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Old 2009.11.05, 07:14 PM   #21
JimmyKoria
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LMFAO@the losing virginity to Shiina Ringo. I so wanted to but I was beyond drunk :[ And I've become too tart to ever go back. *becomes a born again*

Rocket: I like the story behind your name ;] Its kinda like you made it your own by just having it Rocket and cutting off the Drive part.

Konfukuron reminds me of an early crush @_@ Its very over protective and childish type of feeling.

Okonomide just brings out the sarcasm in me. I'm never really sure why but I think its the way she sings and I connect it to poop-tastic friendships.

And life is pretty much like Stoicism. When you first listen to it you're like "WTF" but then you're like "Meh, I cant understand what the heck is going on, the translations make even less sense...but damn this is good" :3
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Old 2009.11.07, 11:03 AM   #22
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Hey All!

My Japanese music cherry was actually popped by Cyndi Lauper. Her rendition of "Giniro no Yume" was the first Japanese song I learned the words to. Being such a big Cyndi-fan, I have checked out every artist she has covered, collaborated with or who has covered her. Ringo had covered the Lauper song, "Unconditional Love" That cover wasn't the greatest, but it introduced me to my first love in Japanese music. I have not much enjoyed American music ever since. Even my Cyndi-obsession has dropped off to nearly nothing in comparison.

At the time I started listening to Ringo, I was in the middle of a depression. Though I didn't understand her lyrics, the emotions she poured into her songs were very clear. I could really identify with the emotions in her music. In time, I came to realize that the fact that I could not understand her lyrics was a bonus. I could plug-in meaning from my own life without lyrics getting in the way. I also found that she was one of those rare performers who could sound pathetic and absolutely beautiful at the same time.

As I recovered from my depression, I came to appreciate the complexity of her music. I don't like simple pop music, formula songs, etc. Complex melodies, Diversity, Dynamics, Crossing Genres, and Heavy Contrasts are things that appeal to me in music as well as in other areas of life. Ringo has them all. She is definitely a world-class performer.

(Un?)Fortunately, I had to stop listening to a lot of my old Ringo favorites in coming out of my depression. One of the choices that led me out of it was to put things out of my life that tended to keep me depressed. Listening to someone agonizing about loves lost, and life's other hurts wasn't helping me recover. This also further led me away from away from American music because so much of it is so damned negative. At least with Japanese music, if a song sounds happy, even if it is downtrodden in it's content, I can still enjoy it. If I understand the lyrics enough to know it's really a heartbreaker, it loses it's appeal ("Momen no Handkerchief" for example... I had loved that song until I read the translation. Now I can't listen to it an enjoy it nearly as much). Now, I only listen to the more depressing ones when I am in a great mood so I do still enjoy them, and my emotions down get down because of listening to them.

Lately, in addition to my many Ringo favorites, I have been listening to a lot more Judy and Mary + Yuki. Sometimes I enjoy listening to Yuki more than Ringo. She is much more consistently upbeat and happy in her music. I need that. She has a lot of the qualities I listed above as being important to me in music, though not as much as Ringo. Yuki is definitely a world-class performer.

+++

Side Note: I have been out of the loop too long! Today is the first day I learned Ringo had produced a new album.

Naturally I came here to read about it. Well, I haven't read about the album yet... I spent the last hour skimming through 142 pages of pre-album speculation! I had forgotten how intense this forum was.

I wasn't too impressed with "Shun" from the PV I watched. I'll have to wait and see if the album proves to be more enjoyable.

+++

Unrelated question: I have noticed that the Japanese music I have listened to doesn't put much importance on making lyrics ryhme. Is this typical of other Japanese music? Music in other languages? Or is it just the Americans are obsessed with rhyming?
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Old 2009.11.07, 01:38 PM   #23
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btw, I still have over 100 Ringo songs on my favorites list. If I had not cut out the more depressing ones, it would surely be close to 150. HF and Variety have proven to be two of my most favorite albums if only considering the fact that I have trimmed the fewest songs out of those on my "Favorites" playlist. KZK still holds a tender place in my heart, but I can't listen to it as often as I used to... and I won't cut songs out of that... It is ONE piece of music, In my mind.
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Old 2009.11.07, 01:45 PM   #24
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Originally Posted by KronKyrios View Post
Unrelated question: I have noticed that the Japanese music I have listened to doesn't put much importance on making lyrics ryhme. Is this typical of other Japanese music? Music in other languages? Or is it just the Americans are obsessed with rhyming?
The way the Japanese language is formed, rhyming isn't something they can do very easily. Words are always ended with a vowel and usually have a grammatical particle. So it'd just be a lot of repetitious sounds and identical grammar. Also a lot of rap is nonsense, in order to rhyme they throw in odd sentence structures and random English words.
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Old 2009.11.07, 08:08 PM   #25
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Originally Posted by mizer_unmei View Post
The way the Japanese language is formed, rhyming isn't something they can do very easily. Words are always ended with a vowel and usually have a grammatical particle. So it'd just be a lot of repetitious sounds and identical grammar. Also a lot of rap is nonsense, in order to rhyme they throw in odd sentence structures and random English words.
Isn't most ryhming in English lyrics mostly the last word in a sentence? "You make me fly, so I can tie, i ate a die, oh my" o: If it followed the same its easy for Japanese but the only thing is you have rhyming verbs and not really objects.

