On Dec 09th, 2018, I joined to the Christmas live event produced by Nami Nakagawa

Recently, on Dec 9th, 2018, I joined to the Christmas live produced by singer/voice actress Nami Nakagawa and played the electric guitar in front of audience. The last time was probably 10 years and more ago. This time I used many of brand-new equipments and tried technically new approach so I’m going to write about technical trial mainly on this blog. On other media I cannot.

Anyway, the show was hold on the cafe SHELTER KUKO@Yoyogi-Hachiman. Performers and staffs did setup by themselves. Karaoke was played and my electric guitar and Yuri Endoh (Twitter: @YuriEndoViolin) ‘s acoustic violin was added. Singers are three. Mayumi Sudoh, singer, Nami Nakagawa, singer/voice actress and Miki Tsuchiya(Twitter:@miki_tsuchiya), singer/voice actress. Live report is on the bottom of this article so if you have interests, please scroll down.

Behind the bright ladies, I played the guitar obscurely. This time the concept was ‘I play like a live back musician’ for me. So I chose Gibson ES-335 which was the standard of standard for studio guitarist and Valley Arts with active pickup and Floyd Rose tremolo unit. The reason why I chose was with these two guitars I could cover all of the sound which is necessary to support songs.

'72 Gibson ES-335

'90's Valley Arts

My ES-335 has floating bridge called as ‘swing’ and is known as good for blues play, but it’s of course semi-acoustic guitar and made with all mahogany wood so the sound is warm. When stroking play, as same as stopped tail-piece, we can get sweet semi-acoustic guitar sound. Valley Arts has EMG active pickup and Floyd Rose tremolo unit and this comes with more harmonics when distortion sound and comes with noiseless clean sound when clean tone setting. Usually I use this guitar for heavy rock purpose but this time used for clean tone sound mainly which is frequently used by studio musician.

Well, let me explain about the difference from usual recording. For 15 years I haven’t played electric guitar in front of audience. This time, I should be a backing musician. What should I do? Finally I decided to use amp-simulator for guitar amp. The main reasons were two.

  • Guitar amp sometimes sounds too loud for popular music. I don’t want to disturb vocals with guitar sound. Shortly, to avoid guitar disturbing vocals so much, it is easier to use amp-simulator and input the sound to live mixer directly.
  • So various style songs we planned to play. If I cover all songs with amp and stomp box, then I needed to use so many stomp boxes and would not be in time.

In addition, transportation was also a big problem. But higher priority for me was not to disturb vocals and to change sound character immediately.

Furthermore, this time I didn’t use dedicated hardware amp-simulator but tried to use iPad Pro 10.5 with amp-simulator app. At the same time I used score app on the same iPad. I will tell you how to do that later. CPU consumption was between 10% to 20% on iPad Pro 10.5 and no problem at all. Now I have aged eyes… so I need to set iPad Pro in front of my face to see scores and used ikmultimedia‘s iKlip Xpand with mic stand. Amp-simulator uses iPad horizontal mode and score app uses vertical mode for I desired to show bigger score and as you see on the left picture, iKlip Xpand is easy to rotate. That’s the reason why I chose this iPad stand.

SLO100

SLO 100 is available only for BIAS AMP 2 users. I used this preset for the new song called ‘DIAMANTE’, which is the heaviest dance tune I delivered for this show. The preset has the heaviest distortion sound and big delay effect. Probably this is the emulation of Soldano SLO100 and it has deep mid range sound character but it moderates presence range which disturbs vocals and was easy to use.

’67 Dumble Clean

As same as SLO100, this preset is only available for BIAS AMP 2 users. Probably it is Dumble Amp’s emulation. The clean tone is very fat so I use it for clean sound with chorus and delay effect for ‘Chikyu-no-Kodomo (Children of the Earth)’ and so on. The combination with Valley Arts was excellent.

