Concerto No. 1

Notes on Concerto No. 1, Op. 56

First Movement: Watercourse
Second Movement: Sweet Melancholia
Third Movement: Artefact

        (For details on the alternative versions of "Third Movement: Artefact"
         called "Landfill" and "Landfill Changes", please refer to the separate notes.)

The FURICO Music Team · Concerto No. 1, Op. 56

(Notation videos are pasted below seperately.)

(TM writes:)

Concerto No. 1, Op. 56:
This is FMT's second series of orchestral works released in September 2021.

The first one is a pair of tracks titled "Hyper Chase For The Ruins" and "Cyber-Excavating The Ruins", which we call The Ruin Series. When starting to compose them in 2019, I opened a blank notation of the orchestral parts at first, rather than wrote the main motifs and then spread them into that. That is what we could do because FMT made music "unphysically". (Both of the tracks are included in our "Unphysical" album.)

As a matter of fact, the second orchestral series was supposed to be different, a symphony with the theme of The Great War (World War I), but we decided to release it later, which made this concerto the second(-released) orchestral series. The symphony was already given the opus number of 55.

After composing The Ruin Series and the symphony, I wanted to make another to supplement something more sentimental and emotional in some untraditional way. In orchestra music I especially love Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky. They are all Russians for a particular reason; I love ballet. Ballet was greatly developed by such Russian composers and theatre artists between the late 19th century and the early 20th.

Nonetheless, I did not aim for music specifically for ballet. For instance, Tchaikovsky's Symphonies One to Four have been used for ballet even though he did not seem to have intentions of that. Similarly, if this Concerto was used for ballet it should be huge excitement to me, but I know it's difficult. Anyway, I have not seen ballet based on concertos, especially electronic concertos.

(Within the concerto category my favourites are Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky, by the way.)

You might not feel it is a concerto. You are right. Concerto is usually assumed to have some solo part with orchestral accompaniment. FMT have rarely made clearly "main" phrases so far. That contradicts the nature of concerto. Yes, that is my challenge or experiment this time. For more details please see the notes on each Movement below.

The concerto as a whole is, thus, an alternative concerto - concerto with various instruments (including the features of electronic music) playing little obvious solos.

In addition, as I have written some times so far here in the Notes, I do not prefer being genre-oriented, or secluded within a particular narrow style of music. I understand it's somewhat natural because musicians in general have particular preferences as well as fixed roles within a group, especially of playing specific instruments. I love FMT's unphysicality as I can make pieces for an orchestra, a funk band or purely an electronic unit. It's NOT same, though, with live performances, of course, and we do not intend to make it resemble live performances.

In case you do not know "Op." in the title, it is the abbreviation of "opus" numbers, Western classical music often uses them, meaning simply the number of the music piece. "Op. 56" shows it's the 56th work of ours. FMT count the opus numbers for all our tracks, at which you can take a look in our discography.

This is our third series in what I call "2021-esque".

I am calling "2021-esque" the music that FMT have been working on since the middle of the year 2021, rather than music played in the world in general in the year. 

FMT's first 2021-esque series is the pair of "Here I Am" and "The Beginnings", while the second one is "Symphony No. 1" to be released later. The fourth is "Newfangled Hotel Ambience" Series. What all of these have in common is the concept of creating particular atmosphere by using FMT's musical features such as combinations of monophonic phrases and dyads, counter-points, atonality, poly-rhythms, poly-structures, patternlessness and so forth.

That is the case for Concerto No. 1 as well. But the atmosphere these tracks are designed to create is, obviously, completely different from the other series including Symphony No. 1, similarly orchestral works.

Creating atmosphere with FMT's features is quite challenging. Very often, quirky music creates quirky (and also often frightening) atmosphere; that is a piece of cake. 

Also, recently I am feeling what we are doing is a sort of anti-21st-century-esque (so far) music, which is the evolution of acoustics to me. That is a part of music, of course, but the music itself has become very ordinary like given up its evolution. That should be the reason why I have liked to write acoustic-instruments-centred music especially in the year 2021.

Notes on First Movement: Watercourse

TRACK DATA

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 101
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT,(All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: July 13 2021 -  Sep 15 2021

Composition

(TI writes:)

This piece was influenced by a discussion with "Western Boket" about Tchaikovsky. We have been exchanging messages from time to time, and when he published a piece influenced by Tchaikovsky, we had a conversation about the relationship between Russian culture and Japanese culture, and Tchaikovsky.

The basic structure of the Movement was created by TM. In terms of composition, I rearranged his original composition to fit the orchestral instruments in their respective registers, and wrote some counter-melodies.

However, for stringed instruments such as the lute, I had to manually shift the timing in Studio One because the timing of the MuseScore data was too just right and unnatural. I also made other minor adjustments to the timing without affecting the notes.



(TM adds:)

"1st Movement" begins with a "fagot concerto"-like form, but in fact there are two accompanying lutes, one of which plays a 8-bar pattern of dyads and the other a 6-bar pattern. (I call it a "poly structure".) Dyads are two notes chords which FMT very frequently exploit; they are very interesting because they do not imply particular tonalities and do not sound dissonant when some of them are combined. (For more details of our experiment with dyads please see the notes on the track called "Testing Combinations And Flows Of Dyads". Although I like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Fagot Concerto very much, the structures are very very different.

