[Rossini's Semiramide plays]
Umu: So HaSeul is the third member to debut in December 2016
Her color is green and her animal is a bird
Fun fact is that she was preparing to study opera in college
But after being recruited for Blockberry Creative at a music festival, she then debuted as a Loona member.
She said "Even if I did study opera in college,
I wanted to find a way to close the gap between pop and opera, such as becoming a... pop-era singer"
RACHEL: Great JEREMY: Pop-era... R: I'm glad she said it [laughs]
CHARLOTTE: Okay, let's hear some POP-ERA!
PEYTON: [whispers] He's not done yet Jordan: Oh, so "Let Me In" is composed by the songwriter Oreo
and the music video is shot in Iceland.
ELIZABETH: It's shot in Iceland?! HENRY: YEEEEEES
E: That's like my favorite plaaaaaaace H: I LOVE Iceland
H: I want my honeymoon to be on the one road that circles the entire island (E: Yeeees) and visiting all the largest cities-
E: There's one large city. That's it
H: All the large city and then small towns. E: There you go
DAVIS: 3, 2, 1 (LINDSEY: 2, 1)
PEYTON: Ooh! Hashtag strings
CHARLOTTE: This sounds like the opening of like, every like
opera's like, overture
C: You know? P: This is a pop-era
C: If it's like the overture of an opera, but it's not long enough to actually have been opera
so now it's pop-era
E: Ooh, I love the pizzicato
E: Yeees
P: Wow that's got like a weird, like, tango (C: Yeah) string thing
C: Got an Argentine tango
LINDSEY: Yeah DAVIS: You can like, I can already tell that she's like a very like well-trained, like vocalist
just 'cause like, it's so consistent, every syllable.
L: I like the lil' flute D: Yeah
E: Oh that's interesting, you go from like a grassy field to the Glacier Bay
H: It's amazing E: Ooh, the harp
E: I really love this texture here where it's like really sparse and you just get the pizzicato strings and the harp
That's great.
JEREMY: There's a lot that's happening RACHEL: I'm trying to hear the opera in her timbre
J: I can't... R: But she could just be like pushing through the vibrato, which makes it just very straight
R: This is the first one that we've heard like belt-belt out of the 3
J: Yeah, you're right actually
L: Woah
K: Extra!
Extra string run!
K: Again, very classical
slash classical jazz-ical, in its harmonic progressions
C: [trills]
C: The little trills, it's so bird-like! (P: Yeah) Especially in flute
K: Woah
JAROD: A little bit of driving snare to push us to the (KATIE: Yeah) climax
P: She hunting... herself?? in bird form?? C: With a diamond??
P: With a dia- OH SHIT
P: She just take herself out?
P: 2-5-1-4 (chords)
ISAAC: [sings along] K: 5, flat 5, 4 (chords)
H: There's too much to unpack harmonically in real-time E: Yeah...
D: Ooh
D: Oh L: WHAT that's IT?
D: Oh that was a good ending L: That was crazy!
L: First I thought, I was like (D: She got me!) I was about to be like woah that was so unresolved
and then she came back on the screen and I was like, oh, maybe not then she just goes
and I was like "what"
D: Oh that's some ASMRs. That made me so tingly, that was weird.
D: That was really effective
L: She just high-key did not resolve at all (D: Yeah) no cadence at all
L: Just, well I guess it kind of was a half-cadence
L: That just feels really lame to call it a half-cadence (D: Just a free piece of music)
L: It doesn't, feel like it doesn't fit in the box at all (D: It's like a bird)
D: The song is like a bird too, it just does what it wants
D: I thought this last one was a much bolder attempt at orchestration
which is always really fun to sort of
dissect in a pop song because a lot of people don't even attempt to do stuff like that
and like they'd rather like play kind of safe like with what they know. L: Yeah, it also just felt like because there were so many
instruments that were involved in that song whether they were present for the whole time or just kind of in there for little interjections
like that flute and then I think there were some other things that kind of were there for just a little bit
but it kind of made the whole song feel like more of a production
so I think that's really kind of cool, I guess it didn't feel like it was just like "Hey let's go in the studio once
and like record this and then leave" or whatever (D: Yeah) it really felt like there was a lot more put into it
K: I never noticed this, but
just really quick, the second to last chord or rather the last chord but what should be the second last chord because the last chord
Is actually a whisper; that chord has a two added to it.
