2016 replies to this topic

[Blackmallow]

Grayface said:

 

^

STFU 

You're being insanely obnoxious with your insinuations.  Please just STFU.

If you knew for a fact that the garbage you're saying is true, you should definitely STFU. 
Since you probably don't have that kind of factual knowledge you should definitely STFU.

 

I usually disagree with your rants. Once again, I must disagree by saying you are missing at least 3 more STFUs in your response.

 

EzioNG, go post your garbage in the HP unpopular opinion thread, where it belongs.

[DiegoKashiwagi]

this person is always posting garbage on this forum, if you hate the girls so much just leave wtf

[Kurolivier]

Obvious troll is obvious.

[Fall]

KanaTomo's performance of "Sunao ni Amaete" in this week's Harosute at the ~29:10 mark, with Manakan dancing backup. She sounds amazing!

[Greyface]

https://ameblo.jp/ju...2576519880.html
 

大変嬉しいことに、、
今年夏頃！！！
金澤朋子ソロライブ
再度開催決定㊗️☀️

Incredibly happily,,
This summer!!!
Kanazawa Tomoko Solo Live
Will be held again

 
Somebody with better Japanese skill than mine can sort out whether 再度 just means again in the normal sense of again, or if it means that the summer series will be more directly a repetition of this winter's.  I can't decide on my own. Sorry.

[thegabriel]

@ 1:30 Tomoko giving Kiki a forehead flick.

[Greyface]

Wow... DecoPin Tomoko is already a blast from the past.  Nostalgia is a funny thing.

[Greyface]

Recent break-out comedian group "3-Ji no heroine's" leader Fukuda Maki tweeted about the a-capella Hito-sore. (and having gone to a J=J release event)

https://twitter.com/...6175920128?s=20

 

Kanazawa blogged about being tweeted

https://ameblo.jp/ju...2592993156.html

 

Fukuda tweeted about being blogged.

https://twitter.com/...3444521984?s=20

 

The people who are fans of both, just kinda burst.  lol

 

mutual appreciation society.

I guess it's something like, since J=J has been out and about in the public eye for longer, Fukuda was looking up to J=J (and was enough of a fan to go to a release event for Hito-Sore)

But 3-Ji are on TV way more, so Kanazawa was looking up to 3-Ji.

[zeroyon]

I don't think Studio recording time is that much expensive for Up Front as i'm pretty sure they do own the ones they record into.

 

I'm also pretty sure they have their own studio.  Also, a lot of the most commonly involved people are almost assuredly salaried employees.  But, in this case, only 1 of 4 even sees the inside of a studio.

 

Sorry to butt into the thread, but I know a bit about the recording studios and UFG assets, so I thought I would share that info

 

Up-Front doesn't have their own recording studio. They use a variety of privately owned recording studios, based on schedule availability and cost.
The studio they seem to use the most though is a studio called "Sounduno", since they are in a very convenient location, just around the corner from where Up-Front is located:

 

http://www.sounduno.com/
Which is owned and rented out by this guy:
https://twitter.com/uksound

Since it's kind of a small studio (and therefore Up-Front will typcially only use it to record vocal tracks), it's not very expensive to rent though. The quoted price on the site for 4 hours of rental is only 25000yen (~$230 USD).

There's also additional fees for setting up software and equipment, but I'm not sure if Up-Front would need to pay for that since they probably know how to set everything up by now (one would hope). The mics, headphones, recording equipment, etc is all rental equipment at the studio.

 

In fact, Up-Front doesn't even own their own building that they have been operating out of for the past 18 years or so.
Takashimaya has owned the building since its construction in 2002, and Up-Front has been renting it from Takashimaya. Takashimaya recently sold the building for 8.233 billion yen (~$77 million USD) to an "undisclosed buyer":

https://news.livedoo...etail/18117420/

 

Some people are speculating that this "undisclosed buyer" is Up-Front Group (or the Odyssey Real Estate agency owned by Up-Front Group), and they are finally acquiring the building they've been renting for so long... but most other people think it isn't Up-Front that bought the building recently, since it would be hard to imagine that they have that kind of money to burn after cancelling hundreds of concerts and events recently.

