A Song I Like

The song that I've chosen to write about for the assignment is a bit of a unique one. It's マーシーキリング (Mercy Killing) by the Vocaloid producer いよわ (Iyowa). If you're not familiar with what Vocaloid is, it's a program built specifically for vocal synthesis stylized similarly to a DAW. Artists can write in vocals using voicebanks of pre-recorded words/syllables (depending on the language). Think of it like a sample pack, but with vocal samples that you can tune individually. Even if you haven't heard of the program, you've likely heard of the most popular voicebank, Hatsune Miku which, coincidentally, is one of the two libraries used for vocals in this song.

To clarify, I'm not saying this is my favorite song, or even that it stands within my top 10, but it is so interesting compositionally that I wanted to talk about it:

1. This song is incredibly dense. There is so much going on at once that trying to identify the individual melodies would be a Sisyphean task, and yet its not just a jumble of sounds. Each element works together to create a larger consistent atmosphere. All being a testament to the production on this song which is stellar. I'm an electronic musician, so things like mixing and layering is intriguing to me, and hearing stuff like this always impresses me because I know it's not an easy thing to do well, especially with the amount of individual tracks needing mastering in this song.
2. It's also very rhythmically interesting. The slightly offbeat piano melody is probably the first thing you'll notice when listening. It's very purposeful, and is done specifically to catch your attention. This type of thing is present in the rest of the song as well, albeit less apparently, with several background elements being ever so slightly off kilter. The verse has less of this garbled feel to give more focus to the lyrics of the song which, unfortunately I can't give you much insight on since I am not fluent in Japanese. But it has a much more steady rhythm to serve as foundation for the singing. When moving to the chorus however, the complexity returns and starts to seep into the vocal patterns as well. Additionally, the key changes here, I just can't tell if it's in the pre-chorus, or at the start of the chorus itself, but the natural switch just further showcases Iyowa's composing prowess.
3. None of this is exclusive to this song either, and is present to even greater extents in all of Iyowa's music, and this album especially. I think he is one of the prime examples I would use whenever talking about "more is less" musically. Not to mention that he wrote this song after only one year of publishing music, and his style has only gotten more polished since then. And if any of this is at all interesting to you I recommend you check out some of his other stuff.