Music Sheets
So one thing over the years that kind of came in and out of focus for me is sheet music. It’s a little something that back in the days I really wanted; when I had the time to doodle with playing music, anyways. It was a little hard to find them. Now I don’t have the time, and naturally they seem to be easier to get.
Now, it seems there’s an upswing of sheet music…or at least one online retailer is having a campaign (aff. link). There were always sheet music for anime songs commercially available, especially the few that pierced the public consciousness, through that insular bubble which echoes of “eew, you watch anime still?” and made it seemed less haunting and more socially inappropriate as a response.
Anyways, the first thing that came to my mind when I first found out was not just “wooo do they have song XYZ” but also “I wonder how many horse-mask-wannabes on Nico video has them.” Do the proliferation of Youtube and self-video-song-covers-ness drive sheet music sales? It has to. I can’t imagine the volume of sales to be all that large for these items, so a movement in the market like that is likely very noticeable. Plus, this has to be true for all sheet music sales of popular songs and not just anime or game music.
And what’s great about it is that thanks to copyright law, your favorite music composers get a share of the money! If you hated Megumi Nakajima (shame on you) but loved Kanno’s work on Aimo, and you want to make your own mix and want to drum up the instrumentals on your own because you think there just aren’t enough versions of that damned song out there, this is a nice start to baseline your work. Poor Ranka-chan won’t see even one cent of that cold, hard monopoly money, I would guess.
I think I might get myself one, just for fun. The selections over there at CD Japan is thin (it always was, no matter where I looked) but it has good enough of a coverage. It reads more like a publisher just got a bunch of licenses and played shuffle on them, generating more SKUs than what is necessary, forcing people to buy duplicates. Not really something too exciting. And if you’re after Yoko Kanno’s stuff, there is at least one better buy out there. Plus, some of you may prefer guitar tabs over standard sheet music stuff. There’s a ton of this crap that wasn’t before.
And you know what’s the best thing about it? Music is a language that crosses language barriers :D
If you are into Anime sheet music, Josh’s Anime Sheet Music is an awesome site for such resources. Been using it over the years and he has a sizable collection of them.
I knew an old site which provided sheet music downloads (which were transcribed by the owner himself). It’s down now. :(
I kick myself for not saving that DYRL sheet music posted in /m/ a few years back.
Indeed, I probably know a total of one kanji, but music is universal. I’m not actually good with music in general, but I’m at least interested enough to be interested in this kind of thing. I’ll be looking into it (whenever I find the time lol)