Jamie: My Silly Song got a Flavor Foley Fixup! Wow!
Rice: I’m interjecting here to once again iterate there are no fix-ups here because When Spring Comes is a perfect song and my most favoritest JamieP song before we met and unable to be improved on
Jamie: This was originally part of a double single with my song People Posture Play Pretend, and was my attempt to write a true Vocaloid-ass Vocaloid song long before I was considered a Vocaloid Producer. It's also a song I've revisited and reprised multiple times in my solo work, and I was really uncertain about offering it up to the Foleys at all because I wasn't sure what else to even do with it, but they ultimately made something incredibly delightful.
Rice: Jamie can you write about how we made the reprise version of this song about queer love so my eloquently written story about my gay violin teacher later in this commentary will hit harder
Jamie: Oh yeah i can do that hold on. Clears throat. Ahem In the original song, any sort of queerness was mostly just implied from me being a Transgender Lesbian myself - However, when we decided to reprise it, Vane and Rice proposed making it even more explicitly queer by transing some voicebanks' genders, and I really, really love how it came out!! Personally, I think Miss Kevin Synthv looks lovely in a lil sundress and some yeehaw lil boots
Rice: Que reprised their role as the artist again for this song and I'm so glad. I'm so happy. I love Que's art so much. They drew Kevin so lovely. Speaking of Kevin.
The Kevin design used in this song is known as “Mr. Kevin SynthV”. He looks like this.
I have written an entire crash course on his history, but it got really long, so I'm putting it in another page. Please read it and then I will tell you why we used this design for this song.
Personally I think Mr. Kevin SynthV is the purest expression of Vocaloid culture. A shared community joke with real love behind it that helps elevate and unite artists, especially amateur ones. That’s the main reason I really pushed to use the Mr. Kevin SynthV design over the VIMALION design when we decided to use Kevin for “When Spring Comes”.... . There was a second reason, though.
Mr. Kevin SynthV wears a green Zelda t-shirt and cargo shorts, which in American culture is understood to be an outfit pretty much only geek/nerd/loner middle schoolers, usually boys, think is cool.
It just so happens that… not all, but a fair number of transgender women used to be those geek/nerd/loner middle schoolers. It’s kind of an inside trans girl joke. Or so I’m told. I’m mostly just here cuz I'm the best at explaining things. The other 2 can speak on it though. Hi trans girls (broadly speaking)
Jamie: hi im trans girls
Vane: i’m a bit more “genderfuck” trans these days but my gender is generally on the trans fem side on the spectrum. sometimes im kind of “worlds first trans-fem-trans-masc” with it. gender’s my bitch. anyways i was a big fucking nintendo nerd as a kid. my favorite franchise was, and you’ll never believe it, legend of zelda. Actually while I have the floor does anyone else remember spirit tracks. That game was one of my favorites and i’ve played the whole game at least 10 times over just because i loved it so much. I need other people to love it with me. my sisters please save me
Jamie: spirit tracks was fucking goated dude its crazy how good of a character zelda can be when they actually bother making her one Anyways. I'm certifiably transgender. I was also absolutely that loner dork in middle/high school who wore ugly graphic tees and cargo shorts and hoodies constantly; It's a very easy genre of dress to fall into when you really don't want to think about your physical body or appearance at all, and a really high number of trans people in general can relate to that. The green Zelda shirt and cargo shorts combo is the platonic ideal of pre-transition Rotting as an outfit.
the thing they don't tell you though? well i've been medically transitioning for a very long time now and my wardrobe has looped back around and i wear a lot of graphic tees and shorts again. its just now the hoodies are big flannels and the graphic tees are band shirts and the shorts are from torrid or whatever. the range of possibilities available to you is so vast. i need to start dressing better again everyone makes fun of me and tells me i need to go to ross dress for less
Rice: now that I think about it I did also wear a lot of graphic tees in middle school. Anyways. Back to me. I consider Mr. Kevin SynthV to be a trans girl icon for this reason, but especially for this semi-viral tweet, which actually genuinely features Mr Kevin SynthV in it like this isn’t a doctored screenshot the tweet actually has Mr. Kevin SynthV in it
It’s also just so funny, it is so funny that of all people, Mr. Kevin SynthV is now attached to this beautiful shared trans girl sentiment, like it’s so funny. And you know how we are about bits at FLAVOR FOLEY.
