if you’re familiar with the Touhou Project, you might not know that besides the mainline video games, ZUN also directs the creation of various manga series and spinoff games. Additionally, every few years he releases music CD’s. These CD’s are composed of remixes of game tracks as well as original tracks that I suspect are tracks that were experimental or rejected, never making it into one of his mainline games.

Things I Like (TIL) #11: Vocaloid

What is this? I’ve liked many things throughout the years. While some have fallen out of my attention, others remain firmly cemented in my memories and feelings. So, I’ve decided to start a mini-series where each week (hopefully), I pick something random that I like or have liked and discuss it, why I like it, and its impact on me. These things can be varied, and range from more trivial matters such as my favourite animal, to books, games, and movies I’ve liked, to topics that have shaped who I am as a person.

Frozen II Song Rankdown

I saw Frozen II today. My impressions are mixed-positive, but that’ll be for another article. Today I’ll do an initial rankdown of the feature songs in the movie. Overall, I thought the songs fit more cohesively into the story than Frozen I, but Frozen I’s best songs (read: For the First Time In Forever and its Reprise) still win out. Frozen I also had the problem where the songs were all front-loaded and the rest of the movie was pretty dry, which isn’t the case in Frozen II.

Things I Like (TIL) #9: Benzene Series (Vocaloid)

What is this? I’ve liked many things throughout the years. While some have fallen out of my attention, others remain firmly cemented in my memories and feelings. So, I’ve decided to start a mini-series where each week (hopefully), I pick something random that I like or have liked and discuss it, why I like it, and its impact on me. These things can be varied, and range from more trivial matters such as my favourite animal, to books, games, and movies I’ve liked, to topics that have shaped who I am as a person.

Champions

Yesterday, my old high school band was crowned the UIL 6A State Marching Band Champion. This brings up so many memories and emotions, so excuse the rambling - I remember watching the Marcus HS band performing their powerhouse of a show at BOA San Antonio 2011 and being amazed at how good they were. I remember Roo telling us in 2013 how there was the “good, great, and OMG” types of bands, and how we were trying to break into being a consistently great band from being a consistently-good sometimes-great band.