Ditto 💕

The other day I wrapped on something towards which I'd been spending a lot of my spare time, declared "I'M FREEEEEE!" and immediately recorded a yolo short cover hahahaha.

First time singing something for fun since Everything Goes On all the way back in July!

Practically half a lifetime ago; it'd been so long already. 😭

I've been obsessed with NewJeans' entire discography, and their latest tune on loop has been the comfy, sentimental, soothing, winter band arrangement of their latest song Ditto performed on It's Live.

This is something I've said frequently but I'll repeat it each time til my mouth runs dry: some of the moments I cherish most are those of feeling inspired, sparkling desire to sing something spontaneously, and then being privileged enough to have the time and health to do it. ;u; Even better if I actually finish something to share. Between inspiration, time, health, or a combination—from July until now I would cycle through lacking these things... Finally was able to experience that fulfillment again!

felt like singing a bit of "Ditto" by NewJeans (arrangement they performed on It's Live) 💗 pic.twitter.com/2b0bTHADnK

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) December 25, 2022

(also unlisted on youtube in case twitter breaks)

I do adore that next part of the song and hoped to include it but unfortunately my voice isn't up for it yet... Although I haven't been up to much proper singing in the past few months I've been doing vocal function exercises to try to rebuild/relearn the functionality of my vocal cords and breathing and the entire sound system. It definitely, physically feels like things have changed. Supporting my voice doesn't work the way it used to. My voice very easily breaks, becomes fatigued quickly, and the existence of my head voice keeps fluctuating... I'm considering seeking a voice therapist/coach to hopefully guide my recovery, but for now luckily most of the song was in a lower range I happened to be in condition for.

😭😭😭😭😭 People have been insanely sweet.............

Genuinely did not expect this short cover to receive this much love and resonate with so many people especially within my particular demographic reach (leaning more towards anime than k-pop) and considering it's a lazy bedroom facecam rather than compelling, pretty, illustrated aesthetics. Not to mention the lousy instrumental. I'm thankful that so many gave my singing a chance!

All of the interactions have been shocking...heartwarming...and tenderly raised my self confidence. Makes me happier with this cover than I'd been initially; it has set me all aglow. I'm so honored. 💗 Personally I do have a few reasons to be proud but none of them I think are necessarily reasons that others would appreciate this piece haha.

While recording I actually came close to giving up because I felt I didn't suit the song; only kept going on account that I already learned it and should record something even if not for sharing. Unlike the horrid lie insinuated by the video appearing like a oneshot, in truth it took a whole 92 recordings to piece together this tiny cover..... Took plenty of takes before figuring out the timbre and energy I ended up being satisfied with but I'm glad I got there—aimed for soft, hopeful, light without being too thin, slightly breathy, and relaxed! Personally I dislike the phrasing in much of my singing so I paid careful attention to that here, especially holding out notes to not sound rushed, and mostly am happy with those results. Also could possibly be my best pronunciation of Korean, as well as depiction of each line's meaning, yet?

Feels like I was able to thwart many of my bad habits in this little project. Progress. ✊

One final note: I'm pretty pleased with how the Medium Effort mixing of the vocals turned out. As long as you close your ears to the noise of this necromantic instrumental lolol. Pitch correction plays a huge part of a polished sound and I accidentally came up with this three-layer method that seemed to work: 1) applied natural-sounding autotune, 2) then did rough manual tuning fixes, 3) applied autotune again but extremely subtle. Each step just kind of cleans it up a little more without being too strong or sounding unnatural. Fairly polished without too much effort; I'll try it again on a future mix!

Everything Goes On 💫

The best part about being on hiatus as my throat heals is that although I can't join any collabs due to my unstable condition where I might find myself unable to sing for weeks at a time, it means that whenever I am able to sing I have freedom to record whatever it is I feel like!

My era of yolo short covers is back~ ✨

The Sunday morning before previous, I woke up to find that Chungha dropped a Korean version of Porter Robinson's "Everything Goes On" which is the new League of Legends song that I've been hearing everywhere, released for the new Star Guardian skins and animation!! And I do love me them magical girls!! And I love Chungha's gooooorgeous, emotion-driven singing.... And just this arrangement of the song is so beautiful, simply magical and enchanting and flowing. 🥺 I sighed and clutched my heart upon first listen, absolutely immediately fell in love, and had an inkling that I'd want to try to sing it if possible loooool.

While getting ready to go out, I couldn't stop listening to the song... Actually for nearly a month my throat condition wasn't great and in particular I could barely eke out or control my head voice which sucks because most songs are too high for me so I depend on it lol. Luckily it had been starting to come back so that morning was me testing it out along to this song—at that time I was skeptical that I'd be able to even sing the "looooonGER~" because it's a sustained note and then goes higher without any reset...

That was a super fun Sunday by the way! My friend pKotetsu (whom I wrote about in this post; he was one of our amazing animators for DREAM✦SCAPE) was in town for the Dreamcatcher concert so we spent a lot of time together hitting up good, good food spots. 😁🌟 I still think about that Sunday's food x friends adventure... My favorite matcha latte spot ever, mochi muffins, authentic Italian pizza, burnt brown sugar boba, mango sticky rice bingsoo, matcha warabimochi, unexpectedly really bomb wings that we got at the dessert place... Take me back to that day LOL.

I spent my 45 minute long drive home just looping the hell out of that song and continuing to test my head voice, began familiarizing myself with lyrics while getting unready, and then started recording it that same night HAHAHA. Until 3:30 AM... before a Monday... when I have work............

But it was too much fun. :3✨ I've said this again and again but I really think it's something special to cherish when you have something you desperately want to sing and you're able to spontaneously indulge yourself with it.

My condition wasn't perfect—in fact I would hate to give anyone the raw recordings in this when my voice often sounded scratchy or grating or unstable or not properly supported... And this song was exceedingly hard to sing... I got away with it(?) by doing the mixing myself and masking it with effects—used a lot of the same ones I showed in 0X1=LOVESONG and gotta say I'm pretty happy with how my "medium effort" mixing sounds now! It's a huge upgrade from before and sounds remotely polished enough despite not going much into the details or automating or having a clean instrumental. (I made this instrumental by taking an audio recording of the song off of youtube and removing the vocals in Audition...) All things considered, I'm fairly happy with how the end results sound 💖

short cover!! #youtaiteworks

"Everything Goes On" ✨

i absolutely fell in love with chungha's korean version of the new Star Guardians song (orig. by porter robinson) - the arrangement and lyrics are simply magical so i wanted to try singing it 💫 pic.twitter.com/VaZc4dmj1w

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) July 26, 2022

[or listen on Soundcloud!]

0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) + Mix Breakdown

[Updated 7/26 with mix breakdown!]

 “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)” / cover by Eva ft. chiisana

Vocals (TXT’s parts) / mix / video : Eva (youtube)  

Vocals (Seori’s part) : 小さな (youtube)

Chorus Artificial Harms Tuning : Scylla (comms open!)

Vocal Remove Instrumental : https://youtu.be/vLGDbH5FY08

---

I truly do not know how this became an entire cover with a video uploaded to YouTube like this lmao.

For those who don’t know, I’ve been on-and-off vocal hiatus for the past year due to throat damage from laryngopharyngeal reflux! But esp the past few months with my condition fluctuating, I pretty much haven’t done any singing.

…Until one day I was in an angsty TXT mood (whom btw I've realized might have my current favorite discography among kpop boy groups?) and started singing this for fun… In fact, about 1/3 of the mains were recorded with speakers bc I thought of it as karaoke looool.

It’d been 1.5 months since I’d last sang so was basically testing my vocal condition—I expected my voice not to be able to handle low notes, pleasantly surprised, then I thought maybe rapping would be too much, was super happy since my last rap attempt my throat said nOPE, and DEFINITELY I thought I’d be skipping the chorus and loud parts, but big shock!!! Somehow….a cover came to existence!!