’69 Plexiglas

This is the emulator of Marshall Plexi old amp from BIAS FX Mobile. I used this preset for distorted, ‘hard-rock’ sound. I could use it widely with Wah pedal On/Off.

’59 Tweed Lux

Probably this is the emulation of ’59 tweed Fender Deluxe but sounds a little bit more clean for me so I used this with more ‘crunch sound’ setting. Mainly I used it for the live show with rear pickup position and Wah On/Off.

’59 Tweed Lux

Amp is as same as other ’59 Tweed Lux but amp configuration and stomp boxes are different. The benefit of amp-simulator is I can change between different amp settings and stomp boxes immediately with Bluetooth pedal. This setting has more compressor and phaser is always ON. Mainly I used this preset for Mayumi Sudoh’s 16 beat pop songs with ES-335’s front pickup.

Above is the direction. Finally I chose iPad’s app, positive grid‘s BIAS FX Mobile. In the past I have been trying many of guitar amp-simulators but don’t use it for my recording. For recording, I can mix with good audio processors so what I need for recording is, the sound character of tube amplifier and air movement from the speakers. But for live show, not disturbing vocals, playing guitars with good balanced, good sound was the purpose. For this purpose, BIAS FX Mobile was very good. How to say, positive grid products always sounding darker than competitors and presence range is not too hard to listen. Competitors’ products may be good just for guitarist for the sound is more bright, but for me honestly they didn’t fit with my purpose. In addition, BIAS FX Mobile is the easiest to add stomp boxes before or after amplifier and was easy to setup guitar systems including amp and stomp boxes for me. So I didn’t need to waste time for try and error.

The advantage of positive grid’s product is possible to customize amplifier more than knobs in front of amps with selling separately BIAS AMP 2 Mobile. If I’m correct, this is possible only with positive grid. In particular, not only we can choose speaker cabinet from library and choose mics and mics position, but also we can change bias in amps which is the must for amp maintenance or can choose pre/power tubes or can choose rectifier tube or transistor. We can fine tune the amps which positive grid delivers and can change the sound character to more favorite one without any electricity knowledge. I tuned SLO100 settings so much. And for all presets I changed speaker cabinets.

These are the amp-simulator and stomp boxes. Analog output quality of iPad is great but to use for live show, surprising plugout is really a problem and to use 4 pin analog adapter both for guitar input/output is not smart and cable is under strain for connector. So so many audio interface for iPad is line-up but this time I chose this one. Xsonic‘s Xtone. I’ve never heard the name until recently and it’s Chinese vendor but in Japan All Access, one of the biggest distributor for pro audio products deals this vendor so I felt it must be OK. I didn’t have enough time to visit stores and to try it so ordered online. On the surface you can find out the words of ‘Smart Stomp’ and on first viewing, it looks like stomp box.

On the surface, there’re three foot switches which are usually used for stomp boxes. It means, this audio I/F is designed for guitarist who cannot use hands to change something when playing. I don’t know why other competitive products don’t have this feature (Yes, bigger one has this feature) but with these three switches we can change presets of iPad amp simulator app such as BIAS FX Mobile, we can turn On/Off stomp Boxes in BIAS FX Mobile. But this time, I used another Bluetooth pedal to change the presets and used these switches only to turn On/Off Stomp Boxes.

In my studio I checked the sound quality with ADAM S-3A + ADAM Sub10mkII. The sound was not so bad and I can use it as usual 24bit/192kHz audio I/F. In the future I may use this for iPad synth app as external sound module. Everybody’s concern is yes, always latency. When setting BIAS FX to Low Latency mode, then I didn’t have any stress even when performing 16 beat stroking play.