So that’s why the “When Spring Comes” ROUNDTABLE REPRISE features Miss Mr. Kevin SynthV. Thanks for attending my lecture.
By the way this song also features transmasc Solaria. I really like when country music does the thing where they layer feminine and masculine vocals over each other in the choruses, so complimenting Miss Mr. Kevin SynthV is on the lower octaves Transmasc Solaria (Solario?????). Here he is in the art everyone say hi Transmasc Solaria
Ever since that Lower One’s Eyes Solaria cover and everyone was like “wow Solaria sounds so good as a masc voicebank!” when. like. she was not even supposed to be masc in that cover she was just supposed to be a woman singing in the lower register, like it was only like 10% of her masc power. I’ve been waiting for the unleashing of the ultimate Masc Solaria (Solario). And he’s finally here and real and he sounds so good
Jamie: transmasc solaria i would do literally anything for you. i love you. here's my number its 2
Vane: I worked on the arrangement on this track as well as played the clarinet! You probably wouldn’t figure this from my noise and glitch filled discography, but I love country/folk music. One of my favorite songs ever is “Of Tongues and Teeth” by The Crane Wives, but I’ve never really worked in the genre before. It was so fun to reinterpet’s Jamie’s original arrangement. My favorite part was writing the banjo part
I’ve played the clarinet since I was a kid, but didn’t receive formal lessons until my undergrad where I studied classical clarinet along with composition. And while I did get pretty good at it (I remember one of the last works I learned was Muczynski’s “Time Pieces” which is kind of crazy challenging LOL), I was so extremely burnt out, exhausted, and frustrated by the program that by the time I graduated I never wanted to touch my clarinet again. But for FLAVOR FOLEY, I will do anything.
The Foleys (members of FLAVOR FOLEY) brought up the idea of doing a country arrangement of this song with some live tracks, and that gave me the inspiration to pick up clarinet again after two and half years. And I am really glad I ended up deciding to do this. After spending so long only studying classical work in uni, it felt so freeing to come back to it for something fun and lighthearted with my friends. I think my embouchure is kind of ass now LOL. Also I wanted to share that I wrote really fun intricate violin and clarinet duet parts but I got too lazy (exhausted) to record the difficult parts. But rice recorded his so now he gets some solos. I’m sure he’s very happy about this fact specifically. He loves me.
Rice: It was really awesome of Vane to write really difficult solo parts for us to do together. It was awesome that I practiced the really difficult solo parts for hours and then I’m the only one that played the really difficult solo parts they wrote. Because they didn’t play the really difficult solo parts they wrote. Which they told me after I'd already practiced and recorded the difficult solo parts they wrote.
Vane: (I’m sorry for my Hubris.)
Rice: I played the violin (fiddle?) on this track! I took lessons for about 8 years through my childhood, and yet I never got very good at it. This may be my fault for never practicing, but it could also be the fault of my violin teacher, who was a very kind woman and one of my favorite people ever. I have a distinct memory of being about 7 years old, walking down her driveway hand-in-hand with my dad, who suddenly said: “I think Miss Jones is a lesbian”. I had never heard that word before, but I could tell from his tone of voice that he meant to insult her, and so I responded defiantly: “No, she isn’t!”
Anyways, my lesbian violin teacher was the first queer adult I had ever met. I started getting some idea of my identity during the last 2 years I learned violin from her, and our lessons would often be spent simply talking through my feelings and her experiences. If only she had spent less time being the sole solace for a queer youth who felt truly alone and unsupported in the world, and focused more on teaching me double stops, maybe my bow technique wouldn’t be so dogshit.
Vane: My clarinet teacher in undergrad was gay too but he generally pissed me off. Have you fucking met professional clarinetists.
Rice: Also my violin teacher (Miss Jones is not her real name) didn’t die or anything btw I’m realizing I wrote about her in kind of an ominous past tense. She still teaches violin, she just moved away. We’re actually still in contact so I’m probably gonna send her a copy of the album. My piano teacher did die though
Jamie: I don't think any of my music teachers were gay but i also wouldn't be very surprised. I'm also pretty sure they're all still alive?
I didn't play anything on this live myself, because I'm a scrub and I couldn't get a good recording of my melodica. I'm washed as hell. Can you believe they call me a music producer
Rice: This marks the end of the FLAVOR FOLEY FILES. I should write something beautiful and introspective here so we don’t end on Jamie being a scrub