This was so fun—from the whole unexpected recording experience, mixing with lots of effects, getting to do a new yolo duet with the best friend (thank you chiisa for your angel voice and Sakura-chan!!!), pulling this video out of my ass…..

Thank you for watching and reading if you did ♡

I will sing lots more when I’m recovered!

---

PS: I got greedy and rushed to upload this the night before leaving for AX LOL. Kinda contributed to my dying but I'm glad I got this out there ;v; I'd like to do a little breakdown of the mix effects, maybe coming soon !?

---

Yaaaay I did it! Rather than a proper mix breakdown, I just showed everything that was on my effects chain—they're kind of the typical effects that I would use for vocals, especially kpop vocals that need to be thick and punchy, and ESPECIALLY since I only recorded one layer with no doubling!

mix breakdown ?! kind of !?

such a huge relief that ppl liked my mixing for the "0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)" cover tysm 🥺

it was fun haphazardly piling on all the effects - so here is a breakdown of what's on my Vocal Bus as requested!#youtaiteworks pic.twitter.com/taWhCEyesq

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) July 13, 2022

Also a little demo of how the pitch phasing works since it's not super common but I think it makes a world of difference!!

yeah, I'm a Born Hater

Epik High's new album inspired me to dig up my rendition of "Born Hater" that i never posted.

i wrote and rapped this in 2014 when i was a film student angst'ing against pressure to change majors. anyway i work in video production now & it's going gr8 😊

warning cuss words !!

(yes it's just the same text copy and pasted from my tweet—just b/c I always feel like the embed is on the verge of breaking or in case my twt account ever goes down LOL)

Epik High's new album inspired me to dig up my rendition of "Born Hater" that i never posted.

i wrote and rapped this in 2014 when i was a film student angst'ing against pressure to change majors. anyway i work in video production now & it's going gr8 😊

warning cuss words !! pic.twitter.com/6wHYyr2mTW

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) January 21, 2021

[YT link]

Honestly surprised at myself for never posting this all these years... If I'm remembering correctly I think I wrote this before Epik High announced their Born Hater cover contest—and then aaalllll the cool rappers started posting their versions and I got intimidated HAHA. It's a bit cringy but I'm embracing it as part of my story. :3 Still would likely consider it better writing than what I can do now!

Lyrics:

Gemini [gals] Impact

SCREAMS this wasn't on the agenda aT ALL but ..... instead of sleeping at a responsible time last night I was spontaneously inspired to try voice acting. As Ganyu, the new ice archer chara that just came out in Genshin Impact! Lolol leading up to her release, I somehow had very little interest in her but the more I got to know her.... who am I kidding, she's an ice archer—I was never meant to stand a chance. 🥺 She's also kind and hardworking and wise and beautiful...

After playing her story quest, I fell in love with her Japanese seiyuu's soft, sweet voice so I thought it could be fun to try my own take of Ganyu in English ;v;.. It's surprising how different her Eng VA's approach is to her personality—it's more rigid, cold, and unapproachable. AND THEN AAA two of my closest friends mimi and chiisana agreed to record on a whim too! Honestly I have absolutely no aptitude for voice acting and almost scrapped this entirely before even asking them but mimi and chiisa are way, way too perfect for their parts so this feels extremely precious; I'm happy we did this. 😭 Thus the first yolo Gemini girls' fandub was born: 

quick little #GenshinImpact dub!
🧚🏻‍♀️⚜️❄️

paimon: @mimi_moiselle
lumine: @chiisanauta
ganyu: @waterpixieva pic.twitter.com/HRe6ZZXsce

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) January 15, 2021

[YT link]

Also would like to give credit to Albedo's Eng voice actor Khoi Dao for being the inspiration that gave me the courage to try this ;; English is his third language and now he speaks it so well...!! Here a link to him talking about his journey with trying to fix and then learning to accept his accent. So awe-inspiring. I wish him every success and also he's super funny; I am a fan of this dude now.

PS: Wowow I get to make a "voice acting" label!! Also tagging "mixing" because this surprisingly took a lot of complex audio mix work 😳 A whole lot of EQ, multiband compression, and even frequency spectrogram work.. but I'm really pleased with how the mix came out considering it was my first time! I learned so much about VA even from this very short clip ehe

🍀 Clover wish~ 🍀 Mix Evolution

YEEEEEEY a big step has been made!!! ✨

Earlier this year, some of my friends and I were obsessed with the anime If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budoukan, I Would Die (aka OshiBudo) which was airing at the time so we thought it'd be really cute if we covered the opening theme!! This cast feels really precious because not only are they my [lovely-voiced] friends in the youtaite community, but also they're all in NorCal so we used to hang out a lot! You know, back during "precedented" times when hangouts were a thing.

And then of course we were brought to life by the perfectly adorable visuals of souleheart (illustration) and Azuka (animation), bless!!! They both make such wonderful things and are really sweet to work with—would definitely recommend their commissions. ;u;

🔹 Looks like souleheart's art comms are closed right now but they're worth keeping an eye out for; she was impressively fast and communicative and just captured all of our personas p e r f e c t l y.

🔹 Azuka is incredibly multitalented and has both animation and vtuber model comms open—and she's also debuting as a vtuber on 10/24!

【合唱】 Clover wish / 推し武道 OP 【7人 ver. youtaite】

⇢ VOCALS:
  KT ･ https://www.youtube.com/seahorsegurl ･ as Reo
  Lucy ･ https://www.youtube.com/Lyrratic ･ as Sorane
  mochi ･ https://www.youtube.com/c/crunchimochi ･ as Maki
  yanovi ･ https://www.youtube.com/yanoviP ･ as Yumeri
  カリタモ (tamou) ･ https://www.youtube.com/c/isoperi ･ as Yuka
  小さな (chiisana) ･ https://www.youtube.com/ChiisanaChanx3 ･ as Maina
  Eva ･ https://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva ･ as Aya

  Kuroノ ･ https://www.youtube.com/c/KuronoCovers ･ as 🐝

  “I will say "bees" exactly once (x1) in the background if you will have me as an additional adlib vocalist”

~✨~✨~

And uh, I mixed!

With the much-appreciated help from fome, mochi, KT, and Kurono for their insightful feedback! 🙏

Yup, that's all I have to say about that.......
Just kidding, there's probably like 500 more words to follow on this topic, sorry.

RESTART YOURSELF

Without a doubt I've been procrastinating writing this post and I can't really explain why LOL...... I'm definitely proud of these uploads—it's not the case where after uploading I feel so embarrassed about my work that I avoid the video for months, which definitely happens... Maybe it's because I dedicated a whole tireless month to working on just cover projects (aka worked my ass off to get these out before Animal Crossing took over my life) so as soon as I was done, I wanted to be absolved of any effort or responsibility related to them for a while? Hm idk... Or perhaps it's because I'm proud of them that it feels weird to admit so and write about it in detail? ^^;; There's a lot I want to say...

Two big uploads that mean a lot to me!!! 💓

The moment I heard Elsa sing Show Yourself on my first viewing of Frozen 2, I just knew it was a song I wanted to sing. Frozen holds a permanent residency and large real estate in my heart for being what helped me explore my feelings and heal through a difficult time—and I just love Elsa and the whole icy motif (metaphorically and aesthetically) and the two sisters' different experiences with isolation and being honest with oneself. The first film is a masterpiece. 😭

The sequel is...fine? good'ish? But on my second viewing of it I sobbed through Show Yourself... I like the lyrics a lot! My favorite line is "I have always been a fortress, cold secrets deep inside" aaah it just resonates with me so hard...... In many ways I try to be pretty open—like how I share my thoughts and experiences on this blog!—but in many other ways I seem to always be keeping my walls and guard up. Have been criticized for that before by someone who was one of the most important people to me at the time ;; And honestly around everyone who doesn't know about my singing, weeb, and k-pop interests, I'm extremely secretive and not comfortable with talking about my interests... >< thus it's hard for me to form a close relationship with anyone outside of this circle or anyone from whom I fear judgment. And due to my thorny personality I'm often described as an ice queen which certainly has its negative connotations but I've embraced and like the nickname haha.

