Album "Real & Unreal (Leaked Live FMT)"
Notes On "Real & Unreal (Leaked Live FMT)" Album
We don't know when or where our live performances took place. This is not rhetoric, but we really don't know.
It was conceived in our minds and created on computers and networks, with great performances by guest musicians.
Perhaps the order of the performances and the scenes exist in our minds, but they exist only abstractly in our minds and on the network, they are not realised in the real world.
What is certain and correct is that what is really "played live" and embodied in the real world is your music device and where you are playing it.
(TM writes:)
While music is right-brained, concert music should be even more so because of its nature. That's good enough, but FMT's (fictional) concert is to present that antithesis. I attempt to make a difference by reducing intuition, and at the same time, make our music logical and verbalised in the left-brained manner, but it never makes it moderate. This concert album is such an attempt, which an unphysical music group can do to make more fun and differences.
Process of Creating Live Version
(TI writes:)
To create this live version, TM created the basic arrangement for the live version using MuseScore, and TI used Studio One to adjust the timbre and articulation to create the FMT performance, which was then performed with the guest musicians.
We did this so that we could listen to the FMT live concert with a fresh perspective.
In fact, by doing this, when we ported it from MuseScore to Studio One and played it back for the first time, we were able to ask ourselves the same questions we would have when we went to see the show: "What's the next song?" "Oh, that's how they arranged that song!" "What's the next song?"
Similarly, when we were mixing the guest musicians' performances, we were able to mix the individual tracks from the guest musicians without listening to them, just looking at the volume meter and the analyzer, and playing them back only when they seemed to fit together. That way I felt very impressed as a listener, and I think it was the same for TM. (TM: Yes, so did I. Moreover, I made some changes in the FMT parts after listening to guests' plays.)
In order to make the sound and the mix consistent with the live version, we used the same rehearsal procedure as for the live band: we created the basic settings for the drums and bass, and for the mix, we created the basic settings first, and then transferred the arrangements created by TM.
4 Guest Musicians Joined Us
"Leaked Live FMT" Extended Play on SoundCloud
1. Mood Of Two (Live)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 38
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musician: STONERJAZZ
Composition and Recording period: Dec 25 2021 - Mar 23 2022
The notes on the original version
(TI writes:)
This track is a song that STONERJAZZ would definitely have wanted to play if they were to join us on LIVE. Also, there was no session track with just STONERJAZZ at this LIVE, so for this track I wanted to make a take with just STONERJAZZ as a guest.
However, it was very difficult to arrange and mix, because STONERJAZZ's Vocal was on a Vocoder he had just bought, and the performance itself was very good, but there was noise over his entire vocal track through this song, and we had to deal with the noise to make it less noticeable Difficulties were encountered. This kind of accident is common in Live recordings.
If the noise was cut too much with the equaliser, it would make no sense as a vocal at all, so very basic vocal processing (low frequencies below 80Hz and high frequencies above 5kHz are cut, and boosting around 500Hz, which is usually emphasised, is not done this time as it makes the noise more noticeable) was used. Distortion and distortion were then applied to make the noise less noticeable. It's like 'the forest that hides the trees'.
The basic arrangement was done by TM, but some of the piano parts were rearranged to make the phrasing more swinging.
(TM writes:)
After we released the track of double-beat swing, “Mood Of Two”, I was really impressed with the work called “The Mighty Himalayas” which was totally remixed and re-arranged by Teth Sin and Stonerjazz. Then we could not “reply” to that and I thought I liked to develop something like version three.
The Himalayas remind me of Nepal, where Gautama Buddha was born some thousands of years ago. Imagining that we played it in a Thai cave temple, I re-arranged it to bring out some atmosphere like in a Buddhist temple. But in the arrangement I left much room for the guests’ performances, out of which especially I love Stonerjazz’s vocals here very much.
2. It's Sticking Around & Worked In (Live)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 54
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musician: The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: Apr 25 2021 - Mar 19 2022
(TI writes:)
This track was originally created with the image of an opening number for a live concert.
I created it in order to get an image of the 'sound image of a live concert', for example, the atmosphere of reverb, drums and bass, which are the basics of sound creation.
In the process of creating this track, I got a clear idea of what the atmosphere of an FMT live concert would be like.
The setting of this track led to the basic setting of the other songs in the concert.
