First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to advertise.
A record of the endings of 18 artists.
A compilation album with the theme of "the end".
The end of the compilation "Shumatsu branchout"
At the Mastodon instance "Vocaloid Bowl" where Vocaloid fans gather, I participated in a compilation sponsored by Yudachi P.
My song is the 8th song called "Utopia".
I had an idea for this song from the beginning, and I made a half-finished project a long time ago and left it alone, but the original story was an IF story for my novel "Shirokaneki", or rather the ending I had originally thought of. That's one.
I don't want to spoil the novel, so I won't go into details, but the family who is the de facto ruler of the world has carried out a "reset" of the world, and most of the humans have died out, but by some luck (or bad luck) they survived. It's a very, very dark song about a girl who has lost her life and wanders into despair, and just listening to it makes me feel depressed (lol).
This time, we used her CeVIO AI Yuzuki Yukari.
From the time I bought her, I thought from her character image and voice quality that she would be more suited to soft ballads, classical music, and ambient music like the one she did this time, rather than up-tempo pops or EDM.
This song is the first song I made in DTM that was longer than 5 minutes, and it was also the first song I completed after using Reaper as my DAW.
It was difficult at first because I wasn't sure how to operate it, but I don't like practicing or studying, and I like to learn through practice, so I forced myself to get used to it while making it.
This time, perhaps because we were distributing MP3 files rather than streaming, there was a loudness specification of -7LUFS.
I thought it was a lot bigger than streaming distribution, but I wonder if that's normal for CDs.
To explain in a nutshell what LUFS is, it is a unit that measures how loud a sound can be perceived by the human senses.
On Niconico Douga and YouTube, the volume is limited to -14 or -15, and even if you try to play a song that is louder than that, it will automatically be reduced to a lower volume.
My songs were originally mastered for Nico Nico Douga, so my songs were like that up until now, but as I was participating in a compilation, I was forced to review my mixing and mastering methods, so I increased the sound pressure while maintaining the sound quality. I researched various things and tried many things to find out what I should do to achieve the desired loudness.
The sound is not broken either. Should be. perhaps.
If you simply force the maximizer fader up, the sound will become distorted.
You have to increase the sound pressure by adjusting the balance of each frequency band and layering compressors little by little to the extent that the sound doesn't get distorted.
The other compilation participants were DTM veterans with over 10 years of experience, famous producers with 5- or 6-digit playbacks, and some of them were working as professionals, so they couldn't put out anything special. I was pretty excited.
Then, I downloaded the compilation that was completed today and listened to all the songs.
Perhaps because there was no restriction on genre, each member was pursuing their own musical style, and the album was diverse in a good way, making it a salad bowl of music, or rather, an all-inclusive album.
And the price is It's free! !
It would be a shame to miss out on such a wonderful album.
Happy new year to you.