The Klassic Note Spirit Part 5 – The Year 2011 and the Venture Outside Standards
Sunday, 04 November 2018
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Up till now, we have been talking a lot about Japanese music. Well because Klassic Note originated with the desire to search for more Japanese songs anyway. But hey, as someone who has listened to Chinese and English songs half his life, it's no wonder I'll miss them once in a while, and this year is the first exception to the growing interest in what was mainly Klassic Note since 2009. Let's see how far this has went.The Klassic Note Spirit Part 5
"The Year 2011 and the Venture Outside Standards"
(*The below information is an adaptation of the original excerpt which was posted here in 2013)
RISE OF NEW MEDIA, AND NEW STYLES
Around this time, copyright laws (and probably new artist/label contracts) within the country (Japan) allowed the music companies to appear in more familiar Internet platforms, for example YouTube - the first and most widely used video streaming service in the world - instead of niconico, their local online video service. Because of this, (Anime) music companies from King Records (with plenty of solo voice actor music careers and mainstream artists) to Lantis (famous for Anime songs) and Pony Canyon (featuring overseas artists and also Anime songs which they later opened a channel for the latter group) have since been around the Internet to allow the previewing of more new songs and expanding my horizon on music listening. This would likely explain why the songs in my list is still expanding. Along with these are the addition of the Anime "K-ON!" with a movie adaptation and "Oreimo" with their ending theme songs. However, not all are into the ecosystem of the new media yet, so this is still a work in progress which we no doubt, will see more of in the future.
| From Victor Entertainment comes a slew of new and old artists. This one is from LITTLE CREATURES which released an album just to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This is their really quirky music video. |
2011 also signaled another change in giving melody over music style with the acceptance of electronic and dance-based music (leaning on the edge of techno which I will NEVER touch on) with artists like NEGOTO, LAMA and School Food Punishment, with the latter two from Anime and the last... disbanding within the year. Man, that was fast.
THE JOURNEY BACK IN TIME
This year also spawned the first of later, many journeys back in time to explore older tunes sung by... artists who have disbanded? Yes, and the easiest way to have this reach is through Anime, specifically jazz duo "Natural High" from the Anime "Bartender" which I watched purely from interest in, you know, cocktails and stuff. It was a short one considering their tracklist isn't that long, but there were some amazing tunes that will make their footprint in Klassic Note significant and long-lasting, to say the least.
| The great jazz duo “Natural High” singing with a guy: What a fresh idea. Also... |
| They have awesome piano melodies in their releases. Yes, this single has been on my shelf already, haha. |
As they already say, “picture says a thousand words”, not to even say in video. As you can see, the songs have not decreased, and so is my passion for listening to J-Pop.
IN A WORLD OF ANIME WITHOUT BLEACH
With the largest source of theme songs from Anime "BLEACH" potentially ending the following year on March 2012, the decrease in artist introductions became a major concern in Klassic Note. But as explained earlier, many of the avenues and watching more Anime will actually help in broadening my listening of what Japanese music has to offer, mainly from Anime. From "Fractale" featuring AZUMA HITOMI to "[C] - CONTROL: THE MONEY OF SOUL AND POSSIBILITY", an Anime original featuring School Food Punishment and NICO Touches The Walls to "A Channel" featuring Kawano Marina (she sang theme songs for the main and the OVA) to Hyadain in "Nichijou" for his quirky pop duo songs created for the Anime in his typical style... all these serve to show the never-ending fountain of songs that make the Anime world a colorful spectrum but also, bring forth a new set of artists (as long as they are not affiliated fully to Anime) which I can tap on in future years.
| AZUMA HITOMI also sang later in the year on her 2nd single "Kira Kira" which hit my rankings hard as the newcomer favourite. |
WHATEVER IS NOT JAPANESE
Maybe it's because of the upset of Anime songs that I have to venture out into my past again, but hey, I don't mean to be racist here. We're talking about specifically the Chinese songs I've given in abundance before Klassic Note started and apparently it has staged a comeback. Maybe it's the saturation of artists as mentioned above, from the disbandment and lack of activity of some of the more active ones from the past year, which made this more of an alternative than of interest. And so, I took a journey back to listen to a couple of artists, from famous ones you might know (sodagreen, Rainie Yang) to probably regional (as in Southeast Asia) ones you probably will never know otherwise even if I mention them here. All in all, it was a nice journey and I gained a lot of insight about how much Chinese Pop has improved over the years, gearing away from singing emotional tunes and giving a perspective the Japanese have been doing in recent decades.
TOWARDS CREATING THE KLASSIC NOTE PACKAGE
Up until now I still referred whatever I did as an abbreviation of my name ie. KN Song Awards, but I’ve been creative and thinking hard and far about what I can make it be like, there was a realisation. So finally after two to three years since the beginnings of a Song Awards presentation, I came up with the title "Klassic Note" to describe the overall... passion project that was going on for the past few years, and I liked the name a lot. This will help to push on the effort to tabulate results and awards every year ever since as they get more complicated and heavy considering the never-expanding song list accompanied by my hunger for new melodies in J-Pop.
This revision fixed a lot of inconsistencies by setting standards for plenty of initial ideas done up till now including fixing Commendations (Awards where competition is not required because of a typical milestone, for example "Most Complicated Lyrics" lol) (yeah as if I know), presenting the Vocal Styles Popularity Survey (yeah the name is still) with a pie chart and making a list of selected entries to choose for Awards and Top 20 Rankings to make the thinking process a lot easier. Two new lists of songs were listed per month along with Song of the Month entries (one of them "POWER PLAY" would become an inspiration for the SILVER yearly compilation) and Awards were thought of and named since 2010 to give the awards more meaning above their original title.
This revision also introduced plenty of concepts which I have taken from everyday life to put into the project. This goes from using correlation (it's Math, baby) and searching online on how to realise them in the Song Awards which brought us the Song Appetite Survey to the Anime Songs Survey which showed proportion of songs from this genre with respect to the yearly list (I mean, this done in 2009 or 2010 would've been massive thanks to "K-ON!") to the single review-focused Singles B-side Survey, giving singles (music releases with a handful track count) some recognition of their efforts even if the topic song (typically known as the A-side) isn't as great as I think. All these will in turn expand and form the Song Award package to what it mostly is today. Of course, this is not over as we see in future years, more will be added in, changed and maybe retired in recognition of the ever-changing landscape in Klassic Note.
Next up: The Klassic Note Spirit Part 6 – The Year 2012 and 5th Year Plans
(And my wonderful idea of starting all of this from five years ago... it needs a commemoration.)
(**All linked references ago were active at time of publishing this post. They are meant for educational purposes and not are not taken directly from any intellectual property)