I also really love the build-up of the song—it made it super fun to sing because there's such a variety of emotions and range to it ^^!! I especially looove singing low and emotional and chilly, and then there's an arc of self-realization and then breathy AND THAT SUPER HIGH OPERATIC FALSETTO I DIDN'T KNOW I COULD DO and then slightly warmer and then strong! until I'm belting and sadly can't even reach the notes without mixed(?) voice hahaha. And with Disney songs, you can be emotive and nuanced in ways that poppy songs often don't allow: there's somberness, there's reservation, there's wonder, reflection, curiosity, confidence, openness!

I'm so, so, so happy that I covered this song. ;u; Recently I started feeling a lot like I wasn't sure in my own singing capabilities and to be frank, in a lot of collabs I've been in, I'm not that happy with how my singing or vocal tone sounds compared to everyone else? Even if I do redoes, sometimes it feels like I'm hitting a wall. It just kinda feels like GOD FINALLY I got to actually sing and show people some of my strengths!!! Like real singing that I'm proud of!!! 😭😭

Phew okay I practically just wrote an essay LOL. One last thing-- I used to do multi-language covers often (or at least just posting more covers in different languages and recently I've only been doing JP and KR) AND I DID NOT FREAKING REALIZE. It's been ten years since my last multi-language cover.............. jeebus...................... Let's not think about that too hard! Anyway I learned while working on Show Yourself that I basically don't know anything about any language lol. Especially with the added pressure of knowing that viewers would more pay attention to my pronunciation than usual and with this somewhat more classical style there's less room for fudgery than in poppy songs. . . it was a long struggle learning to better deliver the different accents in all these languages. Still much to improve on. Bless Fome for not only making me sound good with this mix but also teaching me some of the nuances in the Japanese and Mandarin that I missed!

Anyway here's the video I just wrote a thesis on. Queen Elsa rocks.

【Eva】 Show Yourself / Frozen II ❄️ 【5 Language Cover】

⇢ Audio Mix: Fome [commissions open!]

~✨~✨~

Now the second upload is even more special !!!! Nine years ago, 5 friends and I decided to join a competition (unofficial chorus battle) called DUBattle Royale with the group name Gemini, because among our group we had many "vocal twins" and we blend extraordinarily well together. What a fucking beautiful thing it is that the six of us can still sing together after all these years..... I call them my first found family because they really are that to me—I know that regardless of the ebb and flow in our changing lives, I can always still count on them to have my back and cherish that special bond that only we can understand. We were hoping to have a group meetup again in Toronto late this year but with the pandemic there's no way so maybe next year for our 10th anni. :>

So yeah we sang this amazing IDOLiSH7 song that's about flying high, smiling together to overcome challenges, having courage, and reaching for our dreams together !

Our anniversary date unfortunately fell on the day that shelter-in-place was first announced in the US and in general there was a lot of grief and anxiety on social media—so as a group we discussed if we should hold off on the upload/if it would be tonedeaf to sing something so cheery in these worrisome times, but in the end we decided that it might be a welcome breath of fresh air for some people who were looking for some light in the darkness? ;; Thankfully I think we were right ;;;; To hear that we helped cheer up some folks makes this video even more meaningful than it already was. I love it a lot.

We were super fortunate to get to collaborate with an incredible visual team (I call them the visual fairies!) who are all sweet and skilled as heck and I greatly treasure their friendship too. 😩 The video is so gorgeous..... Look at all these pretty pastel colors........ Our characters and different personalities were captured so well.... The clothing designs are perfect for all of us..... The camera movements are expertly smooth and the video is just sparkly good vibes all around. I would absolutely work with pash, kayla, and azuka again without hesitation anytime, anywhere. 😭

【Gemini】 IDOLiSH7 - RESTART POiNTER 「9th Anniversary!」

【Art】 

✩Sketch & Lineart - pash (https://www.twitter.com/piikoarts) 
✩Color - kayla (https://twitter.com/kaylajungxo) 

【Mix】 

✩Main Mix - Eva (https://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva) 
✩Tune - Ryan (https://www.youtube.com/RyanEatPho) 
✩Base EQ - 小さな (chiisana) (https://www.youtube.com/c/chiisanauta) 

【Animation】 
✩azuka (https://www.youtube.com/user/flence5 // https://twitter.com/Azuka15328)

Fun fact: every Gemini member has a strong preference towards girl idols lololol so we end up singing a lot of songs that cater more to the girls' ranges and voices. But for this one we girls have been like, "YESSSS OUR BOYS GET TO SHINE SO MUCH!! GET ITTT!!!" hehehe Jay especially is the standout in this song—he is the center of this comeback!! 💚

Oh and also I mixed............. the mix evolved a lot lol. We started recording this a long time ago and my mixing style and what I want to convey in this mix has changed a shit ton throughout the working period. I ended up settling on this wide sound with the vocals not too pushed forward, still bright but not overly crispy, fullness in the mids/lows, wet prechoruses but dry choruses. There's definitely something here that's preventing this mix from being on the level of professional that Fome is able to achieve in his mixes—I'm certainly hitting somewhat of a wall... but given my lack of advanced knowledge and not having as much in my toolkit compared to many other mixers, I'm overall kind of satisfied with the mix? It's pretty contained and doesn't make me cringe? lol

Looking forward to Gemini's 10th anniversary project~ 💞

goodbye back to animal crossing

【DREAM✦SCAPE】 GURENGE

✨✨✨ I'M FREEEEEEEE. I've been waiting for this moment for months!! I'm thankfully happy with all the things I've been working on recently and they are fulfilling projects, but it's truly exhausting and stressful to constantly be against deadlines and to always come home from work knowing that I can only take a short break before diving into making cosplay, or recording lines, or mixing, or making video ads. I really need a whole week just to catch up on sleep ;^; However I'm very excited to be spending all of August just doing social fun things and making a trip to LA with friends for KCON!

DREAM✦SCAPE made it to the final round of Ascension Chorus Battle (2019) and the deadline was last week, marking the end of an amazing journey. I really love all three entries our team made!! Our non-vocalist staff (pKotetsu, shippa, minty⁺, neneki) are all so talented and cool; it's been such a great honor to work with them and I still feel privileged that they said yes to us and stuck with us for 3 rounds. ;u; And of course it's been incredible to be a vocal team with longtime friends Mimi, Chiisana, and Aerin 💕💕💕 The other day in our sappy feels we called each other our "singing sisters"—and I feel like that's really the best way to describe the four of us... Our vocal tones all vibe and blend extremely well together and we sing with similar amounts of energy!! And we're always on the same page; having worked together and been friends for nearly a decade (yet somehow we'd never done a quartet before?!) let us be very comfortable with each other and give/accept honest feedback and have the best support system ever. ;o; I love them so much. I got to sing with such fuqqin POWER VOCAL QUEENS.

There's a lot to appreciate—from the vocal prowess and blood-pumping energy by chiisana, Mimi, and Aerin; to minty⁺'s ever stylish designs that nailed each of our personalities every time and eye candy illustrations that I would happily eat up at any given moment because they are just my type; to neneki's persevering dedication and how she elevated us with her knowledge about mixing and audio tech; to pKotetsu and shippa's animation (and the story was crafted by them too!) with A+ aesthetics and unique effects built by them that I can't comprehend the process behind.