It's a B dominant seventh plus two
K: And that gives it (I: Dang) a bit more like a poppy
jazzy, and
almost like a stronger sense of dominance
K: [whispers] dominance
K: A stronger sense of dominance. (I: HEUGH!) And so the last whisper comes as even more
unfulfilling means you just want to listen to it again
K: So Isaac, I didn't want to bring this up during our reaction, but did you know all the instruments are MIDI? I: Yeah
I: No 'cause it was just like, it was so consistent (K: Ah ok) with the way it like, moved between
I: I was actually gonna mention real quick K: Yeah, go for it
I: The strings actually, the way they did it was like it's fine
because it was so much in the background and you're so focused on the vocalist
K: Yeah. Now the latest in MIDI technology, it is
HaSeul's
"Let Me In", way better than your average Sibelius MIDI sound. Like a lot of it is actually really, um,
passable almost, as long as it's not a bass instrument. A lot of the strings, you know
You can kind of neglect the fact that they're MIDI. So like, they're getting there. They're getting there.
One day they'll replace us entirely (UMU: Oh god) but they're getting there
J: Honestly I couldn't R: It almost was like the opposite (J: Yeah) to me
R: Which could be *because* she sings opera, and like to make the other styles
J: Like, she is using like the technique that she (R: She really just has to get rid of the technique)
J: Yeah or something R: It's also so weird because like the way these things were produced, I feel like it gets rid of the resonance
R: Like, the natural resonance J: Yeah, and it's hard to tell R: It's hard to tell
KATIE: I was expecting when you said that she wanted to bridge the gap between
pop and opera, I was expecting her to do that with like her singing
but it seemed to me more that she was trying to do that with the accompanying music, like there were definitely some like
interludes that were a lot more classical or that like just aren't like typical pop. So I guess I
was expecting her to do that a little bit more than the actual music
J: Yeah, definitely because I think that's the first thing I noticed was like, okay her singing is very straight tone
Like there's not a lot of vibrato and it seems to continue to follow in that current like that
kpop voice aesthetic where it's just like kind of not really a lot of depth to the sound, and it's just like it seems to be like
a singular line going like this versus like, you know vibrato and like even like those phrases being a little bit more
goopy, and connected a little bit more dramatic because yeah
again I felt like that a lot of the drama was driven from the background and the
choices of the use- Which I liked it was enjoyable, but it'd be cool if they used like real instruments
which is always the dream for us. I mean she sounded good
but as far as bridging the gap, I feel like we could use a bigger bridge
C: Hey this is interesting that this is the only one where like you hear the animal imagery in the music
but I think that might just be harder because bunnies and cats don't really translate easily into music
Whereas like the flute is always a bird. You know like, Peter and the Wolf - it's the bird
[sings] you know
That's interesting that they put the little trills in the flute
and it was so obvious and then she appears as a bird and it's like very strange
I don't understand the whole hunting her part? She like, hunting herself? Is this like- I don't know...
P: I thought that it captured the idea of pop-era pretty well
Because there are a lot of songs that are like this where they kind of use the strings as the main like musical voice
slash sound and it definitely gives you that quasi-classical feel
with the singer over top and whatnot. Because she didn't use like anything like vibrato or like, you know, those type of like very
classic opera techniques
It wasn't so much like I didn't get like an opera vibe. Maybe in the theatricality, that was kind of a big deal
I think she definitely nailed what she was going for though, for the most part C: Oh yeah
H: I have so many feelings and emotions
I wanted to like be able to say, "Oh they're doing this thing!" Because like sometimes in
The pop songs that I'm like "Oh, this is really good pop writing"
It's because there are songs that I know that are like, "Oh it's like this thing that I know." This is like nothing that I know
H: [whispers] It's, SO cool
H: Excellent. First of all, all the orchestral elements were like super well-balanced.
The percussion was really smart, I thought, actually
E: And they had like the big chimes in there too, didn't they?
H: Yeah, they had the one moment where there's just like a big
crash cymbal like right- and it interrupts it in like the most perfect way.
And there's another, the super huge zoom pan thing that they did as it matched up with the runs in from like high string to low string
Just like, gold. It was so freakin cool
I mean I want to watch, I need to watch it again. I need to, like it's just, I HAVE to watch it again, like I just like
'Cause this is just- I'm gonna find like 10 million more things the next time I watch it and then I'm gonna watch it again
I'm gonna find more and more and more and more. It's just so f- it's so cool.
U: Hello everyone I'm Umu and I'm the channel runner of ReacttotheK.
I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you're curious about the videos that we'll be reacting to in the future
I put a link to a doc with our release schedule in the description
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