Tag: foobar2000

Adding (and translating) lyrics for 1000s of songs…

On 2026-08-10

*from: Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash*

Before we get into it, today’s musical mood is wowdow.

That out of the way, in my latest MVP post, I talked about how transformative it can be to have lyrics to song readily available. Not just in songs not in your native language (or at least not in a language you know by heart) but also in music where you know what is being said.

That connection to how the tongue and lungs combines with string and drum, eh?

In that light, I have begun a rather LONG project where I will take a large number of songs in my library and get lyrics for them so that my phone which is ever digital device in the world besides a device I use to call people can add “karaoke machine” to its resume.

My tool of choice (and also my tool of choice to play music on my PC) is foobar2000 with the OpenLyrics component installed (and set up as a panel). Note: in my settings I set it to prioritize getting lyrics from LibLRC and NetEase with Genius being the main back-up. Others might get better results from others.

On the simpler side…

With that in place, around half of my lyric containing music — probably half the music in my collection doesn’t actually contain lyrics, at least not significant lyrics, I have a lot of ambient, drone, soundtrack, and experimental music — is simple as selecting a bunch of songs → right click → OpenLyrics → Search for Lyrics → wait. Then, going back and making sure it’s a) the right song and b) actually synced.

Working on Durry’s catalog, yesterday, I ended up having to sync maybe four of their songs. With Paloma Murphy, it was around half her album (and syncing somewhat fast moving Spanish did take a couple of goes).

And this is assuming I ever want the lyrics for the songs. There are a good number of albums where I would consider having lyrics to be relatively trivial. Stuff that I like to have in “Doug Core” type mega-playlists but where I might never again play the song in a way where I am actively wanting to glance at the lyrics on a screen. What percentage that is? I don’t know.

…However…

However, there are some albums and songs where it is not that easy. And how not-easy it is can be variable.

(least difficult)
Official English lyrics are available but need to be synced [this of course applies to songs written in English as well as those that need to be translated]
The lyrics have a couple of transliterator quirks (smile faces or emojis) that can be either left in or removed kind of quickly
No official lyrics, but the song is relatively easy to write out
Same as above, but translation is required or there is some confusion about some of the lyrics
Some of the lyrics make little sense if translated literally, so some back and forth is required to recrop the songs without breaking meaning
Some transliterators have pretty major quirks and will do things like censor certain words or use instrumental gaps to include unrelated text or “ASCII doodles” and finding all of those can take a lot of time
No official lyrics available or the lyrics that are available don’t seem to actually match the song leading to multiple versions at odds, sometimes requiring multiple downloads and listening until you figure out which one it is
(most difficult)
Pretty much no lyrics available which means having lyrics will require me typing them in manual one-by-one, then syncing, then everything else

I would say most tend to be around fourth or fifth bullet point.

But let’s take a look at an easier one. mM7th’s “Growth” is a good example that shows one of the other “micro-problems.” For getting quite a bit of Japanese (etc) music, you are going to need to know the non-International release name (i.e., you need to know what the song is called in its home country). “Growth” = 「踵」. Sometimes this is easy to find. Sometimes shockingly not where even local shops — those with an online presence, anyhow — will have international titles.

Once you have the lyrics, you have something that looks like this

JAPANESE LYRICS

[00:12.80]心ということを持って生まれた [00:20.03]事のほか冷たい春であった [00:26.55]教えておくれよ、パスカル [00:33.59]よくを覚えた私のごうを [00:40.14]さらばの声で夜を超えて [00:46.37]みょうね、私は言葉を話せぬのに [00:54.41]まだここで息をしてるの [01:00.88]みちくさよかぜのねよ目をあけて見て

And, in this song’s case, the band has provided an English translation:

ENGLISH LYRICS (Provided by Band)

I was born with something called a heart It was exceptionally cold spring Tell me, Pascal about the badness in me, now that I’ve learned to want things Past the night saying goodbye How funny, I can’t even speak with words yet I’m still breathing here little weeds, little sound of the wind, open your eyes and look at me

The first three lines match up but then the next four lines of Japanese are written out as five in English. In cases like this, it can be helpful to let Google Translate butcher it…

GOOGLE TRANSLATE

[00:12.80] I was born with a heart [00:20.03] It was an unusually cold spring [00:26.55] Tell me, Pascal [00:33.59] My voice that I have learned to love [00:40.14] I cross the night with a voice of farewell [00:46.37] It's strange, I can't speak [00:54.41] But I'm still breathing here [01:00.88] Take a detour, let the wind sleep, open your eyes and look

The first three are really close. Lines #5-#7 match up well. Lines #4 & #8 are at definite odds, with #3 being the most egregious.

Because of that, I never lose the original language version and I make sure it stays part of the file.

NOTE: Some videos have an English translation uploaded into a synced file. That can be realllly helpful.

Anyhow, in this case my step is to take Google’s rough translation and then use it as a skeleton to sync up the official lyrics:

COMBINED

[00:12.80]心ということを持って生まれた [00:12.80] I was born with something called a heart [00:20.03]事のほか冷たい春であった
[00:20.03] It was exceptionally cold spring
[00:26.55]教えておくれよ、パスカル
[00:26.55] Tell me, Pascal,[00:33.59]よくを覚えた私のごうを
[00:33.59] About the badness in me, now that I’ve learned to want things [00:40.14]さらばの声で夜を超えて [00:40.14] Past the night saying goodbye
[00:46.37]みょうね、私は言葉を話せぬのに
[00:46.37] How funny, I can’t even speak with words [00:54.41]まだここで息をしてるの
[00:54.41] Yet I’m still breathing here [01:00.88]みちくさよかぜのねよ目をあけて見て
[01:00.88] Little weeds, little sound of the wind, open your eyes and look at me

There is the twist that I haven’t 100% gone back to make sure that those ARE the right Japanese lyrics but, you know, pfffffffft for the moment. I’m just going to have to trust my fellow humans.