Thank you for a great CB run! 💕

【A-S3】紅蓮華 | GURENGE【DREAM✦SCAPE】

For the past two rounds, neneki had done the main audio mix while Mimi and I would work on the timing—but for this round the scheduling only worked if neneki tuned/timed while I did the main mix, so that's how I ended up mixing despite swearing off CB mixing after Gemini's "Innocent x Haven" for Ascension 2017, heh....... For good reason too, I found out. and reconfirmed every. single day. as I struggled to make enough progress on the mix. Struggled just to accomplish anything. Discovered that I know nothing about efficient mixing, am lacking a lot of technical knowledge. Constantly felt the pressure of the looming deadline and the high expectations for a final round entry. Was burning out because my full time job is also post production and eye strain intensive. Had trouble staying awake late every night. Ear fatigue clouding my judgment.

This was such a big wake-up call regarding my mixing process. ;; More about this under the cut.

Again / Fruits Basket 2019 OP Cover

Happy to be able to say: I have a new solo cover!!! ✨✨✨

So twelve and a half years ago, I uploaded my very bad "fandub" of For Fruits Basket to youtube—my first cover that I put online. But like. Recorded in Windows Movie Maker with a $20 microphone. Mispronouncing everything and singing the wrong words.

Fast forward to when the 2019 reboot of the Fruits Basket anime was announced, I knew I definitely had to cover the opening theme—no matter what kind of song it was, no matter if I actually sounded good on it or not LOL! Hit up my friends' art and instrumental commissions, immediately started recording when the song came out, and I was set on uploading in April because I have other projects to worry about.... Until I got sick for 2 weeks, was on biz trip for 1 week, never fully recovered, had to focus on other things. :c Singing this was a struggle! In any case, I'm just very glad that I finally finished it; this is a super meaningful project. 💖

Bless my friends sherry and Dibur for making me sound and look this pretty?!?! sherry's art is just wonderful and warm and adorable. TuT And Dibur's instrumental makes me feel like a princess.... Do check out their links below to support/commission them!

【Cover】 Again / Fruits Basket 2019 OP 【Eva】

⇢ Vocals/Animation/Mix/Ending Doodle: Eva
http://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva

⇢ Illustration: シェリー / sherry
http://www.instagram.com/creamsherryart
http://www.patreon.com/creamsherry ** support her art here! **

⇢ Instrumental: Dibur
https://www.twitter.com/Diburrito ** music commissions open! **

⇢ Sky Stock Resources:
http://loo.sakura.ne.jp/sozai_m.html / https://material.animehack.jp/bg.html

⇢ Original Credits:
Song: Again
Artist: Beverly (ビバリー)
Composition: XYZ
Lyrics: Sakata Asami (坂田麻美)
Anime: Fruits Basket (2019)

Recorded on a Neumann U87 thanks to Fome and his uncle ;u;

~✨~✨~

There's a special reason behind me holding a basket full of candy in the illustration: I wrote a "future generation" fanfic called Candy Basket as my 8th grade novel lol. A friend and I wanted to make it into an anime (literally drawn in Microsoft Paint) and I was going to voice the cat character, but this is something to share more about another day~

🍭

Expectation // 5 Year Mix Comparison

A super exciting thing—the bestie Chiisana and I have finally released our duet of Girl's Day's iconic song Expectation!!! Although we recorded it in 2014, many plans fell through throughout these years and at long last, expectations have become reality....haha get it.......thanks I'm here all the time

We're very privileged to have aeror404's hot, leggy art and Nobelz' amazing animation 💗

Since there have been multiple "finished" versions of this mix that span across 5 years—evolving with my growth in mixing skill/judgment—I was interested in comparing them and seeing exactly how my style of mixing and mastering changed!
Sad that YouTube was not very kind to the mix though so please listen at the link below:

[left to right is low to high frequencies]

Green :: Expectation 2015 ver. [Link]

Purple :: Expectation 2017 ver. [Link]

Blue :: Expectation 2019 ver. [Link]

The Sky Falls

Hawwo, it's been a while. TAT I honestly don't even remember how I spent April but I was certainly busy with something or the other... Now the month of May has blown by me with little semblance of healthy personal time. orz I was sick for two entire weeks and then had the most intense, draining, high pressure business trip for a week in Phoenix.. Now I'm mostly recovered but still got busy and some stressful times ahead. Yells a little.

Right before I got sick (and probably the reason), Fome and I made a 1 day trip down to LA because my favorite!!!! group!!!! Lovelyz came to the Korea Times Music Festival for their first American performance. QuQ I was so happy I got to use my lightstick and banner.... My princesses were beautiful and glowing 💗 The downsides to KTMF were that it was outside, a very long show, and it got cold once the sun went down—but o m g it was so much better a concert than I ever imagined it to be.... We both enjoyed it a lot!!! Every single act brought a quality performance and we were constantly awed by how impressive everyone's skills were... Kim Bumsoo is now my favorite ahjusshi; he's literally a godman and can do no wrong ever. Super Junior is always a joy to watch; plus their live vocals were very clear and they nailed them. Eunji from Apink is just such a wonderful and incredible singer and person!! Sungwoon's super stable vocals and dancing! And of course Fome's favorite Taemin dances for this non-broadcasted outdoor concert with as much charisma and feeling as he would for a music video shoot. And everyone else was impressive; I'm just too lazy to write about every act.

AH-CHOOO @waterpixieva pic.twitter.com/E4NSH5CxKa

— fome / Sean of PHOENIX ASH (@at_fome) April 28, 2019

Here's me being the one embarrassingly loud Lovelinus in my section.

~ ✨ ~ ✨ ~

The Ascension Chorus Battle round 2 deadline was a few days ago and yaaaay our group actually made it...... Not gonna lie, we were getting worried but hoooooo everyone really worked their asses off and pulled through in the end. T___T So thankful for everyone's hard work; this round was not easy at all.... On the vocal and mixing side, we struggled a lot. We sang XAI's "THE SKY FALLS" (which btw is from a Godzilla anime movie OST, which for some reason we were pretty hyped about) and it's a very cool song but is overwhelmingly repetitive, so we came up with a lot of melody changes and stretched ourselves to add new adlibs and harmonies as last ditch efforts to add a little spark... And then this sort of song is pretty unforgiving to mix since the vocals are very exposed, so every adjustment makes a drastic change in the sound and you end up going back and forth trying desperately to find a sweet spot that may not exist. (Not to take credit for the mixing—I only did timing and then neneki mixed while Mimi and I gave feedback so we were all frustrated together lolol)

Visuals are freaking amazing. This concept? The selective colors? The character styling? The story? The Marvel reference? Amazing amazing amazing.

【A-S2】 THE SKY FALLS 【DREAM✦SCAPE】

【ANIMATION】
✦pkotetsu - https://www.youtube.com/pKotetsu
✦shippa

【ILLUST】
✦minty⁺ - https://www.youtube.com/furisou

【MIX】
✦neneki (main, timing) - https://twitter.com/theonlyneneki ** audio editing commissions open!!! **
✦eva (timing)
✦mimi (timing)

【VOCALS】
✦mimi - https://www.youtube.com/mimimoiselle
✦eva - https://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva
✦chiisana - https://www.youtube.com/c/chiisanauta
✦aerin - https://www.youtube.com/RamenBlossom

You know, I'm actually very proud of my singing in this!!! That opening solo is kind of like a new side to me ^o^

WHAT WHAT WHAT? DREAM✦SCAPE!

