Dysrhythmia: an EP inspired by Katawa Shoujo

[TheDarksuits]

Hello everyone!

I was first exposed to Katawa Shoujo by chance early last summer. I downloaded it one day on a whim and it ended up claiming the next 3 weeks of my life. The experience I had was amazing and unlike any I'd ever experienced from any other type of media before. That being said, I became quite inspired by the game/visual novel and set about writing 5 songs, one for each of the 5 main characters (aside from Hisao).

All tracks were recorded in a home studio over a 3-4 month period. The genres are fairly diverse, so hopefully everyone can find at least one song that suits his/her fancy.

These songs were primarily written for fans of the game (though I hope non-fans listen and enjoy it too). A lot of thought and heart was put into this album, which from the outset was meant to be a sort of thank-you to the devs and fans, so I decided on the "pay-what-you-want" model that Bandcamp offers. In order to get your free copy just put '0' in the field (although if you really enjoy the album, donations are accepted and very much appreciated).

Downloading gets you the full album in a format of your choice, the album art, and lyrics embedded in each song.

Here's the link:

Happy listening!

-The Darksuits

[Crimson]

First of all, seeing as this is your first post, welcome to the forums!

It's always great to see some musically inclined folk on here. I do believe this should have probably been posted in the fan-works section of the forum, but I'm sure the mods will move it if needs be. Props to you for sharing your work, regardless. It's good to see that KS continues to inspire people in one way or another.

Anyhow, I just finished listening through the EP from start to finish so I'll tackle the individual tracks chronologically.

• Run
Out of the five tracks, I think this was definitely the best to kick off with. The style really goes well with Emi's energetic and upbeat personality. Guitar-work is good though it's a little muddy at certain points but I'll talk about that after. Bass feels a little drowned in the mix for the most part.

• Paint
Awesome job on the instrumental. It catches Rin's kind of spacey personality and reminds me of the kind of music that I think she'd listen to. Really liked the line "A beautiful mess we've made, to get us out of our clothes" in particular.

• Lead
Big intro and undoubtedly the hardest-hitting of the five. There's some good drumming in this.

• Read
This one's probably my favorite of them all. Ambient, chilled and - in my opinion - a little foreboding. The lyrics are also well done.

• Teach
Very upbeat and happy-go-lucky vibe from this one. I'd nearly say it borders on being a little cheesy at points, but there's nothing wrong with that. It meshes well with the style of the track.


Personally, bar one or two lines here and there, I didn't really warm to the vocals all in all. At times they felt a little off-putting and off-key, but that's just me. As for the instruments, I feel as though some more post-editing could have helped a lot. The cymbals are washing out some of the mixes and the guitar and bass velocities were kind of jumping up and down and, in the case of the latter, ending up suffocated beneath other instruments.

All of that aside, I enjoyed listening. Good job overall. Who did the album artwork, by the way? It's pretty damn cool.

[TheDarksuits]

First off, thank you for such an awesome and detailed review. I really could have used your help when we were wrapping this thing up! (Btw, the work you posted on Soundcloud is quite cool (Bliss is one of my favorites, in particular)).

A bit of side trivia - the album tracks were arranged in the order in which I completed each route. I'm sure it's not just me that thinks this, but I was quite impressed by how organic the game is.

Second, my apologies for not posting in the right spot - should have noticed the "Fan Works" board from the get go.

I'm very glad you enjoyed the record as a whole. This is a great community and our band is honored to be able to share it with everyone.

P.S. I spoke with the album artist and he said he would get back with me once he has a page up and going. At the moment he doesn't really have anything online but hopefully he will soon.

[Crimson]

My pleasure! It's not often (from what I've seen) that people post music on here, so it's nice to see someone new. Thanks for the kind words, also! Always appreciated.

Anyhow, I know what you mean in regards to wrapping things up. I still haven't gotten my head fully around it myself, but practice makes perfect over time. Shoot me a PM if you want a hand with any future pieces.

Hah, that is pretty cool! Emi tends to be the first route that a lot of people end up getting and Lily seems to be the favored 'final' route due to the epilogue at the end of it.


Once again, good on you for posting it! Putting any creative work out there can always be intimidating, especially something geared towards a particular community.

Ah, fair enough. Well, the art is pretty cool anyway.

[forgetmenot]

I'll be honest: when I first saw this topic I expected to cringe. Hard. I made a personal bet with myself I couldn't make it more than a minute into the first track.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found the end result to not only be listenable, but actually very good. Well done. A lot of people around here don't know this, but in addition to writing/playing music myself, I also moonlight as an audio engineer (mostly live stuff, but I have a few albums under my belt). You guys are definitely on the right track. Also, I appreciate the Radiohead influence, especially on Read (which might get dangerously close to copycatting, but I like the nod anyhow).

Songwriting is the best part of this. Which is good. If you have an excellent producer with crap songs, your end product is still crap.

First of all, I'm betting this is self-produced or mixed by a friend. It's not bad - the levels of each individual track are pretty well-done. I'll go instrument-by-instrument with my general thoughts. This is just advice, so take it or leave it.