How Long, Space Pilgrims?

No clue. When I first started it was chunky going. It could take 2-3 hours to get through an album and feel good about the result (well, at least assuming some work was required, not the “freebies”). Yesterday I got through something like 10 albums over four or five hours.

I don’t want to spend four or five hours a day doing this, though, so I figure I’ll get to where I can crank out an entire album in about half an hour and then aim for maybe two of those, plus a couple “freebies” per day.

Still, easily a few months. Focusing on new (to me) songs and the old standards, though, will help.

A Day in the Life: #17673, Mostly Music Stuff and Sickness Stuff

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-17

In Health, Music

For the second time of this Autumn/Winter season, we are starting to fall into sickness [pun!]. Barbara was the first to go after a week or so of having sniffles. Kaz and I are getting hit about the same time.

The first usual harbinger that announces I am getting ill is that certain smell/taste that my sinuses get. I don’t know how else to describe it but to say it is something like stale turpentine plus a kind of organic earthiness. Like a cup of black tea left out for a couple of days in a rainy pine forest. Can you picture that smell?

The second harbinger is a bit grosser. Not lose your lunch gross but I’ll be kind and obfuscate it: q mgX o XPu5B 1OVX OC igVI 1O3V 1KgoX. bPusB “CgigV 1KgoX.” qX 1POK1 3H Bust OC VostOfUI ost u1 VosB XO fg. q’ig oHOUOmuxgt FgCOVg oFO3X uX XO HgOHUg F3X OXPgV1 Poig XOUt fg XPgI 5os’X 1fgUU uX. bPg Fg1X q 5os m3g11 u1 XPoX uX 5Posmg1 XPg 313oU 15gsX gsO3mP XPoX fI FOtI XoBg1 uX o1 1OfgOsg gU1g’1 1fgUU ost uX XVummgV1 o Vgi3U1uOs.

The third harbinger is when my bones feel like that weird disorientation that your brain gets when you feel deja vu. Know what I am talking about, like your brain is in a hole slightly too large for it but yet your brain fills it? That, only it also slightly hurts.

Usually fourth harbinger is just getting sick and by then we are pushing the definition of an harbinger pretty hard. If the fourth sign that God is showing up is He is standing next to you, you are perhaps past Revelations.

I’m somewhere between #2 and #3. The last sickness that passed through the house, my body decided to fight it off long enough for me to build up a huge viral load and then I got knocked around with bonus dice.

Here’s hoping my body just compromises this time. Just get it over with. Don’t be a hero, body.

Music Stuff (at least, part of it)

I was actually going to talk about some of the new music and stuff I was doing today but in typing that it up, I realized it was really its own post. I’ve cut-and-pasted into a different post and will work on that one tomorrow.

The tl;dr is basically that I am back to getting physical CDs where I can and have been playing on ripping those to both AAC and FLAC formats. FLAC goes to my file server for longer-term storage. AAC I then keep on the computer and upload to my media server. Also copy over to my phone. I miss OGGs but enough players whine about having to touch them. Feck it, maybe I’ll just switch back, anyhow.

While doing this, I ran into the ghost of an old problem I had practically forgotten all about. Back deep in my Linux days {which I miss}, mplayer was my boy for playing music. Then, as I started using more devices, I gravitated to VLC for most of it since it was more compatible with more things.

Only VLC still has issues with gapless playback despite years [decades?] of people requesting it. For a lot of things, such as shuffling your playlist, it won’t matter. For some albums where each track is supposed to blend the next track, it starts to annoy having that quarter second reset.

The long and short of it is that I decided to give foobar2000 a spin. My very short “have played it for around 2-3 hour” review is: it works. It’ll take longer before I know for sure if it is for me but I don’t really see why not.

I guess that exposes a lot more of my musical tastes than I was planning on but I doubt anything is a shock.

Quick Review of the Two Albums Shown

Two of the four “test cases” for the workflow of backing up things are shown in the active playlist: alt-J’s 2022 The Dream and Ado’s 2024 Shinzou. The other two albums were Paul Simon’s Graceland since that’s one I’ve ripped a couple of times (first into ogg, later back into mp3) so it was a good baseline and Babymetal’s Metal Galaxy (I got their Metal Forth, recently, and really liked it so am moving back through their catalog).

The two I have played the most are the two shown, a couple of times each. My quick reviews are…

Ado’s Shinzou

Absolutely phenomenal album. The concert video is also top notch and immense fun to watch, but has enough flashing lights to make it a bit rough for me to watch in a single setting. The double CD that came with it has the audio-only portion and there are so many moment’s to love. The screaming her voice to the brink and then bringing it back down.

It’s hard to explain how entertaining she makes a concert designed around not showing the star, but here’s a sample (just keep in mind that whole “flashing” thing I was talking about):

alt-J’s The Dream

I have enjoyed playing this album but something I noticed on the second round through is that there doesn’t feel like a single song that really reaches out and punches me. The album feels more like a whole, a sustained mood that satisfies the “alt-J vibe,” but one where the whole fits more into the background of the day. Looking into it, there does seem to be singles from the album but even listening to them out of context feels kind of off.

A good album to space out into the liminal.

Also, the limited edition comes with a cool facsimile copy of the handwritten notes leading up to it.