A few weeks ago was the round 1 end of the newest, hottest chorus battle Ascension. Before I rave on and on about my own group, here are some of my close friends' groups that I highly recommend a watch through!
🔹 CYPHER - Redmoon :: Absolute legends. My favorite boys. ❤️ Truly, I admire every single member of this group and I LOVE that they are a CB repeat group! This time they came back with AN EPIC ORIGINAL SONG written by one of their members Toast who just released his first EP which you can buy here! I highly recommend checking out the lyric translations for Redmoon and the rest of Toast's songs as they're just poetic artistry. Everything about Redmoon is flawless....
🔹 The Prison Girls - Division Battle Anthem :: Badass rapping girls!!! Everything is so cool and I've never known of a CB entry as rap-centric as this before! So impressed!!

There's an abundance of great, impressive, fierce, beautiful, sweet, hardworking groups in this battle and you can find them in this playlist~

~ ✨ ~ ✨ ~

It's kind of like a long-time dream come true to finally form a group with some of my favorite singing homegurls Mimi, Chiisana, and Aerin/Erin ❤️❤️❤️ Of course Mimi, Chiisa, and I are very used to working with each other, and Aerin has always been one of Gemini's closest friends and supporters so she's basically family. (Aerin and Mimi have also recently made a duet channel so please subscribe since they'll be active there. ^^) The four of us have great synergy and an honest, comfortable, trusting dynamic that allows us to really try our best—and so it's unbelievably gratifying and touching to hear from...actually a handful of people.......that we were their favorite entry vocally ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; omgggggggggg............ how is this possible?????? what a dream come true... It's especially flattering because our visuals are so strong that it's crazy that people are still able to give attention to our vocals? ToT

We sang the Japanese version of "What" by Dreamcatcher!! It was fun to get to show our colors as we're all also k-pop coverists and Dreamcatcher's songs in the k-pop scape have the unique quality of sounding like j-rock!

And of course the staff are the real reason our entry turned out amazing....

neneki was an incredibly dedicated mixer whose magic touch was what seamed our vocals together and made us shine! She's been dealing with some terrible circumstances but she still chose to work hard towards this entry in spite of everything—and for that, we're indebted to her big heart. ;; Please consider checking out her audio editing commissions as the income would mean a lot to her!

minty⁺ art speaks for itself.... I had a friend describe her art style as "timeless" and I think that's right on the nose. It's visually appealing as hell and she represented us as pretty, fierce, and vulnerable all at once. So freaking perfect. T^T How lucky were we to get Minty art..... I love it too much....

We were also privileged to have pKotetsu and shippa work on the animation and they really brought to life this story of 4 students trapped in nightmare scapes! I really love that we each have our own spoopy situations and how the color grading sets each world apart. Honestly both of our animators were dealing with reallyyyy busy lives during this round so it's crazy impressive how the animation still came together despite how little time they had to work on it. ;;;
Actually Chiisana and I last minute helped out with the animation to take a little off their shoulders—I animated the rap portion and Chiisa animated the bridge! Luckily we had pKotetsu's comps and settings as a base and I'm happy with how my portion turned out ;o; I felt like I leveled up as an animator from this!

【A-S1】WHAT【DREAM✦SCAPE】

【ILLUST】

✦minty⁺ - (https://www.youtube.com/user/furisou) @furisou 

【ANIMATION】

✦pkotetsu - https://www.youtube.com/user/pKotetsu

✦shippa

✦eva - https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpixieva

✦chiisana - https://www.youtube.com/c/chiisanauta

【MIX】

✦neneki (tune, main) - @theonlyneneki || user/neneki

✦mimi (timing) 

✦eva (timing)

【VOCALS】

✦mimi - https://www.youtube.com/user/mimimoiselle

✦eva - https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpixieva

✦chiisana - https://www.youtube.com/c/chiisanauta

✦aerin - https://www.youtube.com/user/RamenBlossom

[MR REMOVED] DREAM✦SCAPE - WHAT | M COUNTDOWN 190318 EP.666

A-also for April Fool's, we.....exposed...our live vocals......... enjoy

(lyrics by Howl and k*chan!)
((i'm tagging "mixing" on the post bc i actually put in effort to make us sound so lo-fi))

You are my everything, bubibu~

Hello hello! I procrastinated blogging a lot in the past few weeks but I've been doing well! I've dedicated a lot of my time to singing projects but not in a burnout sort of way. ^^ My business trip earlier this month was incredibly exhausting but it's for one of those causes that feel warmly gratifying and fulfilling—I edited a video that celebrates some of the brightest students in the country with the strongest knacks for scientific research and potential to improve the world, and they always fill me to the brim with inspiration and pride every time I work this event. ;A; These students are so brilliant, ambitious, sweet, and hardworking; I love being able to share their stories and share their research, showcasing impressive and fun sides to them, and letting them see themselves as heroes. In comparison, they make me feel stupid and unpassionate but I try to think that my part in doing my heartfelt best to create videos that spread the message about their achievements and help them be proud of themselves is important too. ;o;

On this trip I also met up with Sonny for the first time over delicious ramen!!! We became friends many years ago through our blogs so it's super meaningful to me to get to post about our first meeting here. ❤️

Also got dressed up for the fancy gala at which my video was shown at the end of the trip!

Hmm, what else has happened... Chiisa and I got tickets for NCT 127's US tour in May! The ticketing process was painful but yay we're going! Also just one mere month before the concert, MY FAVORITE GROUP IN THE WORLD Lovelyz was announced as performers for the Korea Times Music Festival in LA 😭 Even though I had to book plane tickets and a motel, I'm gonna be exhausted from being busy, and my bank account has a chunk taken out of it from my lung situation, I thought of course I have to go......... How much would I regret it if I missed Lovelyz' first ever appearance in the US? ;;; Sadly Chiisa can't come but Fome wanted to accompany me so it's going to be his first kpop concert ever wowowow~

~ ✨ ~ ✨ ~

March 16th was my singing fam Gemini's 8th year anniversary!!! We wanted to be more active so on top of a new project that's being worked on, we also thought it'd be nice to pick up a really old project that we recorded back in 2014! I had actually mixed it back in 2015 and shockingly the mix was not bad at all, I was kind of proud of myself..... But it wasn't up to current standards and our old mics sounded like crap, so I went and basically redid the majority of the mix L-LOL.. orz;;

A-and then I was going to make kind of a simple lyric video with chibis and just like.... particles and our dumb representative symbols from 2011, BUT LOOK WHERE WE ARE. LOOK WHAT THE NOOBIE ANIMATOR DRAGGED IN FROM AFTER EFFECTS HELL... I sold my soul for over a month animating this in most of my free time while listening to 37 episodes of Shokugeki no Souma dub in the background LOL. It was my first time making a 3D scene and I learned a ton of new things just for this video ^^;;; Please look upon it kindly!

We were all amazed at how our vocals from 2014 don't actually sound that bad ahaha. Of course we've all become stronger singers since, but man this really feels like the ~essence~ of Gemini that we're most familiar with. I'm incredibly proud of the six of us and how we've stuck together through all of these years—making us one of the few permanent singing groups in the communities we've been in that's this old and somewhat active. Especially in the past couple of years, we've been hearing a lot from people that have been supporting us for a long time or tell us that we inspired them, and that's just soooo amazing and heartwarming..... I really want us to keep going if that's the sort of impact we can have. ;^; ❤️❤️❤️

【Gemini】 Apink - 부비부 (BUBIBU) ~2014 ver.~

BRAVER STAR

It's a good week of uploads!!! I published my solo cover last week and today, the best friend [goddess] Chiisana uploaded her solo cover! We worked hard on our videos so it's nice that we got them done QUQ Fun fact: we both sang, mixed, and animated our own videos!✨

【歌ってみた】Shokugeki no Soma OP - BRAVER 【小さな】

I'm slain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are not deserving of Chiisana's vocal cord vibrations. Her talents transcend human capabilities. Chiisana is a literal goddess and angel. I can't even begin to fathom how she does what she does. This animation is badass. And just..just listen to her belting. Are you still alive? Yeah, me neither. I want Chiisana to sing at my funeral. I love her so, so much.

t h i s  i s  t h e  c o v e r  o f  t h e  c e n t u r y

💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘

【Cover】 JUNNA / Shooting Star (eng.) 【Eva】

And then there's my cover which I wrote about here LOL.

