Dojin music

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Dojin music (同人音楽), also called otokei dojin (音系同人) in Japan, is a sub-category of dojin activity. Dojins are basically non-official self-published Japanese works which can be based on official products or completely original creations. Such products are sold online on specialized sites, on the author's own sites and in conventions such as the very popular Comic Markets.

1 Genres
2 Organization
3 Famous dojin music artists
4 Dojin lyrics
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Genres

Dojin music isn't a musical genre in itself but is indicative of a particular publishing way, like the term "indie" would be.

Dojin music consists very often of video game music fan arrangements. Many original music is also created, be it music for dojin games or simply mainstream music such as pop, rock or techno.

By nature, dojin music is most often reduced to synthetic digital productions which allow for self-production at low costs, as opposed to studio mastering live instruments require. As much as full live instrumentations are rare though, it is pretty common to have one live instrument such as a guitar backed up by synthetic orchestrations.

[edit] Organization

Dojin music artists can be solo or band projects. It is very common for members of different groups to collaborate on an album. Some projects, such as Woodsoft, are collaborations of several artists contributing to a given theme for each of their album releases.

Each members of a group usually have their individual site on which they release their personal works free to download and possibly give updates about their involvement in upcoming albums. Some artists actually never release albums and keep their artistic activity to this free-for-all form. The most productive groups usually release 2 albums a year which are released in summer and winter editions of the Comic Markets conventions and sold for an average of 1000 yens for full length ones. The most involved and popular artists are usually featured on their own group albums but also make guest appearance on other groups' CDs.

The albums themselves benefit of various treatment depending on groups, from plain CD-R to fully printed packaging including the CD, with quality often similar to official products.

Aside from the Comic Market, events held in Japan for dojin music include the biannual "M3" and the "Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai" (limited to Touhou Project related music).

[edit] Famous dojin music artists

Original Music

Original Dojin Game Music

ZUN of Team Shanghai Alice, creator of the Touhou Project, is also very famous for the music he composes himself for his games. It is interesting to note that many dojin music releases by other groups have been arrangements of his songs since ~ 2003.

Video Game Music Arranged Dojin Music

S.S.H. aka Saitama Saisyu Heiki has been arranging popular video game music in a heavy synth rock style for a long time. After offering his remixes on his site and releasing a full length game arrangement album, he started working on game soundtracks for official companies. He made the music for the hentai game Sixty Nine 2 and for the adventure game Lost Child. Also worked on the official Atelier Iris Eternal Mana arrange album along with Toshinori Hiramatsu, another dojin music artist also known as Sword of Justice.
Mintjam is a group of 4 person (Setzer, a2c, Kyo and Terra) who formed in 2003 and quickly became very popular. They play a genre of refreshing pop/rock benefitting of a very professional mastering work and released both game music arrangements and original compositions albums. They also started to work for official game companies recently, composing the soundtracks to the hentai games Ryouki and Ryouki 2.

[edit] Dojin lyrics

Sometimes, people may rewrite the lyrics of an exisiting anime song to create a dojin song, or insert lyrics into an originally instrumental anime track. This kind of dojin songs is called "doujin lyrics" (同人詞). Many doujin lyrics are written in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.