Next, strings and woodwind instruments play all dyads, where the combinations of omit tonal third notes and the suspended seconds, fourths and fifths frequently appear. The time signature quietly shifts to 17/16, which is made obvious when the lute plays 16th notes 17 times a bar. That is an inkling that further rhythmic changes will occur later.

When the fagots and oboes accompany the emotional strings, the time signatures of 9/8 and 4/4 alternate repeatedly. The clavinet joins them; from there it becomes like a clavinet concerto. It could be something like the orchestra plays on the clavinet base, rather. That sort of concerto is new and interesting, isn't it?

After the scene changes with the clavinet and percussion, the poly-structure of dyads comes back. The oboe plays something similar to what the fagot plays at the beginning, and the beat gets stronger.

The dramatic shifts within this Movement reminds me of watercourses. I love watercourses and thus such places as Venezia and Amsterdam. There are many here in Japan as well. Especially rivers in the country see rapid shifts of the scenery around. I might have an assumption like that. In this sense this track is different, or more Japanese, from FMT's other tracks taking up watercourses such as Attraversando La Rotta Del Canale and even King Of Tokyo.

Tone Creation

(TI continues:)

Since the concept of this project was an orchestra, most of the tones were created by playing live instrument samples with the playback sampler included with Studio One. The tone creation itself is not that elaborate.

However, it took me a long time to adjust the wow of the clavinet in the middle. If the wow is applied too much, the attack disappears and the funkiness is lost, but if it is applied too little, the wow-like sound is naturally lost. I adjusted the gain of the pedal wow plug-in for guitar in Studio One, rather than using the auto-filter, to get a level that was just barely not too much.

For the drums, I used the same Sound Font that I use in MuseScore as in the other Movements in this project, and exported the sound from MuseScore as a WAV. For the funky part in the second half of the Movement, I used an industrial metal percussion attack over the brass part to emphasize the attack and the sound pressure during the attack.

Mixing

It was not just the time lag before the presentation, but the mixing took a long time. In the first half of the orchestral-like part, I made detailed volume adjustments. However, the volume was not adjusted by MIDI velocity or programmed fader up/down, but by directly increasing/decreasing the WAV of each track.

The reason for this is that Studio One's live instrument samples are not layered, so adjusting the velocity is just a matter of increasing or decreasing the volume, and the auto-fade function increases the load on the CPU, and it is cumbersome to rewrite when the overall balance is changed.

As for the balance, TM already had a clear image of the sound at the time of composition, so he requested detailed adjustments. In particular, the saxophone in the middle part of the Movement is a solo phrase, but I wanted it to sound like it was playing in the background, so I had to rebalance it many times.

What I was particular about was the rise of each tone in the second half and the transition between scenes. Since the first half was an orchestral image, I wanted to use reverb and delay to create a blurred atmosphere at the beginning of each tone, but for the second half, I wanted a sound with a solid beginning.

If we were simply switching scenes, we could have simply stitched together two mix files mixed with each sound image, but it was very difficult because the image was not simply switching scenes, but rather layering an even narrower sound image on top of the atmosphere of the previous part.

Of course, if you mix a deep reverb sound image with a short reverb sound image, only the deep reverb will remain in your ears.

In order to produce each sound image, it is important to produce the original tone of the short reverb well. To do this, I felt it was necessary to express the sound pressure and attack of the tone itself well.

However, since various effects and equalization are applied to each tone, the rise of the sound is inevitably reduced. How to compensate for this was a point of concern.
In the beginning, not only in this track, but also in the past, I was concerned about the gradual weakening of the attack of the sound as the effects were applied to the mix.

This time, I tried the free plug-in Transient Shaper, which emphasized the attack, but didn't have the desired effect (the sound simply peaked out). At that time, I happened to notice that when I played back the multitrack data with no effects, it sounded solid with a good rise.

But of course, since it was non-effect, the sound was very primitive. However, the attack sounded ideal, so I exported two mixes, one with no effects, and the other with effects, and re-mixed them in separate files.

To make the contrast between the scenes clearer, I ended up using an exaggerated hall-like reverb on the drums for the first half of the Movement, a narrow room reverb for the funkier parts, and an early reflection reverb on the snare and toms.

Notes on Second Movement: Sweet Melancholia

TRACK DATA

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 24
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT,(All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: July 11 2021 - Sep 16 2021

Composition

Unlike 1st and 3rd Movements, this one was mostly written by me (TI). In the past six months, people who have been close to me for a long time have passed away one after another, stores and places I used to go to, including the okonomiyaki restaurant I used to go to since I was a kid, have disappeared, and my roots and place of residence are gradually disappearing.

However, it is a mixed feeling of resignation, "I don't like it, but there is nothing I can do about it," and a feeling of ease and comfort as my spirit becomes lighter and lighter by the disappearance. This is what led to the title.

