Welcome,
to another episode of TwoSet Violin!
So some of you have requested us to react to this uh,
TV show remake of the very, very famous
musical battle scene from...
- ...閃光少女(Our Shining Days). - Yeah.
Many of you probably have seen us react to the original.
But now, we have a remade version!
Yeah!
I guess because it was so popular,
and also they must have seen our videos and thought,
- "Damn...let's fix all the problems!" - "Let's fix all the problems, alright!"
Is this new version better or worse,
from a musician point of view?
That's what we're here to find out today.
I think this girl must have been watching
some sacrilegious people,
because compared to the original recording,
in the movie version...
Her tempo is much faster.
But she played a wrong note!
(both) OHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
It's not even the actress, I'm guessing this,
- they must've done a studio recording. - Yeah.
So whoever they hired...
- ...to record the soundtrack... - Didn't do it properly either.
And they didn't pick up on the...
...the bass sound, right?
She played...
That was a sacrilegious musician move.
But it's more like they didn't even check.
They're like, "Yeah, it sounds like a harp."
I mean, put some context, imagine if I play, like uh...
You guys all know Meditation, right?
Yeah.
They're like, "Oh yeah!"
We would often say it's okay to play a wrong note
in a live performance,
- because it's a live performance. - It happens!
But if you're going to make a studio recording,
you want something like a recording or video to be timeless,
people can watch it 10, 20 years from now.
You don't have to rerecord it,
- just get the sound engineer to splice in the right note. - Yeah, yeah... *snickers*
(both) Anyway.
- I do like the quicker phrasing though. It's nice...yeah. - Yes. It's nice.
Thought I'd throw in a compliment.
The school looks more modern.
I'm glad they have like...
Plants...
Plants, to make...you know, freshen up the air there.
Oh!
What just happened there?
Oh no...!
It was like a...
Whatever the drum was, plus uh...
...like a electric keyboard, and you see a bass,
and a pipa... *snickers*
Why did they get the instruments to play
- when it's the background music? - Exactly.
Yeah, 'cause the school principal's just gonna let you...
...flick a coin right in front of him,
and his esteemed visitors.
Hey, hey, hey, hey!
'Cause Brett played at the G20
- in front of 20 of the world leaders, right? - Oh yeah...yeah, yeah, yeah.
You should've just flipped the coin in front of their face.
*laughs*
- Have a...music battle! - Ohh...!
Bang!!!
- Dude, you'll get deported. - *chuckles*
Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!
No..........!
At least they got that string crossing,
kind of action, right though.
But they're just going...
Obviously, they picked a more, I guess,
relevant piece, Vivaldi Summer,
compared to the...Flight of the Bumblebee.
As a string player, it's also much easier to play,
and easy to fake,
- 'cause there's a lot of open strings, right? - Mm-hmm.
Rimsky-Korsakov has a lot...
... left-hand action. This one's actually just...
- It's open string, right? - Yeah.
But they should have taken advantage of that.
You see the violinist going...
Yeah...! *laughs*
She's there–she's moving her fingers when
- she doesn't actually need to...! - You don't need to move that much!
- Change the camera shot, you would've been good! - Yeah.
I was pretty impressed they actually got the...
- ...the note change, they did a little flick. - They did do that. But—
Even though it was on the wrong string, but hey.
It's just this main girl in the front.
Her left hand's doing some weird stuff.
- Like it's in second...second-and-a-half position. - It's like in an awkward second-and-a-half...
And she's doing like some weird wiggly thing.
- It looks like she's squeezing. - G—D string?
*laughs*
Here.
But the guy before got it, right?
It's not timed right,
but at least he's doing an upward scale.
Probably an actual musician,
- they just didn't cut it properly. - Yeah.
Can I just say, those cellos look really spray-painted.
One interesting thing I've noticed,
this will resemble more like if you were just there
listening to the performance,
but the original version,
when the camera zoomed into the Chinese instrument,
the arrangement will bring out that instrument's voice.
Flutes.
Chinese versions,
so now you can hear the contrast with
modern and Chinese flutes.
Even though it's not necessarily realistic,
- it's very interesting... - I think it's cool if someone's watching it
- doesn't know anything about it, - Yeah.
so they can know what they're looking
and what they're hearing. But this new one,
I think it's more like what you would hear
- in a performance. - Yeah.
How do you lose...?
How do you compare those two and how do you lose?
It's actually very hard to depict conflict in music.
When we wrote our concerto battle,
it was actually quite tricky.
The way we have to weave the music in and out...
Because it's got to make—
- The music has to make sense. - Yes.
The thing with this arrangement is,
there's no actual fighting for dominance.
Yeah, it's kind of just like putting two music together.
- It's just an ensemble. - It's just ensemble playing.
- No one's really trying to take over the other person. - Yeah.
- The violins weren't even sounding there! - I know!
*laughs*
- There's no violin sound there! - I know!
- It's like Chinese instruments only. - Yeah.
- And she's on the E string. - Dude, look at all the...
If anything, it should be on the G string.
Her hand is also very awkward.
- Maybe the third one in the back looks a little bit better. - Yeah, the third one.