Xtone has expression pedal connector as well. So connecting expression pedal to Xtone and assigning the correct MIDI CC on BIAS FX Mobile, I could easily use my expression pedal as volume control. The effect chain is possible to change and before/after delay I could set the position of volume pedal in effect chain. It means I don’t need to prepare two volume controls. So I prepared Korg XVP-10 and used it with expression pedal mode as volume control. I played violin play as well with XVP-10 this time. If configuring BIAS FX Mobile then I could use XVP-10 as Wah pedal as well, but it was difficult to control with volume pedal like Wah pedal because the response is different from usual dedicated Wah pedal and the behavior is a bit different from my expectation. So this time I used Fulltone’s CLYDE Deluxe Wah (Right picture) as only one analog stomp box before Xtone. This is low noise and the Wah effect worked fine as I expected so it was easy to use.

Next, score app. I used standard Piascore this time. It can show PDF, JPEG, PNG, everything. Preparing setlist and according to the setlist order Piascore shows scores so I don’t need to go back to the list and to choose another song. With fingers or Apple Pencil we can add annotation on the score so I annotated when practicing as the picture. Paging speed is fast enough and this time I didn’t have any stress for paging. Swipe is of course also possible but guitarist cannot use both hands when playing, so I used ikmultimedia’s iRig Blue Turn (Left picture) Bluetooth control pedal. This is 2 switches pedal to design for paging and connecting with iPad Pro. I used iRig Blue Turn for Piascore paging. The reason why I chose this was I read other people’s review and found out this is quiet pedal and no switching noise even in quiet songs.

positive grid BT-2 (middle picture) is as I wrote before, I used it as switch to change presets. The reason is when pressing left/right switch sometimes I pressed middle switch at the same time or when pressing middle switch I sometimes pressed left or right switch at the same time and it was a problem. This time making mistake when changing preset may cause very bad impression to audience so I was serious and purchased it as well. And Bluetooth pedal is not possible to share between amp-simulator and score app so I used both BT-2 and iRig Blue Turn. As same as Xtone, BT-2 has as same type of foot switches as stomp boxes so I can feel click when pressing the switches and I can confirm the preset was changed with the bottom of the foot. This is a peace of mind.

And tuner. BIAS FX Mobile delivers excellent tuner but it’s annoying whenever I want to tune guitar, I need to switch the screen to tuner mode, so I used Korg’s Pitchblack Advance I purchased recently. I have Pitchblack mini as well but this one has enough width and visibility is finer than mini. I used AC adapter for tuner and this tuner can output the power to another stompbox so from DC output connector, I delivered power to CLYDE Deluxe Wah. So the necessary power adapter was just for iPad, for tuner and for Xtone. That’s all.

These equipments were integrated with pedal board made by Aclam Guitars. Sorry, this time I didn’t have time to take a integrated picture. I chose Smart Track S2 + Softcase S2 [w / UNIVERSAL S] which is 2nd bigger board. The reason is Wah and expression pedal was very big. This board is not the standard one which uses velcro but uses 4 and more dedicated fasteners and fixes stomp boxes. I frequently change pedals to use and for me this is more convenient. No damage for vintage stomp boxes. Big difference from the standard one which I used 30 years ago and very easy to use.

 

As for the live show, 15 songs were performed with one break time. I played all 15 songs. I was standing all the time in live show and in many time I used right foot to keep on controlling Wah pedal so it was a little bit tough live show but behind the very excellent 3 singers I could play and it was very excellent experience. All three sang very, very well and were very fantastic.

Each song has a variety and it was my pleasure to consider how to play my guitar in the songs already other guitars were on the track. Not to overlap with guitars in the track, not to disturb vocals, finally I used Wah pedal with less harmony and played more rhythmically in many songs. Usually I don’t play like this and remember only with ‘Dragonball Tenkaichi-Daibohken‘ for Wii I played similar with this live show so it was my new experience. ES-335 did a good job!

And I’d like to introduce all performers except for me. You can change the pictures with 1 – 4 numbers in the bottom of the right on pictures.

