First Visit
Notes On "FIRST VISIT"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 87
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Dec 28 2022 - July 7 2023 , July 25 2023 - July 27 2023
Why melancholic, frowning, funny, minimalistic, and jazz-beat-without-jazzy-phrases?
(TM writes:)
The track called "First Visit" is a part of the "Placid Wanderings" series, which I had motives in describing trips with FMT's instrumental music. Having created five pieces for the series, I was reminded of the trip to Britain with my parents residing in Japan many years ago. This track is written about that.
Both of them passed away around 2010 and my melancholia was put in its intro and ending -- in the middle of the writing the news of Yukihiro Takahashi's death came through, and the Placid Wanderings project was paused, whereas this work, hence, directly influences on the compositions of the series called "Boyhood Skies", especially the "Silence After You Leave" track.
What was the "first visit" is my parents' heading to Britain, which was especially my mother's first overseas travel out of Japan. Even though I must go there anyway because my graduation ceremony was to be held at my university there, Father was so reluctant due to his busy work at that time and some other reasons. Mother, on the other hand, was so nervous to go abroad.
I'm not going to explain what happened there, since it should take too long, but the final result was that the trip excited them a lot and eventually they loved Britain. The climax for Father was a reception with live-performed jazz he loved as well as pints of beer he loved, while for Mother that was surprisingly massive amount of shopping in London (despite her comment that she had no interests in shopping before departure). After going back home, they watched the video of the trip repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. That was lovely and funny moments.
Without explaining this, it must be too hard for you to understand why the track begins with melancholia, why something like frowning but a little bit funny minimalism follows and why a jazz beat without jazzy phrases is played, and so forth. The Jazz must NOT be jazz in here, because it's a sort of a play within a play.
The first time I had the idea of this work, that reminded me of FMT's classic track called "Family Trip." That was what TI created totally by himself; I did nothing with it but I like it so much. "First Visit" is a response track to that.
Just one episode in their first visit. My father had doubts all the way in my speaking English, probably because he didn't speak it but my speech didn't sound what he knew as English, ie, the American accent. In the first evening we dined out in London, and when I asked the waitress for extra butter or something. Then, she said "Your English is very good! I'm really impressed." and she and I had some chat. After that I looked at his face wanting to say "Did you hear what she said?" but unfortunately that had vacant expression, which obviously showed he didn't understand that at all... His doubts persisted even after that. I should've asked her, "Could you say that again in the way I'll teach you?" and taught a few Japanese words.
Composition
(TI writes:)
I took apart the string parts of the MuseScore score created by TM and replaced them with single-note tracks.
Later, in the final stages of mixing, I wanted to add overtones to some of the phrases. At first, I used a ring modulator to generate overtones, which I adjusted with EQ and the mix fader, but then I realized that I could get the sound I wanted and control the pitch more easily by writing them down as phrases in the score.
Therefore, I wrote a musical score of the parts I wanted to sound as overtone components in some places and added them.
Mixing
(TI continues:)
The balance of the MuseScore score created by TM was good, so I mixed the score with the intention of keeping it close to the MuseScore score.
Therefore, the tones also conformed to the tones set in MuseScore created by TM, especially the synth pad sounds were exported as they were in MS and played without any effects.
However, the mixing of this track was very difficult: the balance of the mix in MuseScore was good, but when I played each part in Studio One, I found that the balance of the whole track was difficult to hear in some parts.
Especially in the score of this piece, the number of notes (harmony) in the same part increases and decreases significantly, so the balance adjustment needed to be fine-tuned for each location, and the movement needed to be smoother.
Similarly, since the sounds are clustered in close bandwidths, it was necessary to set the emphasis for each part and to prevent excess interference.
TM also requested that each phrase be flat (without any particular part sticking out).
This piece has the characteristics of a minimalist style, so to speak, with a collection of small independent phrases, each of which has an equal relationship with the others, and each part does not have a fixed role such as "lead phrase" or "harmony phrase" as in normal "music.
However, "making each sound sound flat" is not necessarily equal to "making all parts have the same volume".
Because it is people (myself) who listen, and even if the volume is the same, I tend to pay attention to notes with more overtones, and I also tend to be attracted to newly introduced phrases.
Therefore, we must take this into account when making adjustments.
So, the creator must be more of a "listener" for this track. In fact, I spent more time listening to it than I did creating it (although this is true not only for this track, but for FMT tracks in general).
These adjustments are basically made using only the volume fader, equalizer, compressor, and Pan.
The procedure is as follows: after securing the location of each part with the pan so that the left and right parts are well balanced, the volume fader is used to adjust the sum of the volume of all parts to within -6db, and then the overtones of the parts that sound prominent are removed, and the attack is adjusted with the compressor. The attack is adjusted with a compressor.
In addition, for parts with overlapping bandwidths, one of the overlapping parts is given to one of the other parts, and the other bandwidths are emphasized in the part that is given up. For the parts with overlapping attacks, the dynamic equalizer is used to side-chain the specific interfering bandwidths by triggering one of the parts only at the moment when the attack overlaps, and only at that moment, one of the overlapping bandwidths is lowered so that both parts sound the same in auditory perception. This trick makes it sound as if both parts are at the same volume.
Incidentally, the only effects pedal used in this track is the reverb (and only a few parts of it, the rest is just EQ, comp, pan, and volume fader).
The individual parts that took the most time to adjust were the piano and cello parts.
This is because the attack of the sample tones in these parts is so strong that it sounds as if all the notes are coming out in full.
In these parts where the attack is too prominent, I used the compressor to suppress the attack, and the release was made longer so that the sound is "audible but not bothersome".
In addition, all the notes are rich in overtones and spread out too far to the left and right, making localization difficult.
Therefore, we have narrowed the width of localization for each sound to the point where it is almost monaural. If the sound were completely mono, the left and right sounds of the original sound would cancel each other out, resulting in a sudden weakening of the sound, so the width of the localization is narrowed while keeping the sound in stereo.
I also tried to draw as smooth a curve as possible, because abrupt volume changes sound unnatural beyond necessity. The trick I noticed here is to gradually change the volume from a little before the point where the volume becomes low (depending on the phrase, from one beat to about one measure before) to get the feeling that the notes are smoothly connected.
The difference in volume between the beginning and ending of this track is about 3 times larger than the beginning, but if you don't notice it, the mix for this track is a success.
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