- It's like they put the better musicians at the back. - Yeah.
- Interesting cut... - ...choice.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that cut.
- Because it's like, that's the same piece! - It is.
But they still manage to cut, you know...
F up the cut.
Wait!
Is that Winter?
Well that's why, they cut from Summer to Winter!
Which is different keys!
They thought like a random chromatic descending scale's—
I'm really sure the person who did this
didn't really have a...
- Yeah... - Any idea of harmonic progression...
- ...whatever you call it. - You need a pivot chord!
- Yeah. - Or if it was Schubert, at least a pivot note.
Not sure that random trill there would suffice—
Was it enough to go...
- Dude, even like jazz has some rules around this. - Yeah.
- Adding some counterpoint thing...yeah. - Embellishments.
- Interesting. - Nice.
Was that just another change?
I don't know if this is a famous Chinese tune or not,
- but harmonically it didn't work. - Didn't make sense, yeah.
In a musical battle, you have 2 aims.
One, to make it sound good,
- but other, to depict the conflict. - Yes.
Realistically, as realistically as possible.
So, the sounding good part, they f***ed [up].
- They messed it up... - Yeah... *snickers*
- Because, harmonically, it was not... - Yeah...
...quite a good transition.
The movie version was harmonically more...
- ...cohesive. - It made sense.
- It's more forgivable when you write the music, - Yeah.
you just kinda go, "Oh, okay, it could go there."
Even if you were to say like
the whole conflict version, alright,
this guy on the Chinese instrument side
comes with a different melody,
what, the classical side just shifts harmony
- to fit him as well? - Yeah, it's like...
And it doesn't even really fit.
It sounds like they haven't—
They didn't decide, which one to commit to.
- This is... - A bit all over the place.
But anyway.
*shriek* *laughs*
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, alright.
That was...
So many things that I would love to discuss.
- First of all... - Oh man!
there's an orchestra playing the corridor,
I am yelling out instructions from a practice room
20 meters down the hallway,
- Yeah, they're totally gonna hear you, right? - Let's just say,
everyone has some earpiece in.
" N O W ! ! ! "
Second of all,
from a plot perspective, he made it sound like
they're trying to find an opening.
- In the music, to cut it back in. - To cut, yeah.
Except musically, if you listen to what happened...
They just played the actual Vivaldi
- how it's meant to be. - Yeah.
They just went louder.
- They didn't really...yeah. - Go somewhere else.
Here's an excerpt from our concerto battle,
to kinda illustrate what we think would be
more realistically—
- musically, trying to dominate. - Take over.
I took over from his B flat...
He took over.
I took over just then, with the G...
- ...aggressively, to Lalo. And then... - Going to Lalo.
I'm waiting for my opportunity...
I find the opening...
- Wieniawski comes in. - Yes.
We're actually trying to find musical openings...
...to take over.
Whereas in this one,
- They literally just went like... - They're just...
"Oh! Take over!"
Yeah.
The music didn't fit the context
- out of what you're trying to do. - Yeah.
And I get it, it's a TV show, they don't really care.
There's so much missed opportunity!
- Musically...! Agh..! - Great art, and just fun.
Did they try and take over just then? Or...
But even if they were, that was like...
- It just sounds... - Random as hell.
Don't know if this is like a Chinese piece,
- that's meant to sound like that, - That's true.
But it sounds really dissonant.
The beauty of this challenge is...
- Trying to... - ...interweaving in and out.
And if you're just both gonna play different things
and be dissonant, you might as well just play
- 2 different pieces at the same time and be dissonant. - Yeah.
It's like they disregarded both again,
- They didn't commit to one or the other. - Yeah.
You know...
I'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt,
and be like,
that's what the Chinese piece could've sounded like.
Yeah, I want to say that as well.
- It's like the Schoenberg of Chinese music. *chuckle* - Yeah, that's what they do.
Done on purpose!
You know what this reminds me of, actually?
Artistically speaking?
Reminds me of Charles Ives.
He's a famous American composer,
known for this idea of
pitting 2 completely different music together,
and it's just like a...
...artistic effect.
- Sorry it's just a bit out of tune. - Out of tune, yeah, I know.
- Post-production... - It's like...
Change the tone just a little bit.
I think this is a perfect opportunity to say,
you guys may have won,
but at what cost?
- Yeah, what cost...? - *snickers*
At the cost of INTONATION!!!
- Oh man... - Ohhhhhhhh!!!!!!
Intonation, we care a lot about that guys.
It's clear that the two shows took
very different creative approaches.
The original one, musically speaking,
- It was much more harmonious. - Mm-hmm.
On the other side, this one,
I think they're trying to depict the conflict, musically,
through that...
-...dissonance. - Yeah, you can say.
I can see where the composer is coming from,
and it's just a fresh take, to be...
- ...respectful, because people put in - Yeah...!
- a lot of effort in this production. - *laughs* Yeah, that's true.
[In] Our humble opinion,
the first one was done more to our taste.
I like how the first one highlights
- the different instruments... - Yes, that makes more sense.
Anyway, guys, what do you guys think?
Thank you so much for watching.
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We'll see you guys next time.