  • Performers

Mayumi Sudoh

Great singer who sang for so many famous commercial songs in Japanese studio. If you're the Japanese, you have had an experience to hear the voice with 'SUICA' or 'Orihiro' CM. And really fantastic technician. I was surprised when visiting recording studio and saw her recording for another song, she tried different expressions several times for each part and finalizing song. This time in the live show, she improvised her melody on 'Chikyu-no-Kodomo' with soulful fake. She didn't do this in the recording. I've never seen the singer who can sing according to the score precisely but at the same time who can improvise so well. I love vocalists who has many techniques and she is absolutely one of such vocalists. I enjoyed her vocals.

Nami Nakagawa

Nami Nakagawa is a singer/voice actress well-known with the stateless muti-track voices for famous game titles such as 'Tales of…', 'NieR' and Goh Shina's songs. She is the producer of this live show. She is active in various direction and her voice has different taste from Mayumi. Her stateless multi-track voices has strong personality and sound fantastic. The reason is she was born in Uwajima and the singer of Uwajima folk-song. It means she has roots music and it's very special in Japan. So she can tweak the melody with folk-music style immediately. I don't have such roots music so I envy her. 'Uwajima-Sansa' is based on Uwajima folk-music and the voice was very impressed. But please remember she can sing softly as well. On 'Hitori-ja-Nai (Not Alone) she sang very straight-forward.

Miki Tsuchiya

Miki Tsuchiya has connection with my previous company and we have same friends. I should say her looks and voice, overall is brilliant. When singing, her brilliant voice sounds very well. Of course she has very good techniques but her brilliance surpasses her great techniques. It's good for singers. In 'Hana-no-you-na-Kimi (You, like flower)' her high tone was very fantastic so I tried not to disturb that. But she loves to make someone laugh and always try so friends request not to do like that. Though she is very serious lady…

Yuri Endoh

Yuri Endoh's violin is very warm and calm. Many of violinists are assertive in good meaning because they're soloists. So sometimes their recording doesn't fit with the back track. But her violin always fit with the back track. When mixing, I didn't tweak her track so much with EQ but it fitted. I remember I was very surprised. This time, sometimes she had ear-catching play and sometimes going into the back track. With well-modulated play she inflamed audience.

Finally, sorry to make you long waiting. Here’re the so many Live Photos. As usual, Hirokazu Takahashi (Instagram: @air_swordfish) took these photos. Enjoy!

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<English Below>
こんにちは
今日は中川奈美さん歌う「ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)」の演奏者についてお話しようと思います

とは言っても、基本的にオケのほとんどは中村が弾いたりプログラミングしているのですが、奈美さんのボーカルの少し左から聞こえてくるソロバイオリンは遠藤百合さんというバリバリの現役バイオリニストの方が即興で演奏してくださっています
弦楽四重奏の演奏会とかやってらっしゃる本物も本物です。コロナ前に演奏会お呼ばれしましたが、まあ凄かった
奈美さんと同じ宇和島出身で、そのつながりでご参加くださったそうです
音色がまた柔らかいいい音なんだ、これが。このバイオリンのお陰で楽曲のグレードも上がった気がします(笑)
元々ストリングストラックを用意していたのですが、このバイオリントラックの邪魔をしたくないので、ミュートして使うのやめました(笑)
即興なのでこちらからディレクションはしてないです。奈美さんといい、遠藤さんといい、お任せでいい感じに仕上げて下さるのでほんと楽させてもらいました

その他の全楽器は中村が何かしらやってるわけですが、それについてはまた今度お話しようと思います
それでは

下記のURLから好みのストリーミングプロバイダーにアクセスできます。
https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/

#KAZNakamura 
#中村和宏
#NamiNakagawa 
#中川奈美

Hi there,
Today I’d like to talk ‘bout a player on Nami Nakagawa’s ‘ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)’

Although I played and programmed almost basic tracks, the solo violin which can be heard from a bit left of Nami’s vocal is played as ad-lib by Yuri Endo, really active violinist
She is genuine and plays on the string quartet concert and so on. Before COVID-19, I was invited to her concert and her play was really amazing

She was born in Uwajima as same as Nami and that’s the reason why she joined to the project

Her violin tone has gentle and great sound. I feel her violin contributed to the quality up of the song

Before recording her violin, I prepared another strings track for this song, but after the recording, I muted the strings track and stop on using ‘cause I don’t want to disturb her violin with another strings sound

This track is improvisation so I didn’t direct her at all. Nami and Yuri Endo’s ability is excellent so just recording and then it’s oK. It was an easy recording session for me.

