Harusame Urame Sings Over Auto-Generated Harmonies Turned to Full Volume

AOGIRI HIGHSCHOOL — Harusame Urame, a singer with Aogiri Highschool, spent a singing stream on Friday testing whether she could hold a song while a mixer’s auto-generated harmonies played back as loud as her own voice. After several failed attempts, she got through a song cleanly in the last stretch of the hour.

Urame had recently started using a mixing tool called Stream Gear Mixer, which adds harmony a third above or below whatever she sings and lets her set the harmony’s volume separately. She said she had never tried the idea before going live and gave herself one hour to sing without being dragged along by the harmony. She opened with a demonstration at normal levels, then turned the harmonies up.

“For the one of me singing, there are ten harmonies.” — Harusame Urame, as the harmony volume stayed at maximum

The first attempts went badly. With harmonies layered above and below, she said her own voice became impossible to find, and the harder she sang to hear herself, the louder the harmonies answered. She switched to songs she knew well, got through one with only the upper harmony, and stumbled on others. With five harmony voices running at once, she said she could not even hear the backing track. Later she described it as singing against a crowd of ten harmonies. She said the harmonies were set to maximum both in her own ears and on the stream, and that she thought she could sing normally with them turned down.

Midway through, she took on a song she said she sings often and that is tied to something a former girlfriend once told her. She said the memory was why it kept going wrong. Chat laughed along throughout, with viewers noting that the harmonies sounded like they were taking over the song.

On the final try she picked a song with a rap section and a simple melody, saying that was the kind that had worked best, and got through it with the harmonies at full volume. She described the experience as singing in front of a choir of about 200. Urame said she was resting her throat ahead of her second solo live at Club Citta on Nov. 11, which has a streaming ticket, and that she would decide on the next day’s stream depending on her voice.