This was my first time mixing, animating, AND drawing for a video! Albeit they're very low quality, childish doodles because that's all I can do. ;o; (The main illustration is by soemei 💞)

Tbh you wouldn't think that a mix for this type of cover would be difficult at all, but this was a struggle through and through. All of these years of using a Blue Snowball—which has the reputation of being a difficult mic—I'd NEVER had nearly this amount of trouble T_______T Matching my mic quality through all of my takes was an absolute nightmare that I probably spent at least 10 hours on over the span of the year. I wish I were joking when I say that I probably did some sort of EQ adjustment to literally every single syllable in this song. Recording this cover was the reason I decided to finally upgrade and take up Fome's offer to long-term borrow his extra mic passed down from his uncle lol;; Considering what I had to work with, it now sounds somewhat consistent enough so I think my long hours of EQ bore fruit, yay!

I don't even know what to say about the animation haha. It's pretty simple. I wish I had good aesthetic sense and had better creative ideas adlkfjslf but luckily I had pretty soemei art to make up for it!

Fun fact: I just discovered today that my cover might just be the only... existing version of this song on youtube....... I-I can't believe.... Gotta make a shout out to Victor Entertainment—I'm so fortunate that they actually approved my copyright dispute ;u;

✨

Nekkoya (Dance/Vocal Cover/Mix Breakdown)

WOW I AM BACK ALREADY!! I posted the thing I mentioned in my last blog that I had worked on and would be putting out soon yay!

asdfddj i'm rly late at this point celebrating #IZONE1stWin but here's a bit of my attempt to dance Nekkoya from Produce48 from a few months ago along with a quick cover ✨ pic.twitter.com/ggSqreqtMT

— Eva @ Gemini (@waterpixieva) November 13, 2018

This was the dance I filmed at Fome's band's studio back in September ;v; Before my injury/surgery, I kept thinking maybe I'd practice Nekkoya more and find a time to re-film it but now I really don't know when I'll be okay enough to try dancing again... It's honestly becoming frustrating that it seems like I would be almost fully functional, but I'm really not close to being normal ;; I hit my limit last night just trying to reach my phone charger that was on the ground while I was in bed, and today I had to call my parents to ask them to help me carry my laptop bag into the house because my chest hurt too much for me to handle the weight. orzzzz Anyway, when I eventually get better, I'll get back into dancing weekly with dance friends! By then I'll probably move on and work on other dances so I thought it'd be a waste if I never did anything with this recording and with how passionate I was about practicing Nekkoya back then. ;o;

I yolo recorded the vocal cover just four days after I was discharged from the hospital LOL. It's really the biggest shame that I was literally using this song to practice my endurance and live singing (initially it was my ultimate goal to sing it live while dancing), only to have it all erased by my lung collapsing...... Although I probably didn't actually have the time to do it, it's regretful that I didn't record it when I was in full condition. Still, I was honestly surprised that I was even able to sing this much right after a lung surgery LOOOL


Lately I've been thinking a lot about making a mix tutorial/breakdown sort of video, so I wanted to share something that I found interesting while mixing this! It's crazy how big a difference different mixing styles make.

Initially I had intended for the vocal cover to be eextreeeemely low effort—and the recording process was indeed low effort...kind of. More like it took my body effort to physically be able to sing, but then I was like, "eh it sounds decent i guess ok moving on to the next line" and didn't record any harmonies. I thought I could get away with a fairly low effort mix too since this was just a fun thing for twitter/blog. ^^;;

What I ended up doing was tuning, timing, panning my doubles out 10% (one double -3 dB quieter than the other), putting these effects on my vocals bus, making volume adjustments for the most noticeable parts, and doing minimal mastering. (Alright~ it's actually a lot but I consider it to be fairly low effort because I usually manually go through everything to do a pass of clean-up, volumes, and EQ... This time I relied mostly on effects that just worked across all the vocal tracks, and I didn't fine-tune the settings as much as usual.)

So starting with 3 compressors which I made strong bc low effort and hopefully means I don't have to make as many volme adjustments. Multiband compressor to bring down parts that were too mid heavy. EQ to just slightly boost highs and cut lows and mids. C6 Stereo is a multiband compressor by WAVES that I find to be good at making things sound more balanced and polished even with low effort. :'D And then some delay and reverb.

For mastering, I used Izotope Ozone and all I did was use the Maximizer (aka you pull down one handle and the mix magically sounds better!!) and then used gating in the Dynamics module to bring out the bass in the instrumental, basically by doing the opposite of compression.

What I ended up with was this mixdown which I really thought was going to be the final mix. Because low effort!

Fast forward two weeks when I finally slapped this mix on the video and realized that I wanted to redo the mixing LOL... It may be ""low effort"" but demo 1 is mixed (and I think would've been acceptable for another kind of song)—yet when I went with a different approach it sounds drastically different and in my opinion, way more fitting for this particular song.

I find it really interesting that even though I didn't re-sing anything, just because of the way it's mixed, demo 1 sounds way more expressive and energetic than the final! (Truthfully I even think I sound like a better/stronger/more interesting singer here..) Somehow making it sound more robotic and uniform just fit the song much better in the end. The first thing I needed to get rid of was all of my strong breaths at the end of notes—they made me sound constantly short of breath, because well..I really was lol...... That part I had to do manually. =_= High effort but made a huge difference! I also went back and re-tuned a bunch of parts that were off lolol.

The biggest game changer was sort of diluting the vocals and making it sound like there were more of them (thus weakening the focal point) and making them blend more into the instrumental. This I did by adding the WAVES effect Doubler4 Stereo [settings], making the instrumental louder, and using the two multiband compressors to kill a bunch of the mids.

Because twitter video can be ass, you can also listen to my final mix here~ Oops, this ended up really long. If anyone is interested in this kind of stuff and wants to discuss anything, do feel free!

I Wish ♥♥♥

Ahhh, where do I even start... I can't remember the last time I was this happy and satisfied with my life. ;u; Not sure why but I feel like I'm more in tune with myself than ever. I can't remember if I ever felt like, "Wow I am a healthy person!" the way I do now. It's probably good luck and good timing that a combination of things has led me to this, and I hope I don't take it for granted haha. I feel worry-free, I feel proud, I feel confident and self-empowered, I feel loved, and I feel like I have things I enjoy and look forward to. It's crazy.

So let's start with my I Wish collab, because I feel that it was likely a trigger in all of this... In my last post, I said my confidence in mixing took a nosedive, so I was pretty scared about getting back into this mix. ;A; But as I did, I realized that I really didn't hate the mix...? All I remembered was my dissatisfaction and struggle with it, so I had low expectations, but honestly I hadn't done a bad job at all...? So I spent about 5 days working on it more, took advice, redid the mastering, improved it, and just kind of threw in the towel when I was riding up against my self-determined deadline for the evening before Valentine's LOL. I'd say considering my current ability, I'm about 95% satisfied with the mix, which is pretty amazing!!!!!! There was so much frustration that I was hitting my limits, so I thank the heavens that I might still yet have potential in me. Also, I was pretty scared about the animation, because I'm really not experienced in animating and the standards for both aesthetics and technicality have risen ridiculously high (due to animators' hard work, respect) in this community. In the end, I've accepted that it's really not bad for being my first animation in AE and for being primarily a mixer/vocalist. Some seemed to like it a lot, yay ;o; <3

I'm really happy about this collab... All 12 of the other girls in it are suuuuch sweethearts, super supportive and gracious, and wow their voices. *___* They're all fantastic and I'm grateful they agreed! I'm glad to see them receiving love and extra recognition through this. ♥ One of my favorite things is that I was privileged to be in a place where I could invite and bring together friends from different communities—so I was able to have friends (and a new friend I stalked down because I liked her voice LOL) from the youtaite community, long-time friends with whom I've been singing since 2010 (Zoey and Chiisana since 2007 actually!), and some friends that I met in 2016 through the k-pop coverist competition PRODUCE90. That's a super beautiful thing to me ;____; And the adorable art makes me clutch my heart!

