shiroihana

I've never been in a band (too introverted I guess), but I've recently improved a lot as a visual kei (style) vocalist and have been singing VK casually for about 7 years and have become a bit more serious about it only since the past year. If anyone wants to hear me you can DM me and I can show you some of my cover stuff. You can also find one of my uploads of me singing on my YT channel which you can find easily through my sig. But I'd also like to say I'd really love to meet other VK style singers because there are very few of us out there, and I think it's very special. Although I know that there's probably a bit of stigma to westerners singing VK. I think I have the vocal style down. Maybe I can collab with someone some time. But yeah -- if you're a fellow VK style singer I'd love to hear you or get to meet you. Feel free to DM me.

Try to get better at something. I try to turn negative energy into positive energy because otherwise I'm too complacent to get stuff done.

Do visual kei bands interest you more if the members have been in previous bands that you recognize? I ask because visual kei especially has (or at least traditionally, perhaps less so much these days) has had an endemic emphasis on extensive band histories, something you rarely see in most scenes. To me it's reminiscent of a family tree, and this 'rarez' would give the avid VK fan many more gems to discover and collect. I don't see this so much anymore, as it would appear fewer and fewer pertinent VK bands consist of members who have played in dozens of bands before. So while there once was a time it wasn't uncommon to see dudes sporting 15 preliminary bands behind their new popular one, it seems to be a relic of the past at this point. But on the contrary, this doesn't seem to hurt anything. These fresh new kids are performing at a very high level. But as I was saying, does this stuff even mean anything to you? Often? Or in rare cases if it's someone you REALLY like? I always thought extensive band histories were interesting and fascinating for many reasons. For instance, if I see a bunch of guys from different bands I'm familiar with playing together, it makes me think. Woah, what an eclectic mix of styles I'm familiar with. I wonder what they'll sound like together?

Man this whole corona stuff is wild. I'm still taken aback by how much it's changed our culture, and how abrupt it all happened. Yesterday I went shopping at a Japanese marketplace and suddenly found myself encumbered by a very long line of people waiting to enter the store. We had to spend almost an hour on line to enter the store as they were admitting a small handful of people at once. Of course, no one was actually social distancing. I had to travel to a different store real quick to use a restroom to which I could only be admitted if it was an emergency. I answered yes and he allowed me in, gave me hand sanitizer, and told not to touch anything or something. I appreciate these safety protocols, but as a person generally fascinated by society and culture I was pretty intrigued by how suddenly this societal shift has happened. Feels like I'm in the midst of a some apocalyptic dystopian scifi movie scenario and it's absolutely fascinating, yet weird as hell and terrifying. And I remember before this all happened, one particular friend of mine had followed the story in china since its inception and during that period it didn't even enter my mind that the virus would escalate into the pandemic that it is today which would significantly alter everyone's lives. My friend knew since the very beginning that it would, and he was right. Sometimes you can be so used to seeing other people drastically exaggerate things — which is in part why I think so many people took this for granted. But this isn't just some ephemeral mishap that'll be easy to forget in a decade from now. This is a very sudden global catastrophe with far reaching consequences that hardly any of us anticipated. It's also a good example of how being paranoid rather than being overtly optimistic is sometimes the better option. Also some food for thought. A very significant chunk of people taking surveys have said they either wouldn't plan to get a corona vaccine, or declined to state. In some polls, this number reaches about half. I think that's terrifying. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/just-50-americans-plan-get-covid-19-vaccine-here-s-how-win-over-rest

Oh man CAT5 and chem discussed a topic that's very relevant to me. Despite being a mixed race black guy myself I remember falling down the stupid reactionary rabbit hole back during my teenage and early adult years. These were the days where the skeptic reactionary community proliferated on Youtube and such, to such an extent that these sentiments basically dominated the platform. Videos bashing feminism, black lives matter, mixed market capitalism, and pro LGBTQ content would receive around 95-100% approval ratios from the community, inundated by circlejerk reactions, where lefties often fell prone to being too timid and afraid to express their voices, and high quality lefty content would be heavily censured and bashed simultaneously by the community. I was involved in it, to an extent, and while I was still fairly open minded compared to many of my younger reactionary companions (this is how I managed to get out of that shit) I was definitely one of those typical reactionary centrist types you'd see on Youtube , debating with people in comments sections, often to the extent of seeing views heavily backed and supported by spectators, while the 'social justice warrior' types would receive the short end of the stick due to the disproportionate ratio of reactionaries to lefties that persists within the social political Youtube sphere. Seeing my views validated only encouraged me to continue engaging with people. I even uploaded a few videos here and there, and had even engaged with Lauren Southern several times (before she exploded in popularity). I could easily see why so many Youtubers became grifters. While I certainly did believe that racism was a valid issue in the united states, even during that time, I still failed to see the extent to which it persisted, despite bein a brown person myself. At my worst, which thankfully didn't last too long, I believed that black people were disproportionately targeted by cops because they simply committed far more crime. But eventually I realized some of the nuances involved. You cannot make excuses for racial profiling, because racial profiling is fundamentally wrong. It's not something you can so easily justify and it's a dangerous belief to have. This can lead to innocent people being persecuted, and even beaten or killed. Unarmed black people are murdered at a rate much higher than unarmed white people. There are also better ways to handle criminality. Rehabilitation, investing in social programs, infrastructure, etc. This may sound incredibly dumb but there is some truth to it - But I also believe that one of the reasons so many people 'swallow the red pill' is because they're young and somewhat rebellious kids who feel suppressed by a left leaning society. I say this because I felt that way, and I knew others who felt that way. When you feel like you're not allowed to express or believe certain things because it'll 'trigger' others, and you see the way that people flip the fuck out as they hastily label you as prejudiced for expressing your views, whether ignorant or not. This is harmful. You can't teach someone the proper way simply by calling them names and refusing debate. This is part of what shaped my views as a 19 year old. There are better ways to open someone up to more healthy and utilitarian views. I could have benefited from that.

