Dear Lessons
Notes On "DEAR LESSONS"
(From "Boyhood Skies" Series)
Piano Version
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 52
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Nov 17 2022 - Feb 5 2023
Detuned Percussion Version
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 90
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Dec 11 2022 - Jan 31 2023
Concept: Tribute to R Sakamoto by using what he has given us
(TM writes:)
The "Boyhood Skies" series is our tributes to Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and this particular work is one to Sakamoto-san. The tentative title during production was "Learned From RS." How precious the lessons his works have given us are.
Amongst a variety of his works my favourites include such pieces of the 1980s as "Kimi Ni Tsuite," "Rain" and "Tabi No Kyokuhoku." The notes in the melodies and accompaniments of "Dear Lessons" are positioned in a similar way to some of those intentionally.
More importantly to me, there are many coincidences -- an example is that I like Steve Reich's or Talking Heads's works so much, which seemed to have influenced many of his works as well, and I didn't know that at all until recently. There are so many cases like those. That's not exactly a coincidence because it's just my taste, but things like that have happened many times especially with minimal musicians. Thus, I made the minimality central in this piece (as well as the whole series of "Boyhood Skies").
Just to me, his greatness seems to lie in not only his music, but also, much more importantly, his role as a medium, educator or catalyst, which he may or may not recognise. As far as I know, there's no such artist who helped younger musicians develop themselves (nearly unintentionally) as him. I'd just like to say that's a huge achievement of his. I thought that through creating this track and that made me create another called "Demo Shows."
So, Sakamoto-san's informative nature led me to folk music as well. Just thanks to him, I have taken so many listens virtually from the whole globe so far and eventually am loving music in so, so many areas. One day when TI and I were struggling with the mixing, especially of many pianos in there, as TI describes later in this page, I came up with an idea of re-arranging this work like Asian folk music. We tried, and that worked quite well, which ended up as the Detuned Percussion Version (DPV), where we intended to change all the cause of the problems, the pianos, to something percussive and metal like gamelan. But thanks to TI's brushing-up the Piano Version survived. That's how these two versions were born. I hope to try pure innotation for DPV someday, by the way.
I started over the arrangement for DPV and there are many differences. For example, the one-bar-length minimal patterns are similar but different as I reversed the first and second halves. Another is that the pitch of DPV is slightly higher than the Piano Version by approximately half a semitone. The groove is designed only a little bit like Takahashi-san's in DPV, while I put zero groove to the Piano Version. Things like these.
At the ends of both these versions I added a short quiet section in order to give you some sort of afterglow. I wanted to imply that it's not only about his music but also about his entire life.
Soon after the release of the track, he passed away in March 2023.
(TI writes:)
In creating these tracks, I went through various exchanges and discussions with TM about Ryuichi Sakamoto's music.
As for myself, I thought about covering some of his tracks, because a lot of the FMT tracks I have been involved with can be said to be influenced by him. Because if you are talking about 'tracks influenced by him', then you could say that many of the FMT tracks I have been involved with are like that.
Also, in Japan, there are plenty of 'Ryuichi Sakamoto style' tracks (at one time, this style was particularly popular in Japan for TV advertisements and film soundtracks, and there were many artists who composed music with the client's request to 'do it in Ryuichi Sakamoto's style'). The idea was to create a piece that was not an imitation, and of course not just a simulation, but "a piece composed solely of Sakamoto Ryuichi's influences".
In doing so, as TM also writes, the tracks have more of the atmosphere of an artist who himself was influenced by, rather than Ryuichi Sakamoto's style itself.
Therefore, the songs in this series, including Dear Lessons, are intended as a tribute and tribute to Sakamoto, but "do they sound like they were created by Ryuichi Sakamoto? However, this is not necessarily the case. However, each phrase and tone can be described as "influenced by him".
Come to think of it, as mentioned in Demo-Shows, I learned about many artists who were "not just popular music" from the radio programmes he was a personality on, his interviews and books.
