Encounter & Progression

Notes On "Encounter & Progression"

 

TRACK DATA

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional

Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional

Number of tracks: 60

Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER

Composition and Recording period: Feb 8 2021 - Mar 13 2021

 

The FURICO Music Team · Love Progression

 

[Background]

 

(TM writes:)

The tentative title was “Scale Progression.” The notion of the scale progression does not exist at all, but is what I created. What I meant by this is what if the scale changes very frequently, eg, in every bar, in some scale music just like chord progression. You may hear something like somewhat strange chord progression in this track. It’s not chord progression but how the scale progresses. In fact, we do not use chords (except dyads) basically.

This track is very experiment-oriented, but I preferred to mark some contrast by taking the form of the pop music. Then, the triplets reminded me of Toto’s “Rosanna”, although it uses 6-tuplets. I thought it could be of great interest to make it sound like West Coast of the United States to some extent. I’m not sure if it’s like Toto but that does not matter. I have liked Toto very much since I had great fun with playing the drums in “Girl Goodbye” at my age of 16 or so.

 

 

(TI writes:)

Basically, my motivation for creating sounds is to create "sounds that I want to listen to", but for this track, I made an exception and started by creating sounds that I have no interest in.

I started by creating a sound that was not what I wanted to listen to, so in the process of creating this track I tried to "make it a sound that I like" or "make myself approach the sound", and in the end my goal was to "create a sound that I want to listen to". I think it's interesting that the track is, as TM says, experimental music based on a clear concept, but the sound mimics that of a hit pop song.

There are many types of pop music, but in this case we followed the format of the systematically marketed US hit pop music of the 80s, called 'Corporate Rock'. These were the music that was often played on TV and radio when I was a kid. Personally, however, I have no attachment to any of it.

In a way, 80's hit pop music is like "a classmate you remember well, but hardly ever talk to". And to produce a track in this style is like two people who meet again as adults and drink together in a bar, alone, with nothing in common. But because they have had a common childhood, they kind of get to know each other and become friends. But we have very different values and backgrounds, so there are certain areas that we don't go into.

 

 

 

[Composition]

 

(TM writes:)

Let me explain about the scale progression. It gets started with the Phrygian (Flat 4^th) scale on G, comprising G, Ab, Bb, C, D, Eb and F. This mode is not generally used; I just created it as well in order to assume that the scale progresses and to make that smooth. The next bar has Phrygian-F4 on Eb. If the chord simply progresses, the tonality does not change. But, here, the mode is transposed, instead. Phrygian-F4 on Eb consists of Eb, E, F#, G#, A#, B and C#.

But such key changes are not simple transposition. The guitar motif in Bar 1 sounds D, Ab, C and F, which follow G Phrygian-F4, whereas the next bar does A#, F#, G# and C#. That is simply transposition but Bar 3 goes for Phrygian-F4 on C and the guitar plays Eb, Ab, C and F, meaning that is on Phrygian-F4 on C but not transposed. That is the mechanism of the scale progression, which is very interesting and exciting to me.

This track uses not only Phrygian-F4 but also Mixolydian and Locrian so that the different sections change the atmosphere very far. If you hope to change the atmosphere in some tonal music, you can make changes within the major or minor. Meanwhile, there are countless modes and even more if you create any.

This track is, thus, very pure experimental music in me. Although this is based upon a “one scale per bar” format basically, I hope to develop it into some freer format someday.

I first composed the basic structure consisting of the drums, bass, guitar and piano, which excited me enough, but TI supplemented the variety of the sounds and that worked much better.

 

 

(TI writes:)

For the composition I followed the rules as described by TM. The rules are described in detail by TM, but what I did was to add different phrases according to the combination of scales that TM created. There's nothing emotional about this work itself. It's just a process of adding phrases, like it or not.

However, even if there is no emotional element at the time of creation, the listener cannot listen to the track without some kind of emotional element. In that sense, we just followed the rules in creating the songs, and there was no trouble at all, but we spent a lot of time and effort to find the emotional elements for the audience. There is a lot of "experimental music" out there that is interesting in concept but boring to listen to in general, but we don't have to create that kind of music and we don't want to listen to that kind of music.

 

 

[Mixing]

 

As TM mentioned, the first specific example I referred to was ”Rosanna” by TOTO. I used to play TOTO songs in my student band, but they were not musically interesting to me at all, and I just played them. When I listened to Toto again, the musical and acoustic quality is very high. That's no surprise. The top creators of the time have come together and spent a lot of money and time to create this. I have a lot of respect for that. But at the same time I was attracted by the high quality of the music, I was worried about whether it would be possible to create this kind of music with Studio One alone.

To begin with, the way we approach music production is completely different to this kind of music. Specifically, one of the main characteristics of these hit pop songs is the reverb sound and the sense of depth in the sound image. This reverb sound was created by Al Schmitt, the engineer for Toto, and the studios of the time, including Capitol Studios. Therefore, I started by reading a lot of information about Al Schmidt, and from there I experimented a lot to see if there was anything I could recreate with Studio One.

Al Schmitt's deep mixes and reverb sounds are also based on "great musicians and live recordings with great microphone setups", which as mentioned above is a very different premise to our music production environment and concept.