Welcome person I totally don't know 🐸

This might seem strange but I probably walk for about 5 hours per day on average right now (no job) while listening to videos and music with my bluetooth wireless noise cancelling headphones. I'm trying to learn some songs so I can do vocal covers so I spend a lot of time listening to music to get a feel for how to sing the lyrics, because otherwise it takes me forever to learn them. I really don't like sitting because it makes me feel incredibly unproductive, unless I'm in class, at work or something, but even then I hate it and might fidget in my seat. I know that's pretty unusual though. I want to get into more physical activities such as weight lifting but I really need to find the motivation to do it. It's definitely worth it, and I commend anyone here who's able to find the inspiration to stick to arduous regimens like that, so hopefully I'll be able to get there myself.

Apologies for the necrobumps (if it bothers anyone?) I have a couple of conditions, although the ironic thing to me is I didn't consider any of these as pertinent to this thread until suddenly. I have asperger's syndrome, which I don't honestly consider a disability, but more an abnormality. The reason I say this is because most of the negative characteristics associated with asperger's can be overcome with training, and many neurotypical may not be aware to the full extent of it, and might succumb to the tendency of believing that autistic people are cognitively capable than neurotypical people which annoys me lol I have tinnitus, from listening to so much damn vk and metal/rock music at loud volume. I've always preferred my music loud because it's more euphoric for me. I get incredibly amped up by music and I feel like at a young age I should have gotten myself involved with bands. Sappy ballads also break me, and I often cry when I listen to them because of how emotionally involved I am with music. I listen to ballads at a loud volume too, but rock and metal typically at 100db easily, and I'll listen for many hours a day. Music is absolutely my biggest drug. I also have a rare condition called cholinergic urticaria which causes me to 'break out' in hives when my body temperature rises from energy exertion (think sweating as an example). This one annoys me, because if I go a few days without exercise (I don't lol) the histamine levels in my body build up to where if I exert energy the hives will be incredibly uncomfortable, and can feel like I'm being stung by a bunch of bees for around 5 minutes straight. It's not fun at all, so I exercise every day in part to keep that from being an issue.

Visual kei aesthetics are so deep that it's both a visual and written (verbal) phenomenon. Do edgy names count? There was a visual kei band called 'Nazis' and one of their members is the vocalist of umbrella, a pretty good recent VK band.

People seem to care a lot about bitrate. When I first joined this server the bitrate of releases was a central concern for people. I both did and didn't understand it. I can understand the concern for high quality audio if you prize high quality audio for novelty reasons. However in my mind, high quality sound is actually less convenient because of size, and if you're like me and you're obsessed with music, this can easily equate to many gigs of music, which ain't nice when your listening device is restricted by total GB. In my mind, bitrate is an extremely trivial matter to be worked up about, as it hardly makes a difference in terms of sound quality depending on the bitrates compared. As someone who owns a Hifiman-400 set, along with an ODAC 02, I feel I have both empirical evidence as well as data to back this up. 128 KBPS doesn't sound very different from lossless unless you have a really good ear. I could hear slight differences if I pay close enough attention, but for casual listening the difference feels negligible. Even with a powerful setup, an untrained ear will rarely be able to effectively make out the differences between 192 KBPS and 320 KBPS or lossless audio, which has been confirmed by studies. Furthermore, if you're listening to your music with a pair of apple earbuds rather than high end equipment, noticing this difference would be even more challenging. It's called the placebo effect, and it's very real. Personally, I feel that CD rips are generally high enough quality to suffice, unless they're being ripped below 128kbps. It's Youtube rips and sometimes transcodes that ruin a music file for me. Generally speaking, the production quality makes a significantly greater difference in sound quality. Do you value bitrate? If so, why? Are you an audiophile who believes that the quality difference is significant? Do you just care about quality regardless of whether or not you can make out the difference? Do you think I'm wrong about anything I've stated above? Or do you agree that people make too big a deal out of bitrate? I have no idea if I'm going to get criticized for this thread or what but I just wanted to share some thoughts.