As for the music, the wind instruments of The Windscale Blues Experiment still add more dynamism to the track.
(TM writes:)
This piece was originally composed as the first track in our concert, which was the concept. The tentative title before released was “Top Of Playlist.” Without doubt for the first time, I picked this up for the top of the playlist. But in fact, I found it suitable for the top then, whereas I do not now for the top of current FMT’s playlist. It is a sort of joke not to play “Top Of Playlist” first.
I re-thought it sounds suitable, nonetheless, after The Windscale Blues Experiment added the absolutely outstanding wind parts.
3. Ascending Stairs
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 31
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: SuZanne Ledwith, The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: Jun 5 2021 - Jan 14 2022
(TI writes:)
SuZanne Ledwith joins us on this track. The Windscale Blues Experiment performs a sax solo.
We asked SuZanne to join this gig because we were going to feature this song. She liked the original and the "Downtempo" version and had commented on it, and that's how our interaction started.
So when we decided to add a new element to the song for the live performance, the idea of vocals was born and we asked her to do it.
This was the beginning of the release of "Ascending Stairs" as a SuZanne Ledwith album.
The song and the arrangement of the solo version of "Ascending Stairs" are based on this version.
In this live version, her voice has not been edited and there are very few effects. This is truly live singing.
As in her own work, the vocalist is basically recorded and mixed in various ways to make it sound "natural", but on this song she has done very little of that. Even the breathing noises are left in.
(TM writes:)
The original version of Ascending Stairs was released around November 2020. I feel it has been totally reborn with the experimental vocals by SuZanne, which I love so much, and the re-arrangement. I also love The Windscale Blues Experiment's saxophone solo, which added the depth to my re-arrangement.
Again, how the drums are played is just like my play. I do not usually design the percussion like my play; I just have done that because it's a concert album. I have found that I can join anywhere with my "digital performance" even without recording my physical performance.
We have received so many comments like "the chords are attractive" and appreciate those, but strictly speaking, TI and I wrote monophonic and dyad phrases on the scale, rather than designed the chords. We call that a methodology in "Scale Music", which enable us to write complex and beautiful "chords." I cannot name the chords in the way widely used today like "Am7", though. The structure is completely different; it is often seen in ancient music such as Gregorio Chants typically, and such harmonies cannot be realised in the tonality system that covers the world now. We wrote more details on:
Notes on the original version of "Ascending Stairs"
4. Particles Behaving Like Waves
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 41
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: Nov 14 2021 - Jan 16 2021
(TI writes:)
This song was very difficult to mix. There were just too many sounds. We changed our tone a lot from the beginning and processed it in various ways to fit in with the guests' performances.
The beginning of the song is very nice, STONERJAZZ's vocals are very good.
He plays the guitar on this song using Mellotron effector. He plays the guitar with a mellotron effector on this song, and it has a kind of "Kecak" atmosphere in human voice.
What the hell is that sound?" I've been getting a lot of DMs from people asking me, "Where's the guitar sound on that STONERJAZZ/Guitar track?" or "What is this sound?"
I deliberately broke up the beautiful phrases that are played by strings in the original song, and programmed and effected them as if they were played by a distortion guitar phrase.
I don't usually program keyboard modulation wheels or pitch benders in FMT songs, but I used them a lot in this show. This is a tribute to the YMO "Winter Live" concerts more than 40 years ago, where Ryuichi Sakamoto played Jimi Hendrix-like phrases on his Prophet 5 with a guitar effects unit. I use this tone a lot in other songs too. You can think of this as my live performance in this show.
(TM writes:)
Especially STONERJAZZ and The Windscale Blues Experiment have done brilliant jobs here.
Originally this work was designed with the concept of "Minimal But Not Repeated 2" and released in May 2021. On my re-arrangement I mainly worked on to give it a funky groove. The drums are, again, somewhat mechanical, I love to play them mechanically with preciseness. I simulated that.
In addition, the original track had only a little bass. If you later add the bass to the bass-less piece, you could easily give some different "meanings" to the piece. I must be careful not to do that, but to generate some groove that was not included in the original version. Or, I designed the bass to imply unexpected meanings.
While I selected what pieces to include in this concert series and re-arranged them, I sent the notation file to TI without saying what piece it was, just to surprise him. That is why every track has a long, unpredictable introduction, which I think is one of the greatest attractions in the concerts.
