Something Unreal

MCM Expo was held in London last weekend, and I took along the soundcase I’d been making, but it was my friend Dnstje’s remote-controlled Yukkuri which really stole the spotlight and turned into a remote-controlled crowd of dancing otakus. ;D

[Watch in HD]

Thanks to Dnstje for editing the videos we recorded!

An attempt at remaking the Alstroemeria Records remix of “Bad Apple!!”, the stage 3 theme from Touhou 04: Lotus Land Story. It took about 8 days in total. I added a lot of improvisation during the main “chorus” part. Major thanks to my brother (Steeeven1 on YouTube) for playing the guitar part, and going from never having heard it before, learning it, and having it recorded in less than 2 hours.

[Watch in HD]

The looping backing part which I played on the keyboard is seriously annoying to play, so I put some lights on to annoy everyone else. …No, not really. I just thought they livened things up a bit. xD

This is a birthday present to someone who finds the original version of “Bad Apple!!” awesome. I hope this can live up to that…

High-quality MP3 is here, and link to the video on Niconico Douga for those who want to leave scrolling comments is here.

TECHNICAL RUBBISH: (more…)

Yeah… A rushed attempt by me of Chen Nyan Poi on the piano (well, keyboard). I had to have it done by a certain day for somone, and I guess I had been too lazy with practising, but being fail has never stopped other things of mine from being uploaded.

[Watch in HD]

“Chen Nyan Poi” is a remix by IOSYS of the theme of Chen (stage 2 boss in Touhou 07: Perfect Cherry Blossom). Anyway, not much more to say here, except that I actually recorded this over 3 weeks ago and had forgotten to upload it until now. orz

Here are my custom StepMania lights taped to my wall, to resemble the crystals on one of Flandre‘s wings, and I added a horizontal mirror to make the second wing. I made a simfile specifically for the 8 lights, just like I did back on Cirno Day.

[Watch with video/audio in sync]

I know that the lights don’t perfectly match up with the crystals on the drawing (by Kiyomin), but I thought of overlaying a drawing AFTER I’d set up the lights, and I couldn’t really move them because I’d measured the wires to be only as long as needed. I never thought I’d stumble upon even this good a picture of her (position-of-the-crystals-wise) – and she’s even wearing Christmassy clothes! So although they don’t line up perfectly, I thought it would be a wasted opportunity to leave out the drawing.

The tune is to the theme of Flandre Scarlet (extra-stage boss in Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil), called “U.N. Owen Was Her?”. Unfortunately, I don’t know the name (or even artist) of this Christmas-style arrangement of it.

The lights are being controlled by my own freeware program “StepMania Player”, which you can get from here. Lower-quality version on NicoNico Douga for those of you who want to leave scrolling comments is here. =P

This light show is for a special someone… nyan. x3

Here are all the Caramelldansens which Dnstje and I recorded at MCM Expo last weekend, combined into one video! =D

Thanks very much to Dnstje for editing them all together, and even making dual-views for the parts where we were both recording at the same time!

[Watch in HD]

Eye was the strongest, who also carried around around a “soundcase” (sound suitcase) which Dnstje helped me to make. It was playing the music most of the times in this video.

Dnstje, a friend of mine, made this remote-controlled yukkuri Reimu head, which also has a speaker for playing sound from things such as an iPhone connected to the controller. A bunch of Touhou fans formed around us, so Dnstje played some Touhou-related remixes on the yukkuri as we all chased it around the various rooms of the Abunai convention, seeing everyone’s reactions. =D

The alarms at 03:13 and 03:31 were set off by the FM transmitter (controller). xD

[Watch in HD]

Sorry for the many fast-forwarded clips, but it was VERY hard to squeeze about 25 minutes of footage down to the length of the song. I tried to completely remove the most boring parts, and I sped up the parts where it took a while for anything different to happen.

Well, I was a ⑨ and only started making this on the 8th, so it was a big effort for me to get it done and recorded before the 9th ended.

[Watch at YouTube]

This is an insanely rushed video of the view from outside my bedroom window. Later I intend to upload a video showing the simfile I made (and which these lights are playing) playing on StepMania, because it looks kind of insane, perhaps along with another few views of the lights from other locations.

This video is not uploaded in HD, because too many computers struggle to play HD YouTube videos (they update the picture slowly), and that’s a very bad thing for this video. Smoothness is essential here, and the picture resolution is not. ^^

Sadly, I couldn’t get it compressed and uploaded before midnight GMT (and certainly not a proper in sync version, *cough* YouTube), but we will NEVAR FORGET our little blue idiot, so I guess it’s okay. ^^ Yep, that makes no sense whatsoever. But who cares? It’s Cirno d–! Oh wait, it’s not any more.

Well, I tried again… and failed again. xD

[Watch in HD]

I know the piano isn’t perfectly in tune, but it was the best I had access to. Plus, if it had been really good, I might not have been allowed to have the front cover off it.

By the way, the piano happened to be in a building attached to a church, so I thought there was a nice irony to starting the medley with the theme of a vampire.

Wow! It’s been a long time since my last video of my Bleeper Music Maker program playing music. This time I DIDN’T make the music – it’s just playing a MIDI which someone else has made and released here.

[Watch in HD]

This is the theme for when you’re fighting Satori (stage 4′s boss) in the 11th Touhou game (Subterranean Animism). I’ve increased the tempo, though, to try to make it sound more lively (my program plays 1-bit music, which is as basic as a waveform can get, and so long notes can sound very boring/tedious/headache-inducing).

My Bleeper Music Maker program is freeware, and you can grab the latest version of it and see more info on it here.

Also, I think I’ll be using this LED display in a lot of videos… if I can find a way to make it look less unstable/juddery on the camcorder. =/

This is me trying to play Caramelldansen as I’ve learnt it from memory, to a metronome at 165 BPM.

There are at least 4 very obvious and cringe-worthy mistakes which make me think I shouldn’t be uploading this, but after trying for quite a few hours over 2 days, this was the best I could do. Maybe someday after more practise I’ll try it on a real piano.

[Watch in HD]

Also, my Remi plush fell onto the keys many times during failed attempts but didn’t during this “most successful” one, so I had to force her to. =P

Technical stuff: The keyboard is a Yamaha PSR-E313. Played music can be recorded onto internal memory. While playing this, it was recording, and later I played it back while its headphone output was connected to my soundcard, to have a nice clean recording of just the piano sound without the metronome, key presses, and my sniffing due to hayfever. xD