Fugue Suite

Notes On "Fugue Suite
[Developed from Gary Rees's motif] (Op. 33)"

This “Fugue Suite” comprises three tracks as follows:

EXTENDED PLAY on SoundCloud




A: FUGUE OF LIGHT (YouTube as below and SoundCloud)

B: FUGUE OF CARBON (YouTube as below and SoundCloud)

A+B: FUGUE OF ORGANIC COMPOUNDS 
(SoundCloud as below and YouTube)



(TI)

TRIGGER OF PRODUCTION

The following message from Gary Rees was the impetus. He said, “Would you be interested in working on something that I've started? I have a very fertile idea. It is a sequence of 4 notes. When played as a staggered figure, the possibilities are very interesting.”

One figure after another with different starting notes, then overlapping, like a fugue. Only the figure is used, no other notes.

This motif appears at the beginning of A (“Fugue of Light”). It appears in various forms throughout the whole tracks.

The original plan was to collaborate with Gary Rees to create MIDI data and then release the data as separate songs at the same time, but in the end, his production method and ours* were very different, so we ended up working independently as FMT.

It is difficult to make it compatible with MIDI and WAV file exchange.

CONCEPT OF "SUITE"

I saw potentials in the concept of "developing the same motif into several different directions", which was in the original plan, so I decided to create it as a "suite".

However, as I was creating the piece, I had an idea that it might be interesting to call it a suite in the sense of "a series of pieces using the same motifs and tonality" in the usual sense of a suite, but in the sense of "playing at the same time".

This concept of "creating as separate songs and making them sound at the same time" was influenced by the German art group, Die Tödliche Doris' 80s work ("Unser Debut" and "Sechs"). I wanted to do it once because the concept of different songs being combined into a different song sounded really cool.

The record was introduced at the state-of-the-art record shop in Tokyo at the time, Wave, and was released in Japan as a two-disc set of LPs. At the time, record shops in Tokyo were thinking like, "Why do they sell these things!? It was easy to get interesting records from all over the world.”

Another thing that came back to me when I was in my early twenties, when I was into long mixes of different songs, was that I wanted to make different songs sound like one song, and I wanted to create the material for those songs myself.

And I also thought it was very silly and interesting to do like that, since there are few suites, if any, in which songs are put together at the same time.

In terms of the production, A and B were created almost simultaneously. They are completely different types of songs, so if we got bored with one, or got stuck, we could start on the other, so there was very little lost time in the production. I tried playing A and B at the same time to get a feel for it, but it was just a check, and I didn't make any changes to the arrangement for the two songs together.


(TM)

TITLES

The title of this overall suite is "Fugue Suite" while each of its three tracks has its own subtitle spotlighting the organic compound. In short, it's a chemical term and means a phenomenon that occurs when carbon atoms are transformed inside plants and animals into another substance with the energy of solar light etc. Eventually, the product of A and B is something completely different from the simple addition of A+B.

TRACK "A: FUGUE OF LIGHT"

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 4 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 4 Professional
Number of tracks: 65
Sound sources: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: 11 March 2020 - 10 April 2020


(TI)

COMPOSITION

I arranged with a full orchestra in mind with a focus on melody and harmony, trying to develop the fugue style.

The procedure was at first to break down Gary's 24-bar motif into four parts of monophonic melodies. Based on those, I created a melody that responds to each part in accordance with the fugue technique, and developed them by canonizing, changing and transposing them.

However, if I had used the normal fugue format, it would have been a similar piece to what I had used before, so I chose the key to be transposed freely in the 12-note scale, and I also used the augmented triad, which was not used at that time.
Then I merged it with a part that TM had created separately. Initially, I tried to break down the TM score and merge it, but I didn't get used to it, so I connected it to the parts that had been done before and positioned it as an episode.

One of the characteristics of this song is that the development of the song changes over and over again, which is also a characteristic of the fugue format, but I think it's also due to the fact that the person who created it kept the different parts together.

