Made By You: Special Packer Feature 2

Our anniversary feature is right around the corner (end of this week!) but before that, Packer Woo showered us with a whole pile of new songs and Taikojiro charts so let's get to them all first! (he will still be in the anniversary special, don't worry!)


The first chart above is Nanashi no Senkyoushi, literally 'The Nameless Missionary'. It says 9* Oni, but this is not your average 9*; besides the high speed of the song allowing for some pretty brutal 1/16 cluster formations, this chart has a hard-to-read super slow part in the middle, followed by a sudden 'in your face' appearance of the notes in front of the marker, DDR style. Quite cool to see Taikojiro being utilized in such a manner!

The original song can be heard here.



Packer's MIZU series of songs now has almost double that of the official SORA series. Wait.....why is it so long? Six minutes long in fact...it's actually a medley of all the previous MIZU songs made to date! Even if you're familiar with previous MIZU songs, some of the notes here aren't the same, and the BPM changes and troll parts will really throw you off. It's a compilation not to be missed!

The medley can be listened here, and the cover art is designed by crystalsuicune and partly colored by LSK, another Taiko fan in Malaysia.



This new song, titled 'Flute of Wind' is earthy and it reminds me of a few other Pop'n Music songs which has the same theme and flute as the primary instrument. Closer to home, this is quite similar in feeling to SORA-II, except obviously more windy sounding. The chart is one of the easiest Packer has made, at 6* Oni, with consistent, intuitive patterns. Only its partner song, shown below, is easier, with 5* Oni.

The original song is here!



Coupled together with Flute of Wind is 'Tears of Earth', which is even slower and smoother than the first song. Fitting with the melancholic title is a calming piano melody, which showcases Packer's improving music composing skills. Don't let the slow scroll throw you off; there are 1/16 clusters in the chart!

Original song here.



The next song, Surrealism, has been floating around for quite some time but we only received it in Facebook last week. Wonder who ZAT is...? (Packer mentions that ZAT is his university buddy, who dabbles a lot on Jazz music.)

Anyway, unlike Packer's usual works, this song has a more bold, jazzy feel to it with lots of trumpets and percussions used (the 'surreal' part extrapolates to the cover art in the original song video, where the trumpets make their presence known even more). The chart isn't easy either, with a complex rhythm and the highlight being the tremendously long, seemingly random stream in the middle to keep sightreading as the main order of the day.



Lastly we have 652, another song which uses only numbers in its title. What do they mean this time? Remember 5, where all the notes were made up of 5 note clusters? In 652 the obviousness doesn't show at first, but after the relatively easy beginning portion, you can see the creative play on rhythm; consecutive clusters made up of 6 notes, then 5, then 2, then again, over and over, until the end of the song. It's not an easy beat to follow and requires some practice. Too bad it doesn't have 652 notes as the total!

Original song is here.

Don't forget our anniversary feature this weekend! Each of you may have one chart (I mentioned two last time but the response was good so I might not have enough space to feature them all!).