In TM’s Atelier – Episode 2: Geometry on Five Lines
TM, 弱く、目覚める幾何 (Mildly – Awakening Geometry), 2025, digital visual composition
(You can find another TM work, “刻まれた史書 (Chronique Gravée / Engraved Chronicle),” here.)
From Digital, from Ireland, and from Okinawa
The media seem to focus on the notion of “digital,”
but I suspect that what people imagine when they hear “digital”
is often very far from our reality.
When we say “we make music digitally without instruments,”
many may imagine synthetic timbres, mechanical phrases.
But that’s not quite what we mean.
That’s only one option among many—
we intend to treat it more broadly, more fluidly.
For example, I have a deep love for folk music, and it influences me heavily:
Bali (like Bali Bach ),
East Africa (Equatorial Deliverance),
Persia (Middle Of Insouciance),
Ireland, Okinawa, Bulgaria,
Ukraine (North At Defining Moments).
Ireland and Okinawa, especially —
places I have visited many times, places that hold a special place in me.
I don’t always use them in surface-level musical quotations,
but their spirit is woven in.
My influences span eras:
Modern French music has deeply touched me,
but also old Japan, Russia, Austria, and Gregorian chant.
TI (my collaborator) is shaped by other influences too,
and various elements intertwine.
Tokyo as a Culinary Crucible
In contemporary Japan, especially in Tokyo where I was born and raised,
there are restaurants for every cuisine.
One might think Japanese food is central and other cuisines peripheral,
but many perhaps feel even Japanese food is just one option among many.
Japanese cuisine itself is so diverse; there is no single centre.
Where Japanese food begins or ends — it’s hard to delineate.
My musical sensibility might be close to that.
Diversity is the environment where I feel most at ease.
In that sense, the homogeneity of Japanese society is deeply uncomfortable for me.
So when I speak of “digital music,”
it is closer to saying “a capacity to handle vast possibilities and freely combine them.”
Viewing the Staff Under a Microscope,
Tweezing the Notes
In composing, I cherish the analog nature of the musical staff.
Although the app allows direct export of MIDI data,
the work I do is analog, perhaps geometric in spirit.
Also, the richness of analog timbres may be one characteristic of FMT.
For example, Le Cube Dans Mon Rêve centres around piano, EP, acoustic guitar, marimba, strings…
From the start I’ve often intended electronic sounds to be secondary.
TI and I rarely use cut‑up or loops.
Cube 3 had a collage theme, but I did that collage within the notation.
Cube 4 explored variable time, but I manipulated time also in the score itself.
I love working as though under a microscope, moving elements with tweezers…
as in In The Mirror, where everything is symmetrical.
TI perhaps does this more than me.
Perhaps this connects to the artisan culture in Japan,
and I feel strong resonance with the precise craftsmanship of Switzerland, Germany, France.
But I am clumsy, so actual tweezing is not my forte.
If asked to do physical tweezing, I might struggle… (laughs)
Analog handled in digital.
Analog methods in a digital world.
The coexistence of analogs, which only digital can enable.
I expect only true interlocutors will follow this tangled discourse.
Oh — by the way, the image at the top of this article
is a piece created specifically for this text.
I don’t know if I can do this every time… but I hope I can. (laughs)
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