 

Anyways... as for the topic of Tomoko, I'm really glad to have her in Juice=Juice, and hope she continues with Up-Front for a while, even if she decides to graduate from H!P in a year or two.
On another note, any idea as to why Tomoko has two Nintendo Switches? Is one an OG Switch and the other a Switch Lite? She should loan one of them to ReiRei so she can join in on the JJ Animal Crossing gang

 

Finally.. the quote and multiquote buttons seem to be busted for me, so I had to just enter manual quotes.

[Greyface]

^
Interesting!

 

I'm really surprised that it would be cheaper to continuously rent studio space than just build one.  But I also don't really know how expensive making a studio is.  The thinking in my head was that UFG/H!P can fill the studio so much, that renting it isn't so different from owning it, but there's an extra middle-man taking a cut if they rent.

 

From the YouTube shows, there are 2-3 different (the one where they record vocals, and the one where they record instruments) spaces that we see very frequently, so I had assumed it was theirs.  But if those are simply the most convenient locations, they just have ongoing relationships with the owners, etc.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

(also, quote & multiquote has been broken for me, too, for a long while)

[mach1neshop]

^ No, think of it as capital you need to keep running. If I were to own one, I'd have rent on the unit, plus upkeep of all of the sound gear, all of the acoustical dampening as necessary, keeping it clean, etc. That stuff adds up if you're only putting out singles every so often. If you're really serious about recording all the time it's maybe a worthwhile investment, but in that biz because the margins are hard to predict (in the sense that I have to spend up front alot of cash to record the vocals, the instrument tracks, the lyricist, the dance coordinator, etc before I understand how it much it truly sold post-mortem) alot of smaller companies choose not to spend that kind of capital on their own facilities.

 

On a slight tangent steer, I hope she stays a bit longer - I want a KNTM/ReiRei duet if possible now that they're groupmates.

[Kurolivier]

Thanks for the info, I was thinking the same as greyface.

[rurupedia]

omg i would kill for a kanatomo/reirei duet, i wonder how their voices would sound together lol

[Greyface]

That stuff adds up if you're only putting out singles every so often.

But this was my point (my misconception?)

 

UFG releases something like a single every month or two, plus an album every year or so.  And for H!P each of those singles involves recording 8-15 main vocals, plus chorus, plus instruments.

I don't have any sort of insight into the industry, it just looked to me like... that requires a studio all day 5 days a week.  Maybe they just have a faster recording pipeline than I would imagine.

[mach1neshop]

^ Disclaimer up front: my exposure to this world was only minimal so most of my insight is secondhand tale.

 

I'm not so certain for every single they make it's as complicated. The vocal training can be done in their own training premises, and from what I can tell, not every instrument is tracked over and over again. The nature of fast cycle pop is that you wind up tracking the things you want quality with guns for hire, everything else is synthesized. If you've got a well meshing fast-cycle crew, you can track things really quickly.

 

More often, unless you're a perfectionist in a studio every day, you want to spend as little cycle time as possible to get a fast-to-market pop record. I remember an NPR article on I think Rihanna or some other pop star where it was something like a swarm attack: get people in a studio for something like a couple of weeks and after all of that money and time, boom, here's basically an entire album she just needs to sing over and be done with it.

 

On the other hand, if I remember correctly, Linkin Park claims it takes 18 months from start to finish to record a new album...now they're different because these guys aren't above doing the tracking on a tour bus or in a bedroom/hotel room with digitools... but still.

 

As for your point, I understand completely, but as much as I am a fan of the stuff, I can't see this stuff ever as high margin as a Rihanna or a Beyonce record...I can see the argument that since they cycle quickly it should be worthwhile, but the amount of insurance, rent, upkeep, and whatnot quickly eats into whatever margin they might have. If you're a corporation looking at short term margins all the time, it always looks cheaper to splurge spend and hope for the best on sales than to invest over long durations of time on what looks like capital with depreciating worth.

