Lots of anime songs inspired to traditional Japanese music have all but traditional Japanese instrments are midi. I’m surprised, because record labels invest millions of yens or dollars to make good results and cannot pay real performers? Opinions are welcome!
Well, for Anime songs, I agree with you there xD.
Sadly, when it comes to VisualKei bands, many are indie and low budget, so they have to do with samples and midi. Also, it’s quite expensive to record all those instruments, and often, mixing can be nightmarish. In many cases, it saves money to use samples and VSTs.
With me, I’m generally ok with Midi Traditional Japanese Instruments, as long as the samples sound good, and the notes that are used are what realistically what would be in the range of the real instruments.
I work in the music industry, specifically on designing electronic music instruments, so I have a bit of insight into this. I can tell you that many producers who work on scoring soundtracks for TV shows and even films don’t necessarily get a huge amount of money.
As far as recording live instruments goes, paying the performers is only a small portion of the cost. You also need to pay for a suitable studio to record it, and then the recording engineers, and then you still need to mix the results with the rest of the soundtrack you are recording (usually on a computer). It’s a lot less expensive and time consuming for most producers to just pay a few hundred dollars to buy a high quality sample library and work that into their productions instead.
I’m talking about really big companies, like Columbia records . And, especially talking about Japanese cartoons, some VST are horrible, especially if you are going to make the specific articulation
Is this a shamisen? The articulation used is not responding to the real instruments
It doesn’t matter how big the company is, ultimately they end up paying a composer/producer to create the soundtrack. That person needs to work within their budget to create the final result.
I’m not 100% sure, but in the example you posted sounds like the shamisen part was probably recorded using a keyboard + sampled instrument, the pitch bends sound a bit unnatural to me which is usually the tell-tale sign.
I didn’t understand when you talk about the pitch bend. And maybe now I can say I wrong thing, but I think the record of the companies more bigger and can more invest about composers