Kit: This is probably what needs the most work. Your drummer is very good, so kudos! However, none of the drums really sound like they've been mic'd properly (except for the kick, but I'll get to that in a sec). I'm hearing some SERIOUS reflection from the snare drum into the tom mics (especially on Read). Which you could normally cut out with a gate, but the kit doesn't really sound like it's been gated properly. I find I get the best response from snare and toms if I set the gate to open as fast as possible without SOUNDING like it's opening (standard Apple plugins are pretty good for this. You can also set a predelay to counter, if you can still hear it opening). Set the hold and decay to match the response of the drum itself. In addition, I'd HIGHLY suggest adding a second mic underneath the snare drum, if you haven't already. It adds a lot of depth to the sound. Just be sure to phase invert .

There's also a slight phasing problem with your overhead mics. Make sure they're exactly the same distance away from your snare drum, or the result will either be a muddled (and weaker) snare, or cymbals so soft you can't hear them.

The kit isn't really EQ'd properly either. I don't want to load down the post with the details of how to properly EQ a drum kit but I do want to point out that the snare doesn't really have any high end. Which can be helped by compression, which I also noticed the kit is in some SORE need of. Not a lot, just enough to even the volume and make the sound a little punchier. I usually like to do snares and toms at around 3.5:1 - 4:1, but that's a rule of thumb that won't work for every kit (especially really deep snares!).

The kick drum sounds like it's been mic'd properly, which is good, because I'm getting a whole lot of punch from what I assume is neither compressed nor EQ'd. Which is impressive. I'm betting it's a shallower kick. 18"? Am I close at all? Haha

The room you recorded it in doesn't really sound the best, either. This effect can also be mitigated with gating, but I suggest sending the entire drum mix to a bus and adding some reverb to that (then, additionally, adding some more verb to the snare and toms). Especially on a dreamier, spacier track like Lead.

Bass guitar: I'm a jazz-trained bassist, so I tend to be overly critical of bass tones. Feel free to skip this part.

I always like adding a little overdrive to any bass track, because it doesn't come out as dirt in the final product - conversely, it helps keep the note hits crisp. I also feel like it's compressed a little TOO heavily, but that's entering into the realm of "too picky". In addition, I think you could benefit from turning up the 'tone' knob on the bass. Different pickups may also help but aren't necessary. EQ is pretty good.

Guitars: The rhythm guitar at the beginning of Run is so out of tune it hurts. Pls tune gtrs. Before every take. No exceptions.

I'm not really sure where to go with the EQ on this one. On one hand, some guitars seem to have all the mids gone. Some seem to be nothing but mids. Some are pretty dang good. In general I'd suggest stripping out 750-850 Hz (the "nasally" area for guitars), as this seems to be a recurring problem with most of the tracks. Again, there's nothing that's really bad, but there are only a few tones that stand out to me as good. I'd suggest spending a little more time to figure out exactly what you want.

Keys: Since these were almost guaranteed some kind of MIDI input, I don't really have comments. They work how they're expected to work, and that's good.

Vocals: The production on the vocals is really not bad at all. I'd suggest more reverb, and a little more compression. EQ is pretty good. I know it's tough to get a consistent vocal performance, but keep at it! Use them diaphragm muscles, son!


Ok, that's it for me. There's more nitpicky stuff I could get into but I don't want to be pedantic. Keep it up!

[TheDarksuits]

Wow, tons of great advice! Thank you so much for the compliments and feedback. I don't know where to start as far as a reply goes so I'll just go down the list here kind of like you did:

Mix/EQ/Post-production: We did indeed mix and EQ everything ourselves. This part ended up getting rushed, because we wanted to release the album on the second anniversary of KS and ended up rubbing up against the deadline pretty quickly. That being said, I don't know how the record would have sounded (better or worse) had we had a little more time in post-production. At any rate, it's definitely our weakest area and something we need to get better at.

Kit: We only had 4 mics to work with (2 overheads and 2 dynamics), so we had to try and make do. The bass drum is actually (surprise!) a 22"! We used a Shure SM57 to mic it and we did end up EQing it a bit. Everything else you mentioned about mic placement, compression, etc. is spot on. If we're gonna get better quality on the drums we will most likely need to invest in some real drum mics. Any suggestions you have with respect to a preferred set would be highly appreciated.

Electric guitar and bass guitar: Again, your observations make sense and are definitely things we should think about in the future. As far as recording goes, we experimented a lot. Sometimes we plugged in direct and let the software work its magic. Other times we mic'ed the amp with the SM57 and added just a few things here and there after the fact. What are your thoughts on this? It felt like going direct (especially with the bass) often produced a lot more unwanted hum, but there's a high possibility we could have been doing something improperly.

Many pardons if this is inappropriately turning into a gearhead/music thread, but it's awesome to be able to get such a warm and honest reception and we wanted to respond in kind.

[TheDarksuits]

Hi everyone.

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone that has listened to the KS-inspired album. Your support and feedback means the world to us.

That being said, here's a bonus track that was inspired by Misha.

This track is free to download if you so desire (just enter '0' in the box when it asks you to name your price).

There are no plans to write any more KS-inspired songs.

Peace and love.

-The Darksuits