Moar Touhou music questions.

[Ghaleon]

I personally never understood why people favor music with vocals over those without. 90% of the time I'm told because they like the words, has some meaning or another that makes them think they're smart for understanding it (Tool fans are a good example here), can "relate" to them (insert oodles of angst bands like KoRn), or whatever.

But alot of the Touhou music has vocals in Japanese. Now obviously this is normal for the majority of listeners who are Japanese. BUT Why are so many english-speaking fans enamored with vocals in their Touhou music? I just don't get it. Most of the time music with vocals has the music dumbed-down too so that it doesn't drown the vocals out. For example there is an IOSYS song of Yukari, and there is a non-vocal version of it. I rather enjoy listening to it sure, but it definately has plenty of space in there where you think "gee, it's missing some instruments here" because it was really meant to accompany the vocals.

Anyway, in addition, after yet more Touhou music discovery I've came to some more observations:

Remilia really gets around with some kick-ass remixes. My brother who isn't into Tohou at all recognizes a Remilia song finally, and no other because there are so damn many I like.

Flandre, despite having a really cool song imo, has craptacular remixes more often than not. So far the only one I've discovered that I thought was nearly as good as the original is one by DbU.

Patchy has almost no instrumental remixes. They are almost all vocals. what sucks is that I frequently hear really damn good sounding Patchy instrumental songs...in sting songs I think they are called stings anyway. Those songs which are typically long that aren't actually 1 song but like 10-20 seconds of one song, suddenly changing into someone else's song, into another, and another.. like 10-50 different songs all mashed up so that they play consequtively without any jarring sounds, but otherwise don't really compliment each other, or go back to previous songs after passing it. UGH

Alice has some decent music, but her stage music really seems to get around and be good. alot of it is techno/electronic or whatever, which I normally don't care for as much BUT hers tends to be good anyway.

Phantom ensemble seem to generate remixes as if there really were 3 of them. They all seem decent, but none really struck me as outstanding. Most are too repetative for my tastes, even the one by S.S.H (who omgwtfpwns).

Youmou doesn't seem to get much love, oh well. Yuyuko's songs are pretty much always win like Remilia's, but not as numerous (though still fairly numerous). Yukari has a remarkably average number of remixes both good and bad that I've seen, which is fairly dissapointing since I like her track. That 7-tailed fox lady, I forget her name at this moment, she tends to share music with Yukari so ditto.

Eirin and Kaguya, despite having some super excellent music, have hardly ANY remixes at all!!! It's just not fair! whyyyyyy. So far my fave Eirin remix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_H8H1RfCbs album: (Touhou Maboroshi Soumatsu Ten 2 "Canon"), haven't found any other good ones yet. Similar story for Kaguya, whose original song is definately one of my top 3 faves. Her best is S.S.H's remix IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osM2rRzYdoc
That was uploaded super recently too, nice. I had to hear it from Nico before.

Final boss in the split-screen touhou game has alot of good electronic/technoish remixes as well, I forget how to spell her name "sheikiehiek-Idunno".

Aya...Ugh, I don't like her song much, nor do I like her remixes. But FFS she is the only character who gets around (music wise) more than the phantom ensemble! ARRGHAGHASGASHFDH!!!!! WHYYYYYYY, Sanae seems to be pretty damn under-rated depite having an otherwise cool original track imo, but not nearly as bad as Eirin or Kaguya. Kanako's remixes are automatic awsome. Not as numerous as Remilia's but they are just about always 11 out of 10, while Remi's tends to be 8+ (though she has a couple outstanding ones as well).

Not going to go into SA/UFO so much yet since the majority of music I've discovered pre-dates both, so I can't say much regarding em.

In short:

GJ Remilia, Kokoro
STFU Aya (not that I hate the character, just sick of hearing her music)
WTB Moar Flandre, Eirin, Kaguya, Patchy, Sanae.

Oh yeah, and so far the character with the least love so far is Rumia. She's been around for a very long time, and I've only heard 1 remix of hers so far...which surprisingly wasn't bad. Maybe that's just nostalgia talking since she was my first Touhou boss.

edit: say I've just discovered the uploaderer of the SSH Kaguya remix, that guy has some good stuff >=P

[Edible]

Crystallized Silver remixes are almost universally good, for what it's worth.

