DIR EN GREY

Apparently , not the cover of Kasumi by Shinya

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It’s sold out by the way

Dada is working for Free Will?! Did I read that right?!!

That is wild!

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Is it really a cover if it’s played by the guy who (presumably) wrote the part?

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…Well, no :sweat_smile:
Although, it depends on if he replicated every drum part 100% (since he’s prone to simplyfing some studio parts when performing live)

It’s nice that he’s sharing more. Do any of the other members have channels like this? I know Toshiya started an Instagram recently.

It’s pretty much note for note what’s on the studio version. Live I feel like he focuses more on looking cool and preserving his energy.

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What I find so interesting about this is that he’s not even trying to make it seem like the video is where the audio is coming from.

There isn’t a single mic on that kit. I don’t even see trigger modules (and you’d still need overheads or spot mics on the cymbals even if you’re triggering the shells). So either he re-recorded the drums again and put that audio over the song, and is doing a play-along to that; OR he has the stems of the recording and bumped up the drum stem’s volume, and is just doing a play-along to the original recording like that. Either way, the performance we’re hearing is not the one we’re seeing.

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Was gonna say something like this but last time I said something critical of Shinya someone flagged me, lmao

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That’s sad :confused:
I don’t even really see it as much of a criticism. I know he can play, he’s a great drummer with a lot of creativity when he applies himself. It just seems silly to mime it like this to me lol

Kaoru has a podcast-like/vlog thing with other guys that I´ve never seen before, but I´m guessing they´re from the music industry too, I don´t know much about it because all the info is in japanese but it´s called “TheThe Day” I haven´t been able to find any episodes in english yet. Kyo has an official YouTube channel but he mainly used it to promote sukekiyo stuff and hasn´t uploaded shit in like 6 years, it probably wasn´t even run by him. Lastly, last I checked their website Die and Kyo seemed to have like a mobile app thing were they blogged stuff from their daily life, kinda like Twitter I guess, but it was available only in Japan, you had to pay for it and I saw it looong ago so maybe it doesn´t even exist anymore.
Those are all of their social media-esque projects I know about, there´s also Kyo´s instagram but you probably already knew about it.

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“TheThe Day” is his personal blog. That podcast thing is called “Freedom of Expression”

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Yup. Seems he likes going out for coffee and building Gundams. Good for him, I say.

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Hahaha I thought the same thing, more a playthrough than a cover?

It’s totally true the audio doesn’t come from the video we see.
I work as a sound engineer and I can guarantee you he didn’t record the sound you hear. The drums sound come from a MIDI file that was very quickly programmed with VST ( a virtual instrument ).

For me it’s ok to do this but considering it’s Shinya from Dir en grey… It’s a bit disapointing. I was expecting a real recording.

As for programming the drums, If he wants to do it he should spend more time to make it sound more " human ". Here you can feel it’s a very robotic feel.

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Probably the same sound set he used when they recorded the Unraveling EP. The drums on that recording (as well as Arche) have a MIDI quality to them.

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It’s possible Unraveling and Arche used a VST drums I’m not sure.

It’s also possible they really record it and trigger each parts of the drum set. It means the mixing engineer replaced each elements by a sample ( Kick, snares, toms ) so in the end it become more flat because each hits are almost at same intensity.

Personally I feel the drums sound of ’ Oboro ’ is probably the best they ever had, natural, powerful and big

Programming drums takes time. To make them sound natural, you have to manually tweak each hit to a) have a different velocity (strength of the hit) and b) be ever so slightly off-beat. Loops can be used but are noticeable, so it’s better to alter each bar. The more time is put into these aspects, the better everything will sound. If enough time is put in, it may even be indistinguishable from an actual performance.

But here’s the problem. This takes a lot of time and is an incredibly boring process. Why a drummer would manually program in each and every single drum beat instead of simply playing it live is utterly beyond my comprehension.

My thoughts are either that:
• he’s self-conscious about his playing.
• he’s a perfectionist who can’t stand tiny errors in his playing.
• he doesn’t know how to mic a kit properly.
• he’s just a bad drummer.

If you can play the instrument, just do a few takes and use the best one. It will always sound more natural.

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More than likely it’s the original drum stem with the volume boosted and he’s just “pretending” to play. We know Shinya isn’t a perfectionist based on his live performances, so it’s not that. But all that said it’s also possible that the original recording used replacement samples for the drums. Considering Tue Madsen was involved, I would say that’s the case.

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What’s the best Dir en grey’s album production-wise? Gauze?