And of course, I'm proud that I was able to complete this collab at all. It's actually been hitting me with a lot of guilt throughout the past year, whenever I had to deprioritize it in favor of other projects, whenever it was me that was holding up the entire thing... I had wondered if I was wrong to be so ambitious to be organizing, mixing, animating, rapping in, and recording additional harmonies for a 13-person collab. The more time went by without me completing it, the more I felt I was failing—and I also didn't have the confidence that I could make it up to expectations. But ultimately... in this economy when most non-chorus battle collaborations never see the light, I'm glad I could shine some on this one. ^^

HONESTLYYYY it was good luck more than anything that I happened to be able to finish it up right around Valentine's Day, which I believe helped it get such good reception for being a collab of a kpop song most have never heard of before LOL!! I'm so grateful for how well it was received, like ;_____; it exceeded my expectations tenfold. ;___; There was so much love! Not to mention that I don't have any expectations for my youtube channel anymore, because I'm pretty much a washed up unspectacular person whose subs are mostly from ancient times and I cover mostly kpop despite being most active in a non-kpop community, and I've basically come to accept that it'll be this way until there's a turnaround. The amount of views/likes/retweets may not match up to others' works, but for me, it was shocking. Thank you.

It truly reminded me of how supportive and full of love the people around me are. ;o; It felt like it was the birthday of me and everyone else in the cast!

As for everything else in my life... After a few weeks of work being very stressful and deadline-ridden, it's been slow and chill for the past 2 weeks, which I've uh been taking advantage of LOL... I know it's going to get busy again soon, so I'm enjoying this. Typically I'd feel guilty over not being productive enough.. and I always feel like a failure for how late I can't drag myself out of bed until and how late I get to work...... but lately, I still think, "Wow I did amazing anyway!" Q^Q I'm quite pleased with myself for taking care of myself and how good I feel about myself despite whatever. I'm in such a good mental and emotional condition that I was able to shake off something that would usually put me in an unhappy and toxic mood. I haven't let physical discomforts get me down either. I don't know how long this will last, but I'm grateful for it right now. I also feel that I've found a good balance of doing good towards others, without giving away too much of myself, which is pretty important to me after how burnt out I was for a while. I'm glad I have time to spend on hobbies and indulgent fangirling—they bring me a lot of joy. I think I'm more comfortable with myself now. The other day, I noted how green the hills were and thought that a cloud looked cool, which I wouldn't have said a year ago!! I'm proud that I've been going to kpop dance class weekly and that my acid reflux has diminished a lot since I started going on a diet for it. AND!!!!! I might be doing a new solo after all, since I felt like recording it and actually enjoyed it ^^.... It's been a while since I truly enjoyed recording. I'm happy that I can work on passion projects, that I can feel "inspiration."

Also I think it's worth noting that right now I'm happy about the friends I have and—gross moment—about how wonderfully blissful and strong my relationship is. I owe a lot to Fome.

YEAH OKAY WELL HERE'S "I WISH" PLEASE APPRECIATE THE 12 BEAUTIES I GOT TO SING WITH!!! <3333

【COLLAB】 Cosmic Girls - I Wish (너에게 닿기를)

⇢ VOCALS:
SeolA  ★  Mimi ･ https://www.youtube.com/mimimoiselle
Xuan Yi  ★  ひのえ (Hinoe) ･ https://www.youtube.com/AqueousSky
Bona  ★  Nessa ･ https://www.youtube.com/nessaxvaa
EXY  ★  Eva ･ https://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva
Soobin  ★  Aerin ･ https://www.youtube.com/RamenBlossom
Luda  ★  mitsu ･ https://www.youtube.com/xRaemii
Dawon  ★  Zoey ･ https://www.youtube.com/XoZoeymonxx
Eunseo  ★  Ashley ･ https://www.youtube.com/KyungJae94
Cheng Xiao  ★  Brey ･ https://www.youtube.com/breyomi
Mei Qi  ★  serena☆ ･ https://www.youtube.com/SutekiAozora
Yeoreum  ★  Mima ･ https://www.youtube.com/MLOUDMima
Dayoung  ★  Yoonshin ･ https://www.youtube.com/lovelight4339
Yeonjung  ★  小さな (chiisana) ･ https://www.youtube.com/ChiisanaChanx3

⇢ ILLUSTRATIONS:
さる (saru) ･ https://twitter.com/saru_rkgk

⇢ MIX & VIDEO:
Eva ･ https://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva

【A-L1】 Innocent x Haven 【Gemini】

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
It happened. Gemini came back for another chorus battle, one year after LSO ended. Our visuals crew from LSO all either had their own ACB groups already or were busy, so we've got new friends on visuals now ;o;)b They did amazing things!

And as usual, Gemini members split up the mixing work, with me on main mix and mastering. Aaaaaaah I have to say it was not easy—for any of us on the team for that matter; we were all busy with work and/or school or.. had to evacuate from a hurricane...... Okay, it was very rough. Thankfully there was a 24 hour grace period after the deadline, because we couldn't submit our entry until 19 hours past the deadline. @___@ And it was really nobody's fault in particular, because the video finished rendering at the same time I finished mixing. Or maybe it was my fault because I was the one doing the rendering (god bless fast work laptop) and I had to split my time between mixing and figuring out all the right plugins and assets. But still, that's really fucking embarrassing to me—that I was mixing up until about 18 hours past the deadline. I'm deeply disappointed in myself about that. The mix ended up sounding pretty good I think, thankfully!! I appreciate having been told that this might be my best mix and I want to be proud of that! And I don't know what I could have done differently that wouldn't have impacted others negatively unless we settled on a bad mix. It's not like I was mixing slowly or that I procrastinated? As soon as the vocals were passed to me, I mixed every night when I got home from work, until I slept sometime between 2 AM and 6 AM. On the weekends, I mixed literally all day long, with only two occasions I had already made plans to spend with friends. Sometimes I would sleep with an alarm set to go off in 3 or 4 hours. And on the day after the deadline, I wasn't even at the point where I was tweaking minor things—I was still mixing and trying to make things cohesive. Aaaaaaah stress and sadness. In conclusion, I suppose I'm just not meant to handle this sort of a timeline. Anyway, it'll take some time for me to recover, but I'm glad that we got an entry in after all!

[Edit: Two days later I just learned that we were the very last entry to submit...... iiii feeeeel soooooo baaaaaaadd screams]

Also, I animated a small section when I had some downtime at work last week. xD It's the shouting part at the bridge with the stage lights, which is... pretty simple but I had just learned how to use lights in After Effects for the first time for this!

Whining aside, here is our entry and please enjoy!!!



【A-L1】 Innocent x Haven 【Gemini】

- Please feel free to turn on/off CC for singers' names! -

Theme Interpretation: "What is bliss?" Take my hand and let’s find it together! Start with a smile and run with me - towards that Haven with an open heart. 

MP3: https://goo.gl/AJ61dL
ACAPELLA: https://goo.gl/PFWakB
SCRIPT: https://goo.gl/7WTbh6
VISUAL RESOURCES: https://goo.gl/hhgFdb

Song: INNOCENT BIRD x SEVENTH HAVEN - Mashup
Inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDHj5...

