Sonna Mono - Far From The Way
SoundCloud:
Track Data
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 4 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 4 Professional
Number of tracks: 106
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: May 11 2020 - June 22 2020
[The Planet Series]
(TM writes on June 2021:)
One year or so later from the release, this track joined the Planet Series to symbolise the planet Neptune, the farthest planet in the solar system (except for the dwarf planet Pluto), where one year takes 164.8 Earth years.
As that tells, we had no plan to put this into the series when composing and recording. Recently, I found the idea greatly interesting when revising this track as a "Neptune" track (without correcting anything). Honestly, before then I had been feeling I would be struggling to make the Neptune track, but this is so suitable!
This is perhaps the third track that we put into the series later than the start of production; "Vista At Landing" is an example but I had an idea of make it symbolise the Earth at its mixing phase. "Uranus" should be another, although I planned to title it so at a very early timing of composition.
[Composition]
(TM writes:)
This track is what we tentatively called "Far From BH", which I think is so quirky. Especially, I love the chord progression in it.
If you don't read notations, no problems at all. Just look at the chords in text.
This has been picked up from "Far From BH" as an example and an example of "BH" in the last three bars. BH stands for Bruce Hornsby, a fascinating singer-songwriter I like very much. "Far From BH" is a piece we are developing from his influence on me but gone far away from his beautiful music.
The notation includes "-dg" in the chord texts like "Gm7-dg." I'm sure nobody knows "-dg" in that I've just created the term. It means "dangling," where the fifth note was omitted. What for? Just for relations with other parts and ambiguous sounds.
These chords are quite complex but have a lot of alternative beauty. I intended to add further description on the near-future notes.
Anyway, this must be the first attempt for the composer to compare what s/he has been influenced by, though. lol
(TI writes:)
The track was originally a bit shorter, less than five minutes long. So, in addition to that, TM inserted a motif that he was working on for another track (entitled “Minimal-But-Not-Repetition"). This is also a motif that I like very much, and I was working on it for another track, I was a little disappointed.
For this track, I'm more of an arranger than a composer. I've deflated the his score, rewritten it for strings and brass, reharmonized it, and I wrote additional countermelodies, harmonies, rhythms and noise parts.
The string articulation was very difficult for me in this context. MuseScore is a notation software, so I had a difficulty in expressing the fine nuances in the performance. I created and adjusted the tracks for each articulation in Studio One in detail. Especially I reworked on the vibrato and portamento of the violin and cello many times until the very end.
The piano and harpsichord sounds were also fine-tuned in the same way. I used Studio One to fine-tune the sound timing of the piano and harpsichord based on the Musescore data. The timing of the end is also hand-drawn on the audio waveform in detail.
This synth bass has three tracks in unison with different timbres, so the three different tones respond to each other. I also hand-wrote the filter open/close data as well.
[Tone]
(TI writes:)
At the beginning of the track, it has a baroque-like atmosphere, reminiscent of acoustic music, while gradually electronic and noise-industrial elements are interspersed throughout.
The sample sounds of acoustic instruments are used extensively.
As for the rhythm tones, I used some of the rhythm box tones that were distributed free of charge in the archive. We use a lot of CR-78 (Dr Rhythm) and Ace Tone samples.
Dr Rhythm was TM's favorite when he was in his teenage, and Ace Tone was my father's when I was a kid. (I later learned that Sly & Family Stone used it.) They are memorable sounds.
The bass drum is effective and the decay is very long, but it's a good sound, but it's not easy to handle. If you cut the release, you lose the goodness of the original sound, I use it in sufficiently long spaced.
[Mixing]
It was even more difficult to mix this track than usual. The reason for this is that the components are complex. The rhythmic instruments are there, but in some cases they are not where they should be, and there is no part to play the inherent role of the bass. Constructing music with stereotypes isn't something we do in the first place, but it's still necessary to eliminate the "bad sense of discomfort" in the music.
In those cases, using synthesizer tones that don't have a fixed musical role can be useful. This time, we used a lot of acoustic instruments, and we used a lot of acoustic instrument sounds.
So I had to separate it from its musical role in this piece and reconfigure it. I did some equalization and effecting that I didn't originally apply to that instrument.
For example, since there is no clear bass line in this track, I had to take a sound in the low range and apply it to a certain amount of low frequency We adjusted the bandwidth and volume to give a sense of stability.
Also, the sounds in the same band are adjusted in great detail so that they do not sound at the same To avoid this, we cut and adjust the waveform level in detail. Especially the release length is adjusted so that the tone, reverb, and delay time are exactly calculated.
Also, just like "Rock", I worked on this track as well as the mix, but I also worked on the sound image. The final result is a mixture and combination of six different master files.
There are two types of master files: a lo-fi master file and a hi-fi master file. The master file is cut and pasted like a mosaic.
Finally, only the reverb and bass parts were extracted and added to the files to reinforce the sound pressure.
The sound was reconfigured in various ways, both chronologically and spatially. At first the sound image is cloudy and old-fashioned and lo-fi, but the spread is a twisted treatment of hi-fi. Because it's painful to listen to sampling acoustic instruments all the time. I hate the sound of programmed sampling acoustic instruments.
The feeling of switching from lo-fi old sound to hi-fi is the same as in the movie The Wizard of Oz. It's like switching from black and white to color. The part at the end where we go back to the first sound image again is also inspired by the return to the Wizard of Oz's house.
(TM writes:)
The superordinate title "Sonna Mono" is a sort of a lament in Japanese that means something close to "the way it is."
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