Deconstructing Motown
Notes On "Deconstructing Motown"
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YouTube (with notation video):
This track has been developed for relatively a long time and released in September, 2019. The opus number is 25.
SEVEN MOTOWN SONGS
As you may recognise, this is a medley covering seven Motown-label songs as follows:
1. The Supremes “Come See About Me”, 1964
2. The Supremes “You Keep Me Hangin' On”, 1967
3. Stevie Wonder “For Once In My Life”, 1968
4. Marvin Gaye “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, 1968
5. Marvin Gaye “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)”, 1971
6. Jackson Five “Never Can Say Goodbye”, 1971
7. Rose Banks “I’m So Glad You’re Here”, 1976
We didn't mean to just create a ‘hit medley.’ It's FURICO, so it's natural.
But we struggled to bring out the originality of FURICO without destroying the structure of the original song as much as possible.
Specifically, we added new components, harmonies, and rhythms to the original songs, and also selected as well as mixed the tones. (Even though the tonality is the same as the original song, we did not feel any sense of incongruity.)
HUGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SONGS AND INSTRUMENTAL
On arranging them, we discussed a lot on the essences of the 20th century’s music history, which is arguably centred in the United States.
We reached a conclusion that songs (or music with singing) are structurally different from music without it (or instrumental). In short, while songs have the vocals at their centres, in instrumental music all the parts are more equivalent and fragmented. Even if some instrument takes part of the melody (vocals) of the song, its structure is still that of songs.
When we were creating this track, we felt that Song and Music were hugely different. (We thought that during FURICO's “Lovesome Liverpool”, but we felt that more strongly particularly this time).
To make a song into instrumental music, you need to add instrumental elements such as Jazz and Classic or rewrite it (otherwise it becomes music like supermarket BGM).
On the other hand, simply putting lyrics on instrumental melodies makes it difficult to sing. It is likely that not just the presence or absence of a melody, but the origin and structure of music itself (eg, configuration, the form of harmony).”
What we wanted to do in this track is to “deconstruct” the song structure and substitute it into that of the instrumental. In order to do this, this track treats the melodies (vocals and other solos) and other elements (harmonies of significant phrases) as just icons.
For example, we used “formats” for Songs 1 and 3. Before we chose the seven songs, we composed the formats. We picked up seven and decided the order (along the meanings of the lyrics). Then, we selected a couple of songs to use the formats with and added iconic phrases onto them. Eventually we did not bring the vocal melody into 1 at all and intentionally gave it double tonalities.
In 'Never Can Say Goodbye' the four bars pattern is formed like a short version of the Blues progression in a way. The progression gets deconstructed and altered with a little bit Jazzy complex chords as it goes. And we use claps almost all over the track, which Techno very frequently uses.
The 20th century might be “the century of songs.” One of the most popular sources should be Blues. It became Rhythm and Blues and later Motown - more recently (Chicago) House. On the other hand, you could say Jazz launched the century’s instrumental music, which more recently includes early Synthpop and Detroit Techno.
We were so fascinated to find out that the century’s two mainstreams of music were developed quite nearby (geographically) in the United States: Memphis and New Orleans / Chicago and Detroit.
LOTS OF QUOTES
To deconstruct the “songs,” we put a lot of what must recall the century’s instrumental music on the track. We gave the medley the characteristics of Jazz, early Synthpop, Techno and so forth.
The “notes” of the new elements (components, harmonies, rhythms) were created by TM. And this time, all the elements that TI added are "quotes from existing music".
Those are not quoted as it is, the harmonies and phrases have been modified. But the features are kept so that those who know the songs can immediately recognize ‘Ah, it’s that song!’
Specifically, there are quotes from New Wave in the 80s and Techno in the 90s, for example, along the way, famous phrases of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Also, the other phrases include quotes from songs called Detroit Techno such as Juan Atkins (Cybotron / MODEL 500) and Kevin Saunderson (Inner City)".
These are not the sampling of the original music, but the phrases were inserted on the score, and the voice and sound effects are mainly the sampling of the raw sound, including various metal percussion made from home kitchenware.
Also, we simulates various past songs with their own voice recorded on a smart phone (so it sounds similar to the original song, but not same).
Like many other FURICO tracks, the track has no repetition. What seems like repetition of patterns is, in fact, patternless.
Creating these sounds was very enjoyable.
ABOUT MIXING
As for the mix, the bass line and sequence phrases were characterized, and the sounds were changed for each song, making it difficult to align the sound pressure while making the sound change.
The number of sounds is simple, but the final number of tracks exceeded 120 because the sounds were replaced in each part.
MOTOWN AND SOUL MUSIC
The concept of this track is similar to the previously created ‘Lovesome Liverpool’ (analyzing the essence of past music and adding FURICO interpretation to make a new song).
Lovesome Liverpool focuses on what The Beatles have commonly with European native music, but Motown Music didn't feel the elements of such traditional music.
(Of course, the Soul music, R&B and Jazz in the US originate in African music, but it is difficult to find musical common elements with traditional African music in chord progression and harmony sensation).
In other words, rather than tradition, we got the impression that it was based on its age, fashion, influences and combinations from other fields of music.
Therefore, we actively quoted songs from other genres associated with Motown music because of the ‘superficial combination.’ And we believe it was a success. Perhaps this method was not established in Lovesome Liverpool.
By making this track, we were interested in discovering that pop music has different origins depending on the place.