霜月はるか & 中恵光城 - 祭果ての花 (Another Flower) // Reaction & Analysis

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another reaction. Today we have Haruka Shimatsuki and Mitski Nakay's song, Another Flower. This one was requested in my executive producers by Vanessa. And I have no clue what I'm about to get into. Apparently, this is a pretty popular song given the response I saw in like the comments of this. So many comments. Also, plenty of views, too. And they had tour dates up, so I'm like, "Okay, so this must be like a huge combo." I don't know how popular they are, but I don't recognize either of the names. So, I guess I have to discover that today. And without further ado, let's go. Also, sorry about the voice quality of me today. I have filters on to get rid of my air conditioner. It's very humid.

[00:00:48][music] Ooh.

[00:00:57]Nice linear progression there. [music] [singing] [music] [music] Very very textured percussion like This has a lot of great texture to it.

[00:01:27][music] [singing] [music] >> The accordion is helping too. Adds a little bit of that spice.

[00:01:42][singing] [singing] [music] Beautiful.

[00:01:54]>> That's so well praised.

[00:01:59][music] >> Oh, and on the upbeat.

[00:02:05]Hell yeah.

[00:02:11][music] [music] Oh, I I love the layering of this so much.

[00:02:27][music] >> Just completely separating their vocal lines.

[00:02:35][music] >> A true duet.

[00:02:41]At first, I thought it [music] might be like rounds, but then I realized they were completely different lyrics.

[00:02:49]and so well paced and patterned. It's so good already.

[00:03:00][music] See, I love that the [music] chorus switches off the uh >> the accordion to the like overall song beat.

[00:03:21][music] [music and singing] I'm [music] daddy.

[00:03:42][music] [music] [music] >> [music] >> I love this. This is so well done.

[00:04:05]>> Now I get why it's so popular.

[00:04:18]>> [music] >> And just top tier clarity from both vocalists, too.

[00:04:26]Like neither of them are struggling.

[00:04:28]It's so effortless.

[00:04:39][music] [singing] >> [music] >> more of that percussion. I love that.

[00:04:52]>> I love how much texture [music] this song has.

[00:04:58]So much room in the mix. [music] [music] >> [singing] [music] [music] [music] >> See, like that chord progression, I thought the song was going to be so much more simple.

[00:05:40]But instead of just making it simple, they added complexity in every other aspect. Like the chord progression might have started simple. They added to it a lot. Added layers, added changes, but it stayed true to that simplicity. Yuri, that's it. That's the review. [laughter] Obviously, I did pick up some of the words. I do know some Japanese. Not a lot of it. not fluent in any way, but I did have to look up the lyrics and especially to understand those overlapping parts. It came clear that this song is definitely romantically charged in some way. I don't know if that's entirely both of them having it, but the visuals would make me feel that that's what's happening. Doesn't matter.

[00:06:21]It's Pride Month as I record this and that's totally [ __ ] chill by me. Hell yeah, Yuri. But as far as the composition goes, this song is really beautiful and again kind of deceptively simplistic. We have like a B minor, an A or a G. I think it's a G, then an A.

[00:06:39]Yeah, that would be it. So it's like [music] that's our main progression. That's pretty much all the verses as well. We do go up to a G. It really just depends on what the song wants. We can have like a [music] and then it just loops back around there. There's also parts that like go up to like an F sharp and then it kind of goes into the G and maybe the AF here before settling back down lower. It also does go down to this lower F sharp. I feel like that might just be the separation of these chords and like both of them being played at the same time.

[00:07:20]It can get kind of messy while I'm trying to hear frequencies. I'm not that good yet to be able to be like, "Ah, yes, that's exactly the frequency. Let me hit this exact note." I'm not there yet, but I do understand where the chords are and why it's happening. And this song, and the reason I gave it what I did initially, and I was like, "Oh, it's a nice simple progression." It is this main progression of B minor, G, A is like a time-tested one. It's one of those ones that shows up everywhere.

[00:07:46]Especially in Asia, they love this sort of progression and it just feels good, you know? So, it's like you can expand upon that. That's where like the uh D comes in up there or the F# comes in.

[00:07:57]It's just like the F# settling it in a little bit more to those like emotional moments. The D being the one that lifts it up and makes it feel like there's more room to grow above. But the core of just those three chords in this song is what makes it so beautifully simple and what makes you able to build upon this basically in either direction as far as you want. It has this minor major major which adds to any sort of chord progression. Your next note could be a major just like the D there or it can be a sharp which would be similar in tone to hitting a minor. I don't think it would go down to an F minor. That would be weird. Like an F sharp minor. Maybe an F minor, but that feels way too dark.

[00:08:42]You see what I mean there? Like there's progressions that just feel like it's doing a little bit too much. And it really depends on what the key is. That is a completely different key, you know?

[00:08:52]So like F minor wouldn't work. And if F# minor is too dark as well, this is within the key. F# just kind of works as that pull down. We have the B minor, which usually would feel like that moment. Just the minor chords tend to be those ones that are emotionally heavy, but this song starts there. So, we start emotionally heavy and then two follow-up major chords makes the song feel like there's a progression forward somewhere.