Title: SEVENTH HAVEN
Artist: Tokyo 7th Sisters (セブンスシスターズ)
Composer: kz (livetune)

Title: INNOCENT BIRD
Artist: AZALEA
Lyrics: Aki Hata (畑亜貴)
Composer: Tetsushi Enami (江並哲志)
Arrangement: Tatsuya Kurauchi (倉内 達矢)

VOCALISTS
Eva - http://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva
Mimi - http://www.youtube.com/mimimoiselle
Ryan - http://www.youtube.com/RyanEatPho
小さな (chiisana) - http://www.youtube.com/ChiisanaChanx3
Jeffrey - https://www.youtube.com/jevacado
Jay - https://www.youtube.com/jaysingyou

MIXERS
Main Mix - Eva 
Timing - Mimi 
Tuning - Ryan 
EQ - 小さな (chiisana) 

ARTISTS
Concept and Design - pash & kane
Vocalist Sketch and Base Lines - pash - http://piikoarts.tumblr.com/
Coloring & Staff Art - kane - https://www.facebook.com/mprincekane
Line Art - Ange - https://twitter.com/qqnge

ANIMATORS 
Sawヽ( ・∀・)ノ -
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZc_...
小さな (chiisana)
Eva

- We now find our six protagonists in university, where they play whatever the heck games they want. -

Never

Yup, so now I've reverted back to only ever blogging when I have a new cover/collab to show haha. It's kinda tough when I spend most of my time at work, but I don't want to reveal too many work-related things here... Ummmm, for a few weeks I basically spent most of my waking free time working on mixing—which resulted in one new upload, yay! I still have another in the pipeline that I had planned to finish before mixing for Ascension CB consumed my life, but I'm doubtful that it'll work out.

Recent exciting happenings are that I went to KCON LA! This year went pretty well. ^^ The concerts were a lot of fun and luckily a huge improvement from last year, when we were only able to get the shittiest seats because they cut like 40% of the seats AND they didn't provide screens that were visible from the sides of the stadium. Huge improvement this year with the return of the 360 stage and 360 large screens! I also went to more fan engagements (fanmeetings) than in past years, which meant a lot of waiting in line, but I got to see a lot of my faves up closer than I'd probably ever see most of them in a concert. And I attended LDN Noise's amazing panel where they discussed their music production and even opened up their project of an EXO song and broke all of those intricate layers down for us! Freaking awesome. That panel lit up some fuel in me that immediately got to work on Never as soon as I arrived home from LA, redid the mastering, re-imagined some effects, and even recorded some extra layers and subtle adlibs.

In the order of the artist I was most excited about, to the artist that I was least excited about but still impressed me, these are the gods and goddesses I had the privilege of witnessing in song and dance this year:

NCT 127, Wanna One,
WJSN/Cosmic Girls, Oh My Girl, Seventeen,
SF9, Super Junior-D&E, Girl's Day,
Heize, KARD, GOT7,
Astro, Vixx, Kim Taewoo

They were all incredible!
Chiisana and I totally lost our shit when Wanna One surprised us by performing Never ;;;;



WHICH LEADS ME TO OUR DUET OF "NEVER," originally from Produce 101 season 2 but also has been rerecorded by Wanna One! This song especially means a lot to me because it was composed and written by Hui of Pentagon, which is one of my current favorite groups but is sadly a group that's painfully underrated and overlooked. ;A; They're full of talent, but there's not enough recognition or interest.. I think Never was their first breakthrough—and it may be a bit sad that Pentagon didn't perform in their first song that charted #1—but it brought a lot to their name, so I'm grateful that Hui got this wondrous opportunity!! And then went on to compose/write for Wanna One's big debut song >u<!!!

So yeah, please enjoy! It may not be the most polished mix, but I spent a lot of time on this. ;v; And it's been a while since Evasana's last duet, so I'm happy this pulled through.


【Cover】 PRODUCE 101 - NEVER (네버) 【Eva x 小さな】

We would like to dedicate this Evasana duet to:
♥ Wanna One, whom we had the honor of seeing last weekend at KCON LA!! We freaked the heck out when they performed this song ;u;
♥ Kim Jonghyun, whom we for sure thought we would be seeing this year at KCON LA. #justiceforjonghyun
♥ The underrated boys of Pentagon! Get them royalties, Hui~

Song: “NEVER” originally performed by 국민의 아들 for PRODUCE 101 Season 2
Composed by: Hui of Pentagon, Flow Blow
Lyrics: Hui, E’dawn, & Wooseok of Pentagon
Arrangement: Flow Blow

MP3: https://app.box.com/s/r5ktaeiioqhyb15...

Vocals:
小さな (chiisana) - http://www.youtube.com/ChiisanaChanx3
Eva - http://www.youtube.com/waterpixieva

Backing Vocals:
小さな (chiisana)

Mix:
Eva

Video:
小さな (chiisana)

Unofficial instrumental from Everysing and provided by kyungsoᄉo.
Thank you for watching!

Wimp / to the beginning

(There was no clever way to combine the two song titles...)

Man I suck at keeping my blog up to date haha. In the online covering sphere of things, I've been in two chorus battles but haven't been working so much on other projects recently.

I'm singing in Serendipity Chorus Battle in the group Daydream Delinquents and we did a fun rockin', rappin' BACK-ON song for round 1. :D I wasn't planning to join this CB, but it sounded like a nice opportunity to finally get to work with Chiika and Caspy who are old friends—and all of our other members turned out to be cool people too!


【Daydream Delinquents】 Wimp【SCB2-R1】

■ Vocals ■
Caspy https://www.youtube.com/user/DuranCloud
Hoon https://twitter.com/hoonieeeee
Kanono https://www.youtube.com/c/kanonopuddle
Chiika https://www.youtube.com/user/Symphoni...
Eva https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpix...
Kurin https://www.youtube.com/user/xCleanly...

■ Mix ■
Kanono

■ Art ■
Shippa (sketch) -no link requested-
xiao (lineart) https://twitter.com/xiaociiao
Chiika (color) 

■ Animation ■
Shippa 



And of course... OTO&ME CB came to a close a few days ago. I'm incredibly proud of having been one of the Revolutionary Girls Q_Q It was a great experience that I learned a lot from singing- and mixing-wise, and our entries are gorgeous in every way. This was the first CB I participated in that wasn't with my Gemini fam (we did DUBattle Royale 2011 and LSO 2016 together) so now that it's come to a close and the group probably won't be singing together anymore, I'm feeling a little regretful but ultimately honored.


【音&ME’16R3】to the beginning『Revolutionary Girls』

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ Mix: 
Eva (time)
https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpix... 
Fome (tune)
https://www.youtube.com/user/fome 
crashtest (main mix)
https://www.youtube.com/user/redshift... 
heartbreakerP (master)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo6J... 

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ Animation: 
saint * ル季 (https://www.youtube.com/user/xKouchan)
Kuroko (https://www.youtube.com/user/backstag...)

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ Art:
minty⁺ (http://twitter.com/furisou)
capu (https://www.twitter.com/capuworks)
tai (http://www.twitter.com/taiyouka_)

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ Script: saint ♔ 

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ vocalists //
saint ♔ 
https://www.youtube.com/user/xKouchan 
minty⁺
https://www.youtube.com/user/furisou 
mong
https://www.youtube.com/user/vamong
小さな 
https://www.youtube.com/user/chiisana...
Eva
https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpix... 
Tsubame
https://www.youtube.com/c/TsubameAka
きむにゅ
https://www.youtube.com/user/azunyanHTT

❤️‍️👭‍❤️‍️ violin // Jobo (https://www.twitter.com/jobofish)