Something Unreal

This PS/2 keyboard accepts a maximum of 2 arrow key presses at once – if you press more, the PC speaker beeps and no keypresses are detected. The beep is sometimes 1 second in delay.

[Watch at YouTube]

From 1:52 to 1:57, I switch to my normal (Logitech G15) keyboard to see if the simfile is actually in-sync.

The song is dBu’s remix of 「月時計 ～ ルナ・ダイアル」 (Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial), the theme of Sakuya Izayoi, the stage-5 boss of Touhou 06: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The StepMania theme is CyberiaStyle 4 for StepMania 3.9.

I tried to remake the Alstroemeria Records song “Suwa Foughten Field” in MIDI form for the old SC-88Pro. The song is a remix of Kanako Yasaka’s theme (stage 6 boss of Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith).

[Watch in HD]

The original song was on the album “HARMONY”, arranged by “Masayoshi Minoshima” with vocals by Nomico.

This pushes the MIDI bandwidth quite far in places, and as a result, the timing of the notes is slightly off in those places (mainly when many notes need to start at the same time).

Should be named “Whole Synth Freezes Over”.

[Watch in HD]

This is the Roland Sound Canvas 88Pro trying to play this ludicrous adaptation of Yukari and Ran Yakumo‘s themes, “Necrofantasia” and “Necro-Fantasy” (from the game Touhou 07: Perfect Cherry Blossom).

There are over 166,000 notes in this MIDI file, and their speed peaks at over 3x the bandwidth of MIDI hardware, which results in inevitable playback slowdowns, but the synth has its own additional troubles and becomes totally unresponsive.

The MIDI file (not created by me) can be downloaded from here.

Although its been in a couple of my videos, I’ve not made a video dedicated to it – so, this is a demonstration of a new program I’ve been working on since February 2010. It’s called BaWaMI (Basic Waveform MIDI Software-Synthesizer), because it’s a MIDI file player that makes sound using only basic waveforms and a low-pass filter (hey, at least I was able to think up a name for once!). When I gave up working on Bleeper Music Maker, it’s basically because I started dedicating my attention to Bawami. But don’t worry! Bawami can play on the PC speaker too. =D

Here, it’s playing ZUN’s MIDI of the stage 5 boss (Sakuya Izayoi) theme, from his game “Touhou 06: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil“. Actually, it’s a slightly modified version that uses a “Synth Bass” instrument instead of “Slap Bass”, as I haven’t coded the slap bass instrument yet. Bawami misinterprets the pitch-bend sensitivity in this video, and as a result, the pitch-bends are overly exaggerated. ^^;

[Watch in HD]

By default, Bawami has 24 internal “sound channels”, meaning it can play up to 24 notes (or sounds) at once (after that, old notes will start being cut). There’s a setting to change this number, but I leave it at 24 in this video because the internal view (black window) can only show 24 sound channels at most. By the way, that internal view shows 2 tables – one shows information about each sound channel (such as the volume, panning, waveform, frequency), and the other shows information about each MIDI channel (pitch-bend, number of notes playing). Coloured lines appear between the 2 tables to show which sound channels are being used to play notes on which MIDI channel.

This program is the first one I’ve made where I focussed on trying to make it look nice from the start (although I took inspiration for the design from GASHISOFT’s “GXSCC” MIDI player).

The program is not quite ready to be released to the public yet, but I’m working on it! I’ll probably post more videos like this to show off new things that I add to the program, just as I did with Bleeper Music Maker. And, of course, I’ll record a video of it controlling the PC speaker, too. ;D

This is the first of the 2 laser shows I made for Touhou-sai 2011. This song is by ARM of IOSYS, titled 「闇光」 (I hope my “Dark/Light” translation is okay).

[Watch in HD]

Although this was meant to be a beam show, I made some danmaku-like patterns that can’t be seen properly in the air, so I included a view of it projecting directly onto a flat surface so these can be seen easily.

This is the second laser show I made for Touhou-sai 2011. The song is 「ひなりんのヤクい関係」, a remix of Hina Kagiyama’s theme, with vocals by Ruru Ichinose. (I’m uploading this one first because the video for the other one requires more editing.)

[Watch in HD]

I made this show in a rush in 2 days, after spending a week or so on my other (Dark/Light) show and realising that it looked nowhere near as good as I had hoped it would. Why do things that I put less effort into turn out better?

On the night of the 24th of June, in a little underground venue, some fans got together and had an awesome time at what was the first ever entirely Touhou Project-based music event in the UK.

[Watch in HD]

The size didn’t stop everyone from having an awesome time. Several people DJ’d (including Piloru), and there were a couple of special guest acts – Masa-kun on the electric violin and Cassis and Ai-chan from the “Oh My Lord!” maid café. I helped out with fog and 2 laser beam-shows (which I’ll re-record and upload in their own videos some time), and Dnstje was kind enough to offer me his Bad Apple graphic laser show.

Is this the start of more to come?

As I was helping out, many of these video clips are all from around the DJ area, although I did try to move around a bit. Apologies for the distorting sound and grainy picture – it seems that very loud music in a dark place is not a good combination for my camcorder.

A heterodyne bat detector lets you hear the difference (frequency-wise) between the sounds around it, and a set frequency. So, doesn’t that mean you can make ultrasonic music and then use the detector to shift the frequencies down so that a human can hear it? It sure does! =D

That said, I didn’t actually make the music – it’s the final boss theme (“Septette for a Dead Princess”) from Touhou 06 (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil), as ripped directly from the game (in MIDI format).

[Watch in HD]

I modified BaWaMI, a MIDI software synth that I made, so that you can shift the frequency of all notes up by a linear amount. This is different to simple “pitch-shifting”, which MULTIPLIES the frequencies by a set amount. That’s why it sounds horribly out-of-tune when shifted – the frequency is made to range from something other than 0 Hz. When shifted by exactly the right amount, the detector is able to recreate the sound as ranging from 0 Hz again. Because the detector is designed to be accurate to a few KHz rather than a few dozen Hz, its internal oscillator tends to “drift” a bit, so I have to keep adjusting the tuning on my program to compensate.

This bat detector is the Ciel-electronique CDB 301 (the newest revision includes a built-in speaker).

(Yes, bat videos will come some time, but they might have to wait until next summer, as little Remi is going into hibernation now >w<)

On a train in the Netherlands late one night, we got bored. We were worried about how the conductor would react, at first, but he turned out to be a fun old man after all. Even some of the other passengers got interested! It’s hard enough to even keep your balance while playing as the train’s moving, let alone actually play well, so we hope that the simple act of us playing DDR on a train is enough to make this video entertaining. Because it sure was for us. Now if only I could’ve got my soundcase through airport security…

[Watch in HD]

The simfiles we played were “Doll Judgement” and “Love-Coloured Master Spark” (simfiles made by Gpop), from a pack named “Touhou Pad Pack”. Thanks to Dnstje for filming and taking his dance mat with him, and to MasterPJ55 for motivating us to actually do something so win.

I didn’t notice at the time that the bag being held at 06:17 appropriately looks just like a power item from the Touhou games.

Here’s me attempting to play along with Dream Express (stage one theme from the PC-98 game Touhou 05: Mystic Square) with the melody channels disabled, on my keytar.

[Watch in HD]

(High-quality MP3 download)

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