[00:09:19]Just because we're looping around [music] and it's very north progressive. It's just moving straight up down into itself. And we're rooting ourselves right back at the lowest part that this song gives because this is a positive chord. This is a positive chord. And this might be a sad one, but it's where we started and it's where we're ending and it's where everything starts over again and again. And even when we do lift up to things like the D, it goes right back down to that emotional root and we just we're here, you know? It allows the song to feel bright while also being just soft enough that you can get through things like the the tension of love, for example. And it works brilliantly for that. That's why it's so popular, I think, in especially Asian music because a lot of their themes, especially in traditional music, are love stories and are of like tragic journeys. And it's just something that has stuck around for the themes of their music. and it works really well.

[00:10:20]Obviously, there's plenty of other sounds that they go for, too. But this is just one that is so all over the place. Every single time I hear a song from Japan, China, [ __ ] Korea, they all go for like this sort of a progression. And it's not something that happens as much in the West, but it does happen because the world is a [ __ ] circle and music gets back around. No matter where it started, there are shared ideas and the commonalities of music are basically universal. But then it's other things about this song that make me go, "Ooh, that's creative and fun." I don't think that the like drums, for example, are the most creative patterns of drums I've ever heard. It's just a matter of it added a texture that would have been gone or missing otherwise. Like you can add those textures by usually having voices that have texture. These voices weren't very textured. They were very clean vocals.

[00:11:14]Both of the vocalists blend so well and the layering was helping kind of break things up a little bit. That's part of the texture though. Like the song having completely different separated sets of lyrics is another texture that everything else just kind of works with.

[00:11:28]You have to homogenize at some point.

[00:11:30]You have to have all of these different layers working towards something. If you just have one thing adding texture, then it's not going to do anything else for you. like an electric guitar and a rock song for example, that's the texture.

[00:11:41]You can have bass, of course, that's not so much a texture as it is like a rooting factor. Just like the drums keep the rhythm, so does the bass. It's the rhythm section. But the guitar and with like a distortion on it, that's the texture. That sort of tone is what you're looking for or trying to listen for in your ear. And it's just what works with that genre. But for something like this, it's like where do you add that? If the vocals are clear, you have to have something else that's adding that texture. So, what we get in this song is this beautiful guitar that's adding a little bit of flare as far as the rhythms go. Plenty of texture in all the drums feeling very organic and just real, very gritty. And also the accordion almost taking the place of like a bass guitar in this composition in my ears. Because if the vocals are being clean and clear and they're sitting on the top and the guitar is still being the guitar, the accordion is doing something to hold the line at the bottom and keep this rhythm on, especially on that up rhythm part before it switches for the chorus. It's keeping that pace and that pattern. It's doing its own thing supporting the rhythm of the song rather than being a mostly melodic piece. It does have moments of that, but it's nowhere near the focus of that instrument in this song. At least in my opinion. This song has so much going on. It's kind of hard to really explain what I'm feeling, and I feel like that's probably consistent for a lot of people. The song is absolutely gorgeous. I love the mixing of it, too.

[00:13:13]Like, nothing felt like it was stepping on the other one's toes. You could hear the guitar all the way through, the accordion all the way through, all of the drums. you could really pick apart of like what exactly was happening down to the shakers. You could feel every single little bit of layer that was in this song. And the vocals were no different either. Even when they were separating completely and singing completely different things, you could tell where each one was and which line they were singing, regardless if you understood the lyrics or not. And if you can understand the lyrics, that's all the better because you're understanding what's being said and you're able to place everything in narratively and it just makes sense. But even if you can't, kind of like myself, I was picking out a couple words, but definitely not a lot.

[00:13:53]Especially in those layered sections, I could still tell who was singing and why. And it wasn't the subtitles helping me. It was just purely the song and the way that they were placing. They were structuring these lyrics to not just be on top of each other, but spacing them as kind of responses to each other in a way that is so difficult to do. I have to give props to the writers for doing that. It is so difficult getting these sorts of duets to function correctly without them just feeling like a bunch of idiots yapping over each other. So, this song did an amazing job at basically every single turn. I have no complaints about this track. It is a beautiful song. I love the energy to it.

[00:14:32]I love all the mixing. The instruments in here. The vocalists were [ __ ] phenomenal. This is just a brilliant song and I really don't have any negative notes. I can just sing its praises. This is a [ __ ] fantastic piece of work here. But I think I'm done yapping as a result of that. So, thank you all so very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video and you want me to get to something else, by all means, drop in the comments below and I will do my best as always to get to those. Or if like Vanessa did, you want to guarantee that I listen to something and the tier is open on my Patreon. You can join that and guarantee something out of me.

[00:15:01]Doesn't matter what it's from, who it's by, if it's good or bad, none of that matters. That's why it's a guarantee.

[00:15:06]But if you don't want to do any of that, maybe just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that. And I'll see all of you in the next video.

[00:15:13]Goodbye.

[00:15:16]>> [music] [music] >> Goodbye.

[00:15:26]>> [music]