Sorry. Still I’m not so active in internet world but recently some tweet I did. When finding some comments like “Wow! I like that song!”, it’s really my pleasure. In addition. I visited two famous places for Sakura to take pictures as annual event.

So, today I’d like to talk about the background music production story of voice actress, Chiaki Omigawa’s song called “Itsuka-no-Yakusoku” (Promise for some day) which was released last month on internet. It is related with music production, it may be a bit professional…no, it must be.

Well, this was ordered by Chiaki herself for her personal live event called “Omigawa Chiaki no Oyugi-Kai” (Play Event by Chiaki Omigawa). The main purpose was to use it for her recitation as the ending theme of the poem. In the event, the available music instruments were only a piano and an acoustic guitar, so first I wrote this song to sound good only with these two instruments, and to fit with the story of the poem and to fit with the atmosphere of the scene where the song will be used. Reading the scene on the poem and I found out the part involves the feeling of ‘hope’, ‘brightness’ and ‘positiveness’. So I chose major key and ballad-style song. In addition, this is supposed to be used for live performance, I didn’t use too tricky melody or high-tone note for this song. As a result, it must have proper key range and melody to sing comfortably. I know too tricky song causes vocalist’s stress on live performance because I’m a vocalist as well and know the mentality. So the key and melody was designed for her comfortable singing and for getting stable results every time.

Then, she asked to produce this song for single release around the 2nd Oyugi-Kai event last year. If the song would be played only with a piano and an acoustic guitar only, and it’s not played lively, there’s too much space comparing with other songs. So I added many instruments. Both piano and acoustic guitar is played by me and in addition I played fretless bass as well. And the latter part adds big strings section, classical harp, orchestral percussion and lifts up the song and expresses the atmosphere of ‘the sailing to the wish at dawn’. But the most important part is Chiaki’s vocal. So I paid attention not to disturb her vocal and the back ground instruments are relatively smaller than her vocal. So you may not be able to hear such complex arrangement but still it’s OK. Again, the most important part is Chiaki’s vocal.

The equipments for Chiaki’s vocal recording. The microphone is Blue Microphone’s Blueberry and the mic amplifier is Focusrite ISA One. This is one of the best combinations for female vocal recording in audioworkshop. Simply put, ‘high resolution, clean and crispy sound.

This time I used Sonnox Oxford EQ and Oxford Dynamics for the post process of vocal track after the recording but amount of EQ is not so big. Very slight boost and cut. Compressor processed vocal strong enough because dynamic range of Chiaki’s vocal is very wide. And in the last chain I added enough plate reverb with Waves AbbeyRoad Reverb Plates. Recently in almost cases I choose modeling plug-in audio processor based on vintage audio processors for vocal process as well but this time I wanted noiseless, no tweak, clean sound for her vocal, so I chose Sonnox for EQ/Comp.

Very important secret is that the vocal track uses only one best take!!. No dubbing from the first to the end of the song!! In addition, NO any pitch correction which is very popular on the current music production!! Also no time correction. Chiaki is a great singer. But on the recording I forgot to setup wind screen and Chiaki felt strange but didn’t say anything and for a while without wind screen she sang. …Chiaki, please ask me if you feel strange. She’s so professional but sometimes a bit mysterious for me.

Finally, guys you wait so long! Chiaki’s pictures on recording. My photo skill is not so good but enjoy!!

You can see further information with these page as well.