I like vocal tracks because humans are a fantastic instrument.

I'm also pretty surprised you mentioned neither Necrofantasia or Love-Colored Master Spark for overuse, since they are by far the most-used tracks for remix purposes.

[Ghaleon]

Crystallized Silver remixes are almost universally good, for what it's worth.

I like vocal tracks because humans are a fantastic instrument.

I'm also pretty surprised you mentioned neither Necrofantasia or Love-Colored Master Spark for overuse, since they are by far the most-used tracks for remix purposes.

Not from what I've seen so far, but bear in mind I've probably heard like 5% of the stuff so far only. It's also possible that because I try to avoid vocal tracks, I don't count them (well I don't count them at all for sure), and the majority of the over-used ones are mostly vocals by chance?

[Iryan]

A quick look at the wiki gives us 12 remixes for Rumia's theme, Apparitions Stalk the Night.
It also gives us 14 remixes for all songs from tHRtP combined.

So, we really need more remixes of PC-98 songs, especially from Touhou 1.

Also, why are there so many remixes of Broken Moon, yet so few of Demystify Feast and Onigashima in the Fairyland? I call shenanigans!

On another note, Greenwich in the Sky is in my opinion not that interesting in its original version, but remixes of it are generally awesome.

[Ghaleon]

A quick look at the wiki gives us 12 remixes for Rumia's theme, Apparitions Stalk the Night.
It also gives us 14 remixes for all songs from tHRtP combined.

So, we really need more remixes of PC-98 songs, especially from Touhou 1.

Also, why are there so many remixes of Broken Moon, yet so few of Demystify Feast and Onigashima in the Fairyland? I call shenanigans!

On another note, Greenwich in the Sky is in my opinion not that interesting in its original version, but remixes of it are generally awesome.

I don't think the wiki is also an accurate way to determine the # of remixes on a per-song basis to be honest. Has a bigger sample-size than myself personally no doubt, but still.

As for demystify feast, I've got quite a few of those early in my music explorations.

[Iryan]

Yeah, you can't trust the wiki, but I believe you can extrapolate from the data it gives, so yeah.

[N-Forza]

Aya's theme owns. Jealous much?

I would like more remixes of Iku's theme though.

[Fightest]

OP makes me rage with its misuse of the word "song". Songs are sung. With a voice. There is such a thing as a "song without words," but this practically never comes into the picture.

On-topic though, the voice is a fantastic instrument, able to add inflection and emotion to a piece trivially, where most instruments have to bend over backwards to achieve that kind of humanisation of what they're playing. This is why vocals make such a big difference in a remix, even if one doesn't know the words.

[Ghaleon]

OP makes me rage with its misuse of the word "song". Songs are sung. With a voice. There is such a thing as a "song without words," but this practically never comes into the picture.

On-topic though, the voice is a fantastic instrument, able to add inflection and emotion to a piece trivially, where most instruments have to bend over backwards to achieve that kind of humanisation of what they're playing. This is why vocals make such a big difference in a remix, even if one doesn't know the words.

First, bite me.

second, that is a fair argument. I was considering similar things to myself. About how the human voice can make a variety of sounds as well much like a keyboard (with a soundbox). But then I considered if people truly wished to utilize the array of sounds from the human voice in a song, there would be more dare I say scatting, and less language. Should be said though that scatting IMO doesn't even come near trying to properly match sounds to the song, just random gibberish that makes the vocalist sound like a tard most of the time. I didn't think of the emotion bit though, that's definitely a plus.

I think my problem is I just don't like the sound of the human voice much in general.

[^^flandre^^]

I prefer to write and listen to tracks without vocals, but the human voice is wonderful and sometimes the feeling that a vocalist can put into a song with his or her voice can't be matched by a traditional or electronic instrument, or even a voice synthesizer. It also takes talent to write meaningful lyrics and a lot of practice to perform them in a way that is satisfactory to everyone involved in production.