I did something for all the other tracks so I will talk ‘bout this later.
Have fun!

You can access with your favorite streaming service from the URL below.
https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/
<English Below>
こんにちは
情報アプデです

中川奈美さんが歌う「ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)」ですが、Spotifyにて曲をスマホで再生すると短い動画が出てくるCANVASに対応しました!

また、同じくSpotifyのアーティストページの詳細情報も追加しました!
Spotifyユーザーの方は是非ご覧ください

https://open.spotify.com/track/4TwkxzE0LiaAEkFw11iV8q?si=978765bcf47c46ff



Hi there,
I have an update for Nami Nakagawa’s ‘ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)’. 
This song now supports Spotify CANVAS, which is the short video for Spotify. 
It appears when the song is played on Spotify of your smartphone!

And I added Nami’s detailed information to her Artist Page on Spotify as well!
Have fun, Spotify users!
<English Below>
https://youtu.be/qzSAX5bSXGg
さて今日はお待たせしました!
中川奈美さんのお歌の話です


プロですし裏方仕事やバックコーラスのお仕事もたくさんキャリア積んでる方なので安定感は抜群です

ディレクションほとんど要らないw
した記憶がないですw
今回はしっとりした歌い方ですが、「鬼滅の刃」などでは「ブルガリアンボイスの東洋版かよ!」というクセの強い歌い方をされています
これ、出来る人少ないんですが、宇和島の民謡がベースにあるからできるんだと推察していますw

そう、中川奈美さんは民謡の歌い手さんでもあるのです

実際、「西日本豪雨チャリティCD「愛」」では一曲民謡を披露されています

ライブで伴奏した時はすごすぎて演奏しながら鳥肌立ちましたね
これまで幸いにして奈美さんはじめお歌が上手な方とたくさんご一緒させて頂いております

ありがたいです


Hi guys! 
Today I’m gonna talking ‘bout Nami Nakagawa’s vocal!

She’s professional and has been working for backyard jobs and backing vocals and have many careers so her vocal is always stable.
No need direction.

I have no experience to direct her vocal.
This time she sings softly and gently but on the very famous animation, Demon Slayer, she sings with very characteristic style like ‘Asian Bulgarian Voice???’

In Japan very few singers can do it. 
The reason why Nami can do it is she has background of Minnyo, Japanese traditional folk song.

Yes, she’s a Japanese traditional folk singer.

Actually she sings one Uwajima folk song in her produced CD called ‘West Japan Torrential Rain Charity CD 'AI’’

When I accompanied her the guitar at her live event, she was too great and I was very impressed.

I’m lucky. Nami and many excellent singers I worked with.

I appreciate all of them.
<English Below>
中川奈美「ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)」のMVが公開されました!
中村も横でギター弾いてますw
どなたでも見ることができます!

https://youtu.be/qzSAX5bSXGg

配信先へのリンクが有効になりましたが、なぜか4つだけ💦
でもまあ使えます

https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/



MV公開とこちらからも飛べるようになりましたというお知らせです



Music Video of Nami Nakagawa’s ‘ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)’


I played the guitar aside her.


Everyone can watch it!

And now URL link works but just for 4 streaming services.

But these are available now.

https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/



This is just the announcement of music video and URL likes available.


Have fun!
<English Below>
中川奈美さん「ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)リリース日です!