5. Things Are Unstable
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 41
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: May 19 2021 - Jan 12 2022
(TI writes:)
It starts with a hard Guitar by STONERJAZZ. The narration was made also by STONERJAZZ, while originally written by TM.
His recordings had been naturally run through an amp and effects pedal, but again I ran them through an amp simulator.
I think Studio One's amp simulator is of a very high quality. You can adjust the mic placement, the number of mics and even the distance and angle of the amp. I've never used a third party amp simulator before, but it's good enough for me.
The wind instruments are played by The Windscale Blues Experiment. He played 3 saxes in this track.
I had a lot of trouble with the mix balance of the sax on this one, once I tried to use the track he sent me as a demo track with the trio together, but I didn't have that track (it was recorded together with the drums), so I ended up using the solo track and mixed it somehow.
As for the sutra I put in the original, I programmed it as if I had scratched it with a sampler.
(TM writes:)
I selected what tracks to play for FMT's concert album and made basic re-arrangement, which I enjoyed pretty much differently from the other "studio" tracks.
Like TI explains, one of the objectives here is that we hope to listen to FMT's concert tracks, but also another is to highlight early tracks of FMT's, which have been eventually placed somewhere far below on SoundCloud now.
The track called "Things Are Unstable" was FMT's 21st work released in 2019. Originally, in this we pay homage to the Hip Hop music, where it applies the 7/8 time and 9/4 time, oddly enough.
In the original track it also picked up the samples of Buddhists' beautiful chants. But this time on the concert track, those chants have been excluded. I planned to replace them with the narration of Heart Sutra, which is considered to be the central in Buddhism. I interpreted a part of it and wrote the narration for this track.
I made a narration software play it, the same one as what was used in the original track, but I did not like it very much. Then, STONERJAZZ made it, which was absolutely splendid.
Not only in this track but in this whole concert series, I was surprised with the qualities of the live performance the guest musicians made for us like STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment, SuZanne Ledwith, and Western Bokketto. Absolutely super.
I also programmed the drums to simulate my play. It is just like mine. You might think "it's not live performance, is it?" but I would say, that is true, while it is not. But before playing the drums I always simulate what to play in my brain. If I can simulate it I can play it physically as well. If not I cannot. Thus, programming is just like such simulations; nothing is different.
If you simulated your play perfectly, would you call it your performance? FMT would say yes, because your brain certainly created it. Whether your answer might be, a big difference between the real play and simulation is that listeners will not care about whether the simulated play is technically good or bad, which has just modest meanings for artistic creations (unless listeners cannot continue listening due to the badness).
Notes on the original version of "Things Are Unstable"
6. Micro Adoromics / Live introduction / Saint-Germain-En-Laye / Member introductions (Live)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 82
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment, Western Bocket, SuZanne Ledwith
Composition and Recording period: May 20 2021 - Jan 12 2022
This track is referred to in the page of "The Root Of FMT's Styles (2016 - 18)"
(TI writes:)
This track is used to introduce the members. It too has more than doubled in length from the original arrangement.
Originally, 'Saint-Germain-En-Laye' stood alone, but as the tempo was coincidentally the same as that of Micro Adoromics, we decided to link them together in a medley format.
This song, like the others, was improvised over and over again by the live members, and kept morphing.
Western Bocket plays a very active role in this song. The swirling bassline brings a funkier element to the song, while the guitar solo is in a completely different style to STONERJAZZ, complementing each other's characteristics.
The Windscale Blues Experiment also blows the Flute throughout the song. It's a great stamina on this long song.
The heavy guitar solo, reminiscent of STONERJAZZ's E-Bow, is also a highlight.
And the best part is SuZanne Ledwith's vocal performance. She actually sings the whole song (nearly 10 minutes), and there are several different takes of the song, but we'll keep it to the ending solo part on LIVE, and release the other takes as separate songs in different versions, her own and ours.
Narration uses multiple speech software - TM has a thing for British English pronunciation, so we looked for speech software with British pronunciation.
For the medley, Narration, member introductions and solo parts, we wanted to hear a 'live concert-style production'.
The image I had in mind was the James Brown Show. But when I let the speech software speak and apply effects, it has the feel of a dancehall reggae MC. As a result, Soundcloud's 'automatic genre identification' AI seems to have recognised the track as 'Rap' and 'dancehall reggae'.