Furthermore, during the recording process, TM suggested that the drum sound could be better suited to the sound of Phil Collins. So we started to replace it. The engineer for Phil Collins was Hugh Padgham. His sound is very different from Al Schmitt’s, and has a very hard texture.

This was the sound I liked. Yukihiro Takahashi's "Wild & Moody" had that kind of sound, but it's not the same. Recording studios in Japan are basically dead and not very resonant. This album was recorded at Alpha Studios, where many of Japan's pop hits were born, and it has a unique sound, but probably not the same as in the UK. I think the reverb in Japan is artificial, whereas in the UK, especially in studios like Power Station, it's a raw stone sound, so the texture is different. So I used the Japanese way of creation as a reference.

The key to the drum sound is the type of compressor, equalizer and reverb. For the reverb, I used a preset from Studio One's Convolution reverb, which is supposed to simulate a power station, so I used that as a base. This is a little harder than the real thing (the sound you hear on CDs, LPs etc). The reason for this is that Studio One is Full Digital, and my memory of the time is of listening to tapes, LPs and narrow range playback devices.

The depth was also a problem for me. I thought I had learned a lot about compression to control the depth and three-dimensionality from the previous "Mood" extended-play, but this time, especially with a band sound, I had to recreate in a way the sound field that actually existed.

However, there were many discoveries and things I learned. For example, the strength of a sound is the difference in harmonic content and distribution, not the volume itself. In other words, a strong (strongly played) note is not the same as a loud note. For example, the difference between striking a piano hard and striking it softly is not so much a difference in volume as it is a difference in the amount and distribution of the overtones. To control this, it is better to use a compressor to reduce the rising overtones than to use a fader to reduce the volume itself.

Similarly, the depth is not a difference in volume or resonance, but a subtle difference in the way a sound rises. This was done by using a compressor to adjust the attack and release. Nowadays there are tools that allow you to control these things more easily, but we did it like the engineers of old - with a compressor (we didn't want to spend any extra money).

But it's really difficult to move the sound back and forth (you have to understand the theory and then follow the logic. Also, even if you know the theory, back and forth is relative, so the settings will change from time to time. A recipe that worked before will rarely work the same way again.

We also had to redo the mixdown many times. A particular challenge was dealing with the low and high frequencies in the master mix. On a normal FMT song, I don't worry too much about the range, I just try to get the range I want, but on a mix that's intended to be a "hit pop song of the day", whether it's an LP or a CD, the low and high bands are often cut. Particularly in the case of this type of music, which was intended to be played on TV and radio, there are certain bands that have to be cut if you want to get it onto the airwaves. There is also a bit of bandwidth that has to be suppressed, as it is difficult to play or hear on the playback equipment of the time.

So I used a thin 12db curved low cut filter to cut 50Hz and below from the master track, and about 3db in the mid range around 500khz.

 

 

[Tone]

 

Most of the samples are live instruments from the Studio One. For the guitar, I changed the sound (effect) for each location. This takes up a lot of CPU, so I created a separate file for the guitar sound creation, which is separate from the main file for the mix, and played the wav into the mix.

The brass part is inspired by the song "Final Countdown" by Europe (band). I don't know if I need to include that element at all. The song itself was played a lot when I was a kid and I remembered the famous intro riff, but it wasn't the type of music I was particularly interested in. However, if I had Oberheim's brass tone, I would play that phrase.

As for the Strings, I've always wondered if they weren't needed in the first place. The aim was to replace the lead part (ie the vocals), but although it may not be necessary for the concept of the song, I felt that it would be difficult to make the song work without it.

I thought about sampling something like radio chatter, but I thought that would take it further away from the concept, so I made a phrase that sounds like chatter, following the rules of Scale (the source or idea is Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka).

That's why it sounds like a radio or an old record. I tried to make it sound like it was coming forward and backward *unsteadily* all the time, and then at the end it comes out for a moment in a real way (but the phrase is broken).

 

 

[Looking back...]

(TI writes:)

I think I learnt a lot of techniques to control the sound by creating this piece. It was also a kind of surprise to me that I could create such a sound.

 

(TM writes:)

This track is also my objection against the general tendency of music maniacs hating popular music. Whether a particular song is popular or not does nothing with the music itself at all. When I said to someone who knows I was a musician that I was listening to Basia then, the guy asked me "Do you listen to such music?" Very very ridiculous.

Although I understand hating popular music is perceived somewhat cool or differentiated, that sort of viewpoint makes us blind to truly good music. They only look at something around the music rather than the music itself. 

Obviously, it's fine to be biased in that the people listen to some music for their preferences. But I myself never do that. I never avoid listening without have just a listen. The variety or diversity is extremely important to me. I have, of course, artists I don't like, but I don't like them because I don't like the music, never because it's popular (or for any other reason).

I love Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev but never avoid other music. I am curious enough about any others. I love music but never avoid other art domains. I love arts but do not avoid science, economics and whatever. I am strongly against attitudes of avoidance, which I think is related to prejudice and discrimination. 

Especially for those who create music it's essential to listen to as various music as possible, I believe.