*Recording is going pretty well*

I enjoyed reading various opinions from you like "No need to be that complicated, we can understand it and that's just OK!" or "I wonder what Japanese language will be in the future . . . " about my recent messages. Some people say "You're being so hardheaded! Are you always thinking about things like that, Hikki?", but . . . hm, honestly that's exactly what I'm always thinking about!! (lol)

To sing, means not only to express the meaning of each word but also to take words apart into pieces, sound by sound! I write the lyrics considering them as a series of sounds, while at the same time trying to write something that can convey my philosophy to you all, with some nice verses. You know what "rhyming" means, right? Besides that I rack my brains like doing a puzzle till I finish the lyrics, like "A word without a voiced sound would be nice for the phrase here" and "The first sound with quickly-ascending melody here, would sound better with the vowel o, so I've got to think up a word like that," "The first word's vowels go a/i/o . . . then a word with the same a/i/o order would be good for the second half part with the same melody," etc.!

I do research on this and that, like "The vowels '?' and '?' (trade secret(lol)) are easy to express sadness or pain when singing" and "When it comes to the consonants that can be sung energetically, the lines '?' and '?' (another trade secret) are the best choice," and so on. I've been doing this since my first album era. That's why I write the lyrics after I fix the melody.

Some of you might consider this a limitation, but actually it's a very good stimulation on creating something, that working-out process is needed. Here I think, not only imagination and emotion but scientific thinking is important as well for writing the lyrics/music and singing! Especially I suppose music and math could be closely connected with each other.

In the past several years in America, quite a few schools have stopped teaching music classes for cutting costs. And VH1, a music channel on TV, is now supporting the movement of "That's not good! Save the Music!". I heard there is data saying that the children learning to play musical instruments or studying music since a young age are also better at math and other subjects, and I do agree with it! Cause while writing lyrics I feel the same sense of brain-burning, which I felt when working out math equations thinking "Damn what the heck are these things, so difficult, but interesting! I'm gonna figure them out for sure!". You know, my dear Sting holds a title (or qualification?) of math teacher, and Inaba-san of B'z holds it too if I remember right.

I feel sorry for the kids who just ignore math saying like "We won't use it outside of school." The math part of their brain might work when they come on to their favorite person, when they try to write a love letter and when they aim to be a rock n' roller or singer/songwriter!

. . . Well, study-ish stories have lasted from "Huh? Y, Yankees?" thing . . . I suppose it's OK, just once in a while!

Lastly a quiz from me! Give it a try if you have some free time. - well then this leads to "You mean I'm an idle person cause I solved it!?" (lol) (maybe the idle person is me who's setting a quiz like this(lol) - No, no, that's not true! Now I'm able to connect to the internet in the studio, so I can write messages at break times~) If you're interested or insomniac, just try it, please!

To what song is the episode in the sentence above that the writer thought "The first word's vowels go a/i/o . . . then a word with the same a/i/o order would be good for the second half part with the same melody" related? (hint: the song is in the writer's first album, "FIRST LOVE")

Everyone who gives a correct answer will get . . . nothing really Mwahahaha!