ところがURLリンクが出てこないトラブルが💦
なので、主な配信先のリンクを記しておきます。こちらからアクセスしてください。
ご不便おかけします。問題が解決したらその旨また告知します。

Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/jp/album/%E3%81%A1%E3%81%8D%E3%82%85%E3%81%86%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82/1646274807?i=1646274817

iTunes Store (ダウンロード販売) - 上記リンクから画面右丸3つのアイコンをクリックしてメニューを開き、「iTunes Storeで表示」を選択すると購入できます。

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/4TwkxzE0LiaAEkFw11iV8q?si=483f406756b141b8

YouTube Music - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-rYgJUcn4&feature=share

現在なぜかAmazon Musicで配信されてません。上記リンクからお楽しみ下さい。
よろしくお願いします。

Today is the release day of Nami Nakagawa’s ‘ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)’!

But trouble happens on URL Link called Artist Hub. Now URL for each shop doesn’t appear on the web page.
So please jump from the links below.
Sorry for inconvenience. Once solving this problem, I will announce.

Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/jp/album/%E3%81%A1%E3%81%8D%E3%82%85%E3%81%86%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82/1646274807?i=1646274817

iTunes Store (purchase) - From Apple Music link above, click 3 dots icon in the right side of the window and open the menu and choose ‘show in the iTunes Store’ then you can purchase this song.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/4TwkxzE0LiaAEkFw11iV8q?si=483f406756b141b8

YouTube Music - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-rYgJUcn4&feature=share
<English Below>
明日22.10.07はいよいよ中川奈美「ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)」のリリース日です!
なので今日はこの曲を書いたいきさつなど、インタビューでも触れていますが、改めて述べておきます。(インタビューはこちら:https://youtu.be/NakSE5vYKgE)
「ちきゅうのこども」はもともと「西日本豪雨チャリティCD「愛」」のために書き下ろした2曲のうちの一曲で、奈美さんから参加アーティストの皆さんが輪唱する、CDの趣旨を一番体現する曲としてリクエストされ、書き上げました。色んな個性のアーティストさんが歌われるのと、チャリティソングということだったので、テクニカルな要素は盛り込まず、誰でも一回聴けばサビを口ずさめるような覚えやすいメロディを反復しするようにしました。また、コード進行も非常にクラシックな、スタンダードな歌モノです。
アレンジについては、奈美さんの頭の中で漠然と超有名チャリティソング「We’re the World」のイメージがあったそうなので、オリジナル版はThe 80’sという感じのアレンジでした。今回奈美さんのソロ作品として配信するにあたって、もっとパーソナルな印象になるよう楽器を差し替えたり、ミックスを変えたりしました。アレンジの話はまた後日もっとディープな話をしようかと思います。
それでは明日の配信をお楽しみに!

下記のURLから好みのストリーミングプロバイダーにアクセスできます。
https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/

#KAZNakamura 
#中村和宏
#NamiNakagawa 
#中川奈美

Tomorrow, on Oct 7th, 2022, Nami Nakagawa’s ‘ちきゅうのこども (Children of the Earth)’ will be released! Hurrah!
So I will talk about the details that I wrote this song though some are mentioned in the interview video with Nami. (Interview video is here: https://youtu.be/NakSE5vYKgE)
The original ‘Children of the Earth’ was one of two songs which I wrote for her produced ‘West Japan Torrential Rain Charity CD 'AI (Love)’. Nami requested this song to be the center which expresses the purpose of the CD and according to the request, I wrote this song. The song is assumed to be sung by various artists and to be charity song so I didn’t add too technical elements and intended to be the melody repeatedly, which anyone can remember easily, once listening to. And chord progression is very classic style, standard vocal song as well.
About song arrangement, Nami’s request was the similar style with super famous charity song, ‘We’re the World’, so the original version based on the 80’s style arrangement. This time the song will be delivered as Nami’s solo song, to be more personal, I replaced some instruments and changed mix style (more vintage style!). Later on I will talk more and deeper about arrangement.
Wait till tomorrow’s song release!

You can access with your favorite streaming service from the URL below.
https://music.imusician.pro/a/mXSz14-9/

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