Last edited by JimmyKoria : 2009.11.07 at 08:14 PM. Reason: i make far too many typos for it to be legal.
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Old 2009.11.07, 10:17 PM   #26
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Originally Posted by JimmyKoria View Post
Isn't most ryhming in English lyrics mostly the last word in a sentence? "You make me fly, so I can tie, i ate a die, oh my" o: If it followed the same its easy for Japanese but the only thing is you have rhyming verbs and not really objects.
Well, then you have to make the end of of the line the end of the sentence, which doesn't happen all the time.
Plus you'd get awfully repetitive -- you'd get - masu, - masu, -masu or -ru -ru -ru at the end of EVERYTHING if you did it that way. Rhyming to with too makes me cringe enough. And it seems they do put the verb at the end several times in a row since they're limited by the grammar of the language, it's more like a formulaic sentence structure that they're repeating rather than a poetic play on sounds.

Also, English has the added ability of having final consonants. So you can get things like "If you change your mind, I'm the first in line" with some added variation which Japanese just isn't free to work with.

However they can have some nice rhymes that I find pretty interesting. Like from Namie Amuro's "Hello"

"dakedo mou sukoshi dake
kangaete mite"

So it's different parts of speech rhyming with the final sound in the same musical formula in each line.


This is actually shown pretty nicely in this one Korean song by Jaurim. (Korean and Japanese have pretty similar syntax) Even if you can't read Korean, since it's an alphabet you can still see the patterns of the phrases at the end of the lines:

1. 무거운 걸음으로 다시 오늘도
2. 피곤이 가시지 않은 머리로
3. 어쩔 수 없지 이게 내 인생
4. 나는 자리를 향해 출발해

Lines one and two both end with the vowel "o", both using different post-word particles ("and" and "with/by" respectively). While with lines 3 and 4 they both end with an "ae" vowel (the first having an -ng sound at the very end.), line 3 being the end of a noun ("life") and line 4 ends with a short form of the conjugated verb "to do".

----------------
1. 어머니, 당신은 알고 계시나요
2. 나는 이름도 없는 나사
3. 어머니, 당신은 만족하시나요
4. 내가 왜 살아있는건지 말해줘요

While in this sample, lines one and three have the same sentence structure save for the main verb. The end bits "shinayo" are all parts of the verb. And when they're used to rhyme together they just sound repetitive if you think they're supposed to rhyme. But along with the first part of the line "omoni tangshineun" ("mother, you[subj]") they sork well as part of a formulaic structure. (Lines 2 and three have no bearing on anything here, but you can note that they don't rhyme.)
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Last edited by mizer_unmei : 2009.11.07 at 10:51 PM.
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Old 2009.11.08, 09:05 AM   #27
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I must say this is a lot more than I expected in replies to my Unlreated Question. Honestly, I didn't mean to Ninja Hijack this thread. But, this is information I really wanted to know, so I do thank you.

I think that part of what captured my attention about Japanese music was the fact that it does not rhyme incessantly, so I am certainly not complaining that it is inconvenient for them to do so. It's rather refreshing. It adds to the Complexity of the music. Your example of the Korean music shows that it is possible, but I certainly wouldn't ask that they make it a habit.

I think Americans could take a tip from the Japanese and stop obsessing over it. At least some poets get it. According to Wikipedia, Poetry is considered "artificially developed". Prose is poetry "without meter or rhyme", and is "less constructed and more reflective of ordinary speech". So, by those definitions, we could say:
Americans are manufacturing their music
.
The Japanese are keeping it real
.
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Old 2009.11.08, 09:36 AM   #28
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Originally Posted by KronKyrios View Post
I think Americans could take a tip from the Japanese and stop obsessing over it. At least some poets get it. According to Wikipedia, Poetry is considered "artificially developed". Prose is poetry "without meter or rhyme", and is "less constructed and more reflective of ordinary speech". So, by those definitions, we could say:
Americans are manufacturing their music.
The Japanese are keeping it real.
I mostly agree with what you're saying. I've pretty much always hated rhymes, unless of course you are trying to come off as trite (like, say, you decided to write a cheesy old broadway tune). There's a song or two I've written that had rhymes in the lyrics but I couldn't change them because changing the words to break the rhyme would affect the meaning of the lyrics. It can be somewhat frustrating.

P.S. I find the way you write your posts quite charming.
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Old 2009.11.08, 09:43 AM   #29
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Originally Posted by KronKyrios View Post
Americans are manufacturing their music[/u].
The Japanese are keeping it real
.
Um...well =/
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Old 2009.11.08, 09:52 AM   #30
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Originally Posted by KronKyrios View Post
Americans are manufacturing their music.
The Japanese are keeping it real
.
And are we talking about the same Japan here? We're pretty much equal in the bad to good music ratio.

Last edited by BanFan : 2009.11.08 at 10:03 AM.
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