Goals For The Trio
Notes On "Goals For The Trio"
- Goals For The Trio: Minimum
- Goals For The Trio: Maximum
- Goals For The Trio: Superfluous
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 25 (Minimum), 64 (Superfluous)
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT.
Composition and Recording period: Feb 28 2021 - Jun 22 2021 (Minimum), - June 21 2021（Superfluous）
"There must be no trios structured this way"
There are three versions released under the title, out of which "Maximum" is the complete version (in a way) flourishing from "Minimum" closer to the original composition and "Superfluous" are what we developed from the complete version "Maximum", or extra takes (or even possibly outtakes). Not via such music distribution services as Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music, "Minimum" and "Superfluous" are available only on SoundCloud and YouTube.
Very much I love The Police and Bill Evans as well as many other trio music, but music by trios could be more various than it has been. One answer is this track. That is my objective here.
Most of recent trios consist of the percussion, bass and some instrument like the guitar, piano or saxophone, meaning the rhythmic, bass and lead/harmonic parts. Obviously, there are string trios and brass trios, etc, but we assume a more comprehensive, modern band by three.
What if the structure is to be shuffled? It may be the rhythmic (same), two bass/lead/harmonic parts, which the guitar and piano play in this piece. In other words each of the guitar and piano plays the bass, chords and other phrases, no matter if human players can manage them in reality.
That is the concept especially of “Goals For The Trio: Minimum”, which remains nearly as I originally composed. We supplemented a variety of effects on it for “Goals For The Trio: Maximum and even some other parts for “Goals For The Trio: Superfluous.”
Since I wanted to emphasise that there must be no trios structured this way, we aimed to adopt relatively acoustic sounds rather than electronic. Yet, the difficulties lay with the fact that there were no goals for the music of this kind. At first I was strongly against arrangement that TI made to develop it into “Superfluous”, but it’s like a few supporting members join a trio, which you could name “trio (or triumvirate) music”. That could be one goal for the trio music; that’s interesting enough.
We took methods that trio music rarely goes after into the “Goals For The Trio” series; for instance, the piano and guitar depict polyrhythms and play bass and chords at the same time, which should be extremely difficult to perform manually. Like many other FMT tracks it is atonal and non-chordal.
Unlike others, on the other hand, the phrases on the drums are quite simple in order to highlight the other two, even though we used as many kits as four. The tempo is designed to change many times within the track, the details of which you can find in the notation video.
What I feel now when listening to these tracks months after composition is that these are very 2020-esque but simultaneously suggest where we were heading after 2021.
I mean by “2020-esque” that there look particular features or tendencies in FMT’s production in/around the year and I am feeling this would be around its end, as I wrote in the Notes On “How I Like To Align My Things.”
(TI writes:)
This track encompasses a variety of contradictions. It is a trio, but not a trio. The parts are played by three different instruments, but not necessarily in the same range or with the same technique. The three goals that have been reached (also trio) are these three types of music.
Mixing
[Minimum]
This version is a mix that follows TM's request as closely as possible. He asked for a reverb with as long a release as possible, so that the three instruments would sound as one. This was a very difficult request.
In particular, we had to make sure that each phrase was clearly audible while retaining a reverb-like feel, and that the same timbre was used throughout the performance, and that there was no roughness in the timbre or sound source due to the fact that the performance was programmed in a bad way.
In the first place, a long release reverb is not suitable for playing fine phrases like the one in this song with clarity. Even in the real world, a small instrumental band like this would not play in a very large hall, and if they did play in a large venue, the PA staff would be plagued by sound delays and venue-specific reverb.
In particular, although there are only three parts in this piece, there are many sounds packed into the time, and the range of each instrument is wide, so even if we assume a trio composition, the number of sounds and the range per hour is almost the same as a normal orchestra. It's easy to create a sense of unity, but the individual phrases become inaudible and the sound quickly becomes a jumble.
That's why we fixed the position first. This was done by placing the piano on the left 30/90, the guitar on the right 30/90 and the drums in the centre (HH 11/90).
As for effects, after some basic EQ and Compressor processing, I only applied a reverb with a long release time (about 7 sec), simulating a hall, throughout the whole track.
I then cut the reverb below 200Hz, and for each track I cut a few specific bands, such as the finely tuned HH and high piano bands. There are a number of bands that have a particularly strong attack, and although I've already cut out the lower 200Hz, I've also made pinpoint cuts to the high frequencies of the hi-hat, piano and guitar (around 2kHz and 5kH) where the characteristic attack is felt.
In terms of tone, StudioOne is a very good DAW, but we make most of our productions using only the instruments that come with StudioOne, with very little additional cost, especially when it comes to simulating live instruments. For example, if you want to distort only a certain pitch, you have to use a different tone. For example, only certain notes are distorted, or sound differently. We have tried to equalize and adjust the volume of these notes as much as possible, but there are still points where we are not satisfied.
Also, our music is programmed,( so of course we adjust the volume and the timing in detail), but the way the phrases sound is always flat. For me, there's nothing wrong with flatness, and I believe that a really good performer is able to control everything perfectly, including the shaking, so it's very just right and sounds like a machine is playing. But StudioOne's live instrument samples are distorted in places, and some of the notes sound strange, so we need to make the roughness less obvious.
FMT's tricky sounding processing is also the result of a "desperate attempt" to hide the rough edges.
As for the instruments, the piano is divided into several tracks with different touches, but the guitar has only one tone (track) for each part of the MS (not many tone variations), and all of them have only volume control.
At first I wanted to write about velocity in detail, but since the S1 timbre is not layered by velocity, velocity is just a simple volume control, so it is not very effective.
The overall sound quality can be high fidelity, but as I mentioned before, some tones (especially the guitars) can be distorted by pitch or become weirdly loud, so to reduce the unwanted high frequencies, the overall sound is more muffled and old-fashioned with a fuller midrange.
[Maximum]
We took a very opposite approach to the mix between Minimum and Maximum.
Minimum uses the same effects throughout the song to create a sense of unity and cohesion, and does not make any more adjustments than necessary.
For maximum, I went away from the instrumental sounds to make each sound stand out and to balance them on the spot, by equalising and re-positioning each note and switching effects to improve the grain.
This version is trickier to listen to, but I think it's a more legitimate way of thinking about the mix, regardless of the sound quality. The tricky sounds are not necessarily sound effects.
Of the three versions, this is my favourite.
[Superfluous]
This is totally "Superfluous". The very existence of this version, the sounds we added, everything is "Superfluous".
In Japanese, "Superfluous" is described as "drawing a foot on a snake", and that's exactly what we've done - we've drawn a foot on a snake that doesn't exist in the first place.
I took the Trio score created by TM and mixed it with Strings, Piano, Bass and Rhythm.
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