 

@yuripop: I think it would be marvelous. I like both their voices: but the contrast should be sublime...I just hope it's not some bubbly cutesy thing lol

[Lurkette]

Recording itself is the least time-consuming part of the music-making process, in this case. An experienced group of session musicians can get their parts done in a day or two with proper direction (and since so much of pop music these days is digital, they don't even have to get a player for every sound they want to use), and the H!P strategy of having every girl record the entirety of every song means that they can actually spend less time recording, not more, because the track doesn't have to be perfect all the way through when they know they can cut and divide the best parts of each recording in different parts of the song. Mixing and mastering can take longer, but mastering half the time is done by a third party, anyway. There isn't one single timeline to record a song for a given artist, but with idols, efficiency is the name of the game, so I don't see a recording studio being a necessary thing to own in-house. I genuinely don't know how long it would take for them to recoup an investment on buying or building a studio versus renting a nearby location for a week once a month, but I imagine with the upkeep costs it probably would take a while. 

[GrayScales]

It's funny how such an interesting off-topic read is buried in the thread of a member I don't follow.

Only found it because when I see a post on the main forum topics page by some people, zeroyon, Greyface, Lurkette, I'll follow the link and read it.

click
根本凪 (Nemoto Nagi): I have a lot of feelings

It's not a recording studio, but the closing of LOUNGE NEO due to the pandemic can show why it makes sense to rent space at a studio vs owning one outright and not having the associated expenses when there is little to no income.

I originally saw this retweeted by PINOCO from 鶯籠 (toricago)

click
 

[Notice of closing Glad]

Due to the contraction of business due to the effect of the new coronavirus, Glad and its affiliates VUENOS, LOUNGE NEO will be closed on May 31, 2020. Thank you for supporting us for a long time. I sincerely hope that the situation will end.

Glad all of us

click

 

[zeroyon]

Many here have probably already seen these, but Up-Front covered their process in the recording studios on several MUSIC+ and Upcoming (アプカミ) episodes in 2015 and 2016.

 

What takes the longest seems to be the "track down" process, which is the process of taking all the different channels and combining them into two channels for stereo sound. For Angerme's Taiki Bansei, it was far over 200 channels of music, since most of it was captured performances in a studio, and all channels have to be balanced and edited. Hashimoto-san said they sometimes listen to the song hundreds of times and keep editing until it is just right.

 

Here's the episode on that:

(scrub to 3m30s)

 

For music that has a lot of synthesized instruments and sounds, the process is much more straightforward. The voice tracks are captured in studio, but then the person arranging the music can do a lot of the work by themselves afterwards on their own. Shoichiro Hirata covers his process in his home studio in this episode for Angerme's TsugiTsugi ZokuZoku:

(scrub to 26m15s)

 

 

^

@GrayScales

 

Thanks! I always enjoy reading your posts and the info you provide too

 

I'm actually quite upset by the closing of LOUNGE NEO / Shibuya GLAD, as I have memories of a few lives there... I hope clubasia survives too...

I'm even more upset though that Akasaka Blitz is closing. I must have been to over a dozen lives there by now, and all of them were great...

In fact, last year's Juice=Juice Day was at Akasaka Blitz.

 

This site tracks all the live houses in Japan that have closed (or will close soon):

https://kaiten-heite...g-leisure/live/

They track new live house openings as well.

 

As for my question I posted above last week about Tomoko's Nintendo Switches... speak of the devil, Tomoko (kinda) answered it in her lastest instragram post!

 

She has two Switches. A grey OG Switch and a pink Switch Lite (with Spiderman stickers)

https://www.instagra.../p/CAXWdD4Bgpm/

 

I asked that question last week because of the recent episode of Hello! Station. Tomoko was on the phone with Reirei, and Reirei mentioned that she wanted to get into gaming, but didn't have a Nintendo Switch. Tomoko then mentioned she has two of them, but didn't provide details. She also said that J=J members often online game with each other.

(scrub to 22m04s)

[thegabriel]

♪.収録！妄想！天丼！ 金澤朋子

[Blackmallow]

July 3rd was her 25th birthday. Coronavirus sucks, but the silver lining is that it and Karen's graduation are giving us an extra 6 to 12 months of performances from this angel.

 

Happy Birthday to the performer with the most unique voice in HP history.

 

Let us not talk of graduations just yet...