 
"I was playing in the summer when I had plenty of time to play without worrying about the time, and then I was playing in the same way, and then suddenly it was dark, and the only people there were my friends and me. That's the kind of feeling I get when I realize it's suddenly fall. This is the kind of music and harmony that I write when I am in such a state of mind. In terms of music, there is Ode In E Minor. I don't use explicit rhythms in these tracks.

I started writing this harmony based on the chord progression of the refrain (Em-Dm-C#m7-5-CM7-G, 5 bars) of "MAPS", a song by Kenji Omura. However, due to various recombinations, the tonality completely disappears and it becomes something completely different. The phrasing is also based on his Eric Clapton-like solo, but there are some phrases like that in places.

Also, the characteristic string harmonies of "Journey With Dragons," "Amazon," "Final Frontier," and other songs from "Underground Resistance" are influenced by the band's own style. (I didn't notice it when I was writing it.)

However, the harmonies are more elaborate and less formulaic than in any of these tracks. As I was writing, an idea came to me: what if I added an acid house rhythm and bass to this? I'm hoping that the oscillating tempo will create a groove that I've never heard before. That's what I was hoping for.

Then TM added the tempo information. I was very grateful for this. I'm going to shake up the tempo in the end, but if it's the tempo I imagined, I'll be able to see the artifice. It's better to have someone else do it for me so that I can feel the shaking.

He also added the phrases Yang Qin and Wind Chimes. This also makes for a very effective accent. I used a plug-in called Movement by Output to make the delay shake even more and create a floating sound.


(TM adds:)

The 2nd Movement is what TI almost all composed first of all the three movements. Coincidentally, I was making the 1st Movement and found the two pieces suitable for a suite, especially as an alternative concerto. Then I composed the 3rd Movement like a conclusion.

Tone Creation and Mixing

(TI continues:)

For the sound, I used a sample of a raw string sound from the playback sampler that comes with Studio One.  For some of the sounds, I used a Sweep sound created by Oscillator Sync with the included Mai-Tai soft synth. The sound was set up so that one of the two OSCs would play a descending sound and the other would play at the same pitch.

I controlled the gating of the strings and wrote a separate sequence. This technique is also used in Bali-Bach, where the sound becomes more abstract, without the feeling of simply simulating a live instrument. For the octave violin, I used the articulation function of the violin samples that came with the instrument.

For this track, there are only 24 tracks, which is not a lot for us, and the mix is simple. The strings were processed with EQ and iZotpe's Vynal, and reverb and delay were added. As mentioned above, some of the reverbs and delays are done with Movement, a free app from Output.

Notes on 3rd Movement: Artefact

TRACK DATA

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 100
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT,(All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: July 18 2021 -  Sep 16 2021

Composition

This track was basically composed by TM, and I added two parts of melody, and rearranged the phrases created by TM to fit the range of the orchestral instruments, so that it is a combination of single melody for each instrument.

(TM adds:) 

The 3rd Movement is a "Strings Concerto" in me. Although, again, there are few obvious solo parts, small and large groups play the strings in contrast. In this movement even more intertwined short-notes dyads are the "main" part, whereas it shows it's a little bit like a French Horn Concerto. The time signatures frequently use 17/16 and 9/8 again. And it has even more features of electronic music.

This composition was so quick because I was so much inspired by 1st and 2nd Movements. My intention here was to eliminate melodies by making combinations of monophonic phrases. But the phrases are parts of the rhythms so that the whole track has no central phrases. In contrast with the previous Movements this was made less orchestral (though still orchestral), where my aim was that it sounded like "it does not really matter whether it's orchestra or not."

If you eliminate the centre musically where will the definition of concerto go? In this Movement, for example, a couple of violins TI wrote sound like the "solo" parts to some extent but they are not central, which is how "Strings Concerto" is, as I have written earlier in this page. The synchronised phrase that appear at the beginning sounds like a collective section but it is later treated as the "solo" parts.

I subtitled it "Artefact" as what appears as a result -- or a product -- of movement (in 1st Movement) and mental process (in 2nd Movement), which is just like how I composed this.

Tone Creation

(TI continues:)

As with the other tracks in this suite, most of the sounds are made from live instrument samples played with the playback sampler included with Studio One. The sound creation itself is not that elaborate.

However, for this Movement, in addition to the drums, the string parts were played with MuseScore and output in WAV format.

To create a sense of depth, I exported the strings directly from MuseScore in WAV format, and then used Studio One's playback sampler to play the same phrase and output it through iZotope's Vynal to create an old-fashioned atmosphere. 

I also mixed the drum sounds with the sample drum machine on the S1, since the sound pressure was not enough with the MuseScore alone.

Mixing

The mix is orchestral in style, but the bass part is dub-like in tone and sound processing. In particular, I used a lot of processing to create tracks with the original sound and effects, and then gradually switched between them.

For the effects, I use a lot of morphing between the processed filtered sound and the original sound to switch the sound image. Also, the effect components themselves are processed in various ways. For example, I applied a filter to the reverb component and used Pan to move it around, and used a free plug-in, Movement by OUTPUT, to create movement with a complex effect that combines reverb, delay, and filter.