Creating a tribute to him was both a tribute to himself and a reflection on myself and his respect for these artists.
Process of Composition
(TI continues:)
First, TM and I exchanged ideas about 'writing out Ryuichi Sakamoto's music in musical notation and extracting the characteristic parts'.
TM then wrote the basic score in MuseScore, which was then ported to Studio One and mixed.
In the process of analysing the characteristic aspects of his music, I realised once again that there are not many 'his own melodies, harmonies or rhythms', but rather a style of 'combining influences from someone or something else with his own unique sensibilities (which I think is what leads to his style), composing and presenting them'.
In fact, if you check the phrases of his music again in the score, you will find here and there fragments of the music he was into at the time, such as "this part is Steve Reich-like" or "this part is Baroque-like".
However, these are not just quotations, but are combined with his own diverse perspectives, making his work original and unique.
Also, the music to which he devotes himself is extremely diverse, from the old to the new, from the East to the West, and it is artists and works that we ourselves did not know at the time, and I am reminded of the fact that we were exposed to various kinds of music through him.
For the 'Piano Version', we basically didn't make any changes to the phrases written by TM, but added a phrase before the ending that quoted the rhythm of his song 'Tibetan Dance'.
The same procedure was used for 'DPV', but in this case we added guitar and synth phrases in the second half of the track, where the rhythm comes in. I took a phrase from his track 'Frontline' for this one. Incidentally, like 'DPV', all instrumental parts of this song 'Frontline', except for the bass part, are created using synthesisers, but the tuning is in a non-dodecimal scale.
Mixing
(TI continues:)
Piano Version
The original version of the Piano Version was not modified from TM's MuseScore score, this version was composed almost exclusively of piano, except for the drums and bass.
This mix was very difficult, because we had so many parts with just the piano. Because a piece with this many parts using only pianos would not normally be possible. In other words, seven pianos playing all the time at the same time, plus bass and drums, would certainly saturate the sound.
Perhaps you could get seven good piano players in a music hall to play at the same time and the acoustics would be unbearable to listen to.
Therefore, for each part of the piano, I repeatedly "extracted only the necessary sounds and bandwidths and cut as much as possible" and "cut the volume to the limit where it could be cut". Moreover, the score written by TM had already been filled in with the intensity of the sounds, so we had to reproduce that.
We also had to find the right balance with the drums and bass. If the drums and bass are also reduced in volume, it is aurally unnatural and the sound image becomes unstable. Also, if the volume of the piano is reduced due to the large number of piano notes, the drums, especially the cymbals, will inevitably stand out. Also, cymbals do not always play rhythm, so the auditory trick of 'if you can hear the attack, it sounds like it is playing, even if the volume is low', as with hi-hats and snare drums, cannot be used.
This was done by listening again and again, cutting the volume of the piano and lifting them all together, and then correcting each unnatural part of the mix one by one in detail.
These mixes were not complicated, but it was very time-consuming.
Detuned Percussion Version
(TI continues:)
For example, 'Kecak', 'electric guitar' and 'synthesised noise'.
As for the Kecak, it is a tribute to the fact that he used to incorporate it into his songs and that he was the first person in the world to do Kecak using a sampler. For this one, I've been experimenting with various ways of putting rhythmic accents, with the suggestion of TM, the drummer.
For this version, as TM also states, I raised the tuning of all the notes except the bass by about 15%. However, this simply shifts the key tone, so I have added a further 10-15% lower note for each in places. I think this makes it sound as if unstable overtones have been created, and the pitches sound unstable.
The volume problem that occurred in the 'Piano Version' did not occur here, but because multiple notes of different tunings and metallic sounds were layered on the same phrase, unpleasant resonances and peak-outs in volume occurred in some parts, and these were corrected.
However, at the beginning of the song, the attack is strong and the resonance is unpleasant, and if you adjust it at the beginning, you will be left with a feeling of discomfort (in the middle of the song, other sounds are also playing, so you won't mind so much), so we faded the intro in (fading in is not a simply a technical issue rather than a preference).
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