[Cover] Ray of light - FMA 歌ってみた & Utaite culture!

After being a fan of the Fullmetal Alchemist 鋼の錬金術師 series for a while (watched both the original and the brotherhood series), I finally got down to finishing one of the songs which I liked from the anime. Recorded last summer, this is a cover of the ending song "Ray of light" from fullmetal alchemist brotherhood originally sang by Shoko Nakagawa 中川翔子. I chanced upon a video of her talking about the meaning behind the lyrics she wrote which if you're interested. She wrote the lyrics to the song from the point of view of edward to his father who left ed and his brother when they were young just like her own father so she tried to identify her own feelings with edward's. The song means is mostly about conveying the process of growing up, much like a strong ray of light.

I found it a little difficult to record this, I think mainly because the pitch goes lower than I'm comfortable with so I tend to sound flat, but after many tries, this is what I came up with! I hope you like it!

Also found out some terminology today. People who (like me lol.) regularly covers j-pop and anime songs are called 歌い手（うたいて）and the songs that they cover are usually labelled "Song title を歌ってみた" which essentially means "I tried to sing ____". Apparently its a Nico nico douga practice? 面白い。

The discovery of this 歌い手wikipage also uncovered an entire universe of youtube/nico nico douga (NND) cover singers, some of which are more famous and have tracks in compilation albums such as quoted from the wikipage:

• 10 Dai Utattemita Live! BEST (10代うたってみたライブ!BEST) features talented utaite in their teens (10代).
• Ikemen Voice Paradise (イケメンボイスパラダイス) features utaite who are considered ikemen, that is, male utaite whose voices give the impression of being good-looking.
• Kamikyoku wo Utattemita (神曲を歌ってみた) features kamikyoku, or "godly songs", sung by notable utaite.

Amazing isn't it? At the risk of sounding like some fangirls I know of this subculture, some of the male singers of this genre do have very attractive voices, and some of the girls are very professional too! XD Granted alot of it revolves around vocaloid songs that are original productions. Anyway I digress.

Van