MIXING

As for the sound, I took a full orchestra into consideration as the fugue has its roots in Western classical music, but instead of simply imitating it, I wanted to create a sense of discomfort and surprise in terms of the sound image.

I had a hard time choosing tones for this version. Even though I intended to play a full orchestra, if I played it in imitation of that, it would sound very stale, so I tweaked the sound in various ways. Even when I played samples of acoustic instruments, I filtered them and applied a variety of effects. However, in terms of registers, I am following the registers of acoustic instruments that I was initially aware of.

What I particularly struggled with was the tone of the first 16 bars, the subject phrase. Initially, I was going to start with an impressive synth sound that seemed to be ringing in the middle, but it didn't fit with the other acoustic elements of the instrumental sound. In the end, I let them start with a sound I created based on a French horn sound.

This was influenced by a Shostakovich symphony that came on the radio when I was working on it.

The noisy guitar sound in the middle of the track, with a lot of shoegazer-like reverb, was inspired by the sound of Echo Garage, with whom FMT collaborated on "Fractal".

TRACK "B: FUGUE OF CARBON"

Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 4 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 4 Professional
Number of tracks: 87
Sound sources: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: 11 March 2020 - 10 April 2020

COMPOSITION

I think Acid House is similar to Baroque in that both have no so-called chordal parts and are made of combinations of single melodies.

So, why don't you create this song with an Acid House sound image? I thought to myself.

Therefore, I tried to reduce the number of notes and arrange them in combination with the rhythm, so I arranged mainly the counterpoint combination and rhythm of the melody in the lower part of the three parts, and the sub-melodies and chords in the higher part, which sometimes appear for seasoning.

The rhythm parts are usually created by TM, but for this song, TI is the main creator of many of the parts. From the middle of the song, it's clear that the rhythm has changed, and the set of the rhythm has changed accordingly.

From my point of view (TI), the rhythm of TM is a "drum rhythm," in other words, a band sound. I don't usually use that kind of rhythm in Acid House or club music, but when I put it together, it becomes very interesting. My rhythms are clearly rejecting the human groove and natural grooves. I think the contrast is very interesting.

The other is an awareness of the combination of the heavy bass and funkiness. Specifically, I used a lot of syncopation and arranged it so that the heavy bass of 20 to 50 hz of a sine wave enters into the gap that was created.

I don't think it's possible to have this kind of combination of funky drums (though it's drumming rather than a sample) and a dubby bass.

MIXING

The number of the parts on the score is eight, which means very simple for FMT, but we use many tones and tracks (87 tracks), twisting various sounds and twisting them together as if they were thin threads twisted together to make one thick thread.

This time, I used a lot of syncopated delays in the bass part to create a dubby atmosphere.

TRACK "A+B: FUGUE OF ORGANIC COMPOUNDS"

Composition tool: None
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 4 Professional
Number of tracks: 6
Sound sources: Original Wav
Composition and Recording period: 11 March 2020 - 10 April 2020

Along with the original concept, we basically created this album based on simultaneous playback of A and B. However, we switched the sound image in detail to create a sound that could not be expressed just by playing it simultaneously. For example, the rhythms are taken from the original track, remixed and layered on top of each other. The TM rhythms in the second half of the album have a funky and heavy industrial music sound to them.

At the opening of the song, A and B seem to have an awkward combination, but it gets better and better from the middle of the song. This is due to the fact that we didn't arrange the two songs so that they match smoothly, but just like DJing with an analog player in the olden days, the tempo and pitch were not quite right at first, but as I started to play, it seemed to come together.

The voice from the middle of the track is that of Gary Rees. He originally did vocals as well, and he has a very good voice and has the vibe of a Beatnik poet of yesteryear.

His reading will feature heavily in a track we recorded as another version of the soundtrack for an upcoming art film we will be releasing next.

This take was what could not be used because the poem was in conflict with copyright, and I edited the reading by chopping it up and spinning it backwards. (This may be beatnikish too).