You may have seen it around that I’ve done a cover version of the Perfume song Spring of Life. I was going to just share it privately on Facebook so I could show my Perfume fan friends, but then decided a few minutes before uploading that I would bite the bullet and make an unscheduled public return to YouTube.
As I covered in my last post, I have recently acquired a shiny new microphone and I’ve been eager to test it out on a full song recording. I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone: test my mic, and cover my favourite Japanese girl group. The mic is a dream to use. It made singing quietly a breeze. Even if the signal didn’t come through very loud, the mic picked up the subtleties of soft singing which allowed my voice to cut through the instrumental accompaniment. I barely had to adjust the volume of any section of the recording once I’d finished.
As much as the mic was very helpful to me, I still struggled a lot singing this one. I’m not terribly practised at singing in Japanese. I have a vague idea since I’ve listened to Japanese singers most days since the latter part of 2006. Also, it helps that hubby studied Japanese at university. He taught me how to read out romaji reasonably fluently and I know a few bits of hiragana. I’ve pretty much nailed that soft ‘r’ sound, too. But when it comes to singing it? It can be problematic.
It’s hard to find a comfortable place in my throat to carry a good vocal tone at the same time as clarity of pronunciation. There is the word totsuzen (suddenly) in the second chorus and I found it to be a bit of a tongue twister while I tried to stay in key.
In short, I’m not really happy with the recording, but I am glad I did it and decided to show it to everyone. I got a fair few Japanese people tell me they thought my Japanese was good. I suppose I can only improve!
So, what next? I’ve had some requests for more Perfume covers. I do have another song in mind… Might take me longer though, as I have a much more elaborate arrangement planned.
Thank you to everyone who has listened, ‘liked’, shared, and tweeted.
ヽ(*⌒∇⌒*)ﾉ