Uruha NIL Bandscore Translations Part 1

It's No Fret Friday again and today I'm posting translations of a few comments from my favorite guitarist. As a student in intermediate Japanese, translating from the NIL band score took way more time and patience than I expected. The process is dreadful, especially when it comes to looking up unknown kanji, but by god it's worth it.

To be honest, I don't really care for reading interviews where the artist tells you his favorite animal or something ridiculous like his shoe size. In most interviews, the questions are silly and frankly they have zero substance. That's what I love about the commentary in band scores, they're nothing but that. The comments are a chance for the artist to seriously explain their techniques and let you know exactly what it is they do aside from looking pretty.

These people are musicians dammit, not your best friend!

At any rate, here's what Uruha has to say about some of the songs from NIL. Enjoy!


Nausea and Shudder: The main hook is basic with the exception of the scratching (muted strings?) parts which gives playing it a lengthier feel. The intro comes in with an 8 beat section, but I had to be careful of the different variations in speed. At any rate, the delay (in the chorus) is sweet, like a bird flying. *It leaves an entangled feeling in my heart.

*感じを心がけておこうThis sentence, I’m not so sure if he means himself or maybe what he wants for the listener.

Bathroom: In this song I used a 7 string guitar in B tuning. As for having a seventh string, dealing with holding it down turned out to be okay. I’m assuming that’s the first time he played a 7-string and had doubts about how it played. For the A melody I adjusted the front pickup halfway to give the song a fuller sound. I believe he literally lowered his pickup to achieve the heavy tone in the song.

Maggots: In this song please play the parts with sharps as if they weren’t there, keeping your right hand tightly muting the strings. Because the B melody is fairly tricky to achieve with the whammy, I think whether or not it gives rise to that scale is up to the player. This last sentence was a little tough but I think that’s the gist of it. He uses the word adoribu, which translates to adlib but after some research it looks like it also refers to a type of scale or a certain way of playing guitar.

Namaatatakai ame tozaratsuita jounetsu:I decided that starting out with a fast-paced shuffle was the first thing I wanted in this song. I vigorously pour my soul into keeping the rhythm while I play the main hook (laughs). Also, playing the solo feels like the start of a match. With the exception of the solo, I used only one pickup to record, never the rear. This was just my preference as I saw to it.