(TM writes:)
I intended to treat this track as the most entertaining one, including the introduction of the guest musicians. Groovy minimal sounds with the theme of Claude Debussy. (It’s FMT’s original work showing our love to his music, but it is not what we were going to copy from any of his works.)
The motif was put half a beat later than the original version. I used the minimal sequencer phrase instead of gamelans. The drums play almost an exactly identical pattern like a drum machine, but I like to play that way.
I had the computerised narration of my text, whch TI said that it’s like I speak, changed its accent because it had been originally very American but I could not speak English that way…
7. Where Seagulls Fly (Lovesome Liverpool)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 42
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musician: The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: May 23 2021 - Dec 24 2021
(TI writes:)
The Windscale Blues Experiment is an artist from Sheffield, but he joined us for the Liverpool song. We did not edit his performance in any way.
I programmed the piano phrases for this song based on how I would play them live.
I programmed the second half of the song and the ending as if I were improvising, quoting various phrases from other artists' songs.
(TM writes:)
Lovesome Liverpool was released in April 2019. The place of Liverpool is special to me. When I lived in Lancaster, Britain and especially when I was struggling, I often went to Liverpool, where I could be relaxed, probably because the city is a little bit like Yokohama, one of the largest port cities in Japan, my hometown at that time. Also, just before moving to Lancaster, I stayed in Dublin, Ireland and I loved to be there so much. Liverpool is a place where I can feel the Irish culture. I am also a big fan of Jürgen Klopp and his team. This work is all about my love to the city and its backgrounds.
This track uses some of the Beatles' essential features in FMT's way, to which many people (unless none) have not been paid attention so far. To my re-arrangement like that, The Windscale Blues Experiment has given "life". I love his play very very much. It's like his and my arranged digital wind instruments are making conversation.
The little quirky Irish motif has been made somewhat central and the groove, which was originally more mechanical, has been changed more human. Although the drums may still sound mechanical, I have received so far many comments on my drums that my performance is "precise like a machine". I just realised it. (It's confusing and funny to programme and let a machine play my machine-like human play, isn't it?)
I'm sorry its original version has no notes here, in that it was made before this website was opened... We refer to it a little bit in the summary page of our oldies, which is linked here, "The Root of FMT's Style."
(TM added on June 2022:)
The title of this track "Lovesome Liverpool" was rejected by the distribution system called Repost by SoundCloud and we changed it to "Where Seagulls Fly." The reason for the rejection was that we must not use "live" in the title as in "Liverpool." Absolutely ridiculous...
8. Bangriddim 594
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 47
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment
Composition and Recording period: May 20 2021 - Jan 12 2022
This track is referred to in the page of "The Root Of FMT's Styles (2016 - 18)"
(TI writes:)
The track got longer and longer as we played it, more than doubling the length of the first arrangement. This was thanks to the guest improvisations, which got longer and longer. Anyway, the laid-back STONERJAZZ guitar playing and surreal lyrical vocals, and The Windscale Blues Experiment's wind instruments in response, are excellent. The atmosphere is more psychedelic.
STONERJAZZ liked this track and we were going to call on him to play it LIVE. However, we had no idea what kind of performance or vocals we would put on it when we first asked him to do it. The crazy cutting of the acoustic guitar is very addictive on this track. It seems to have been tuned originally for this track.
His message is quoted here.
(STONERJAZZ writes:)
This has come along very nicely lots of subtle and not so subtle changes.. The xylophone is such a nice touch, and I am thrilled that The Windscale Blues Experiment is involved.. I am a big fan!!! The woodwinds really bring a nice jazzy feel to it.. I think it’s really wonderful!!! As for the chords, I tuned the acoustic guitar and the electric guitar specifically to this song because I was not getting what I wanted in a regular tuning.. So these are Open Tunings... Honestly I don't know what they are, but I have left them in that tuning, so I can research that and I will get you the tuning scheme on both guitars..... I am very pleased to hear the acoustic in this version. It sound great!!
These tuning are so subjective, that I thought the tones would be better, and I am not all that confident in my electronic tuners.. I have 2 and they don't agree.. ha ha.... so the first set of tones are for the acoustic and they go G# Bflat G# G# G# D... none of them are spot on, ... the G#s are all slight de-tuned but not quite a G and the rest need to be tweaked a bit, but this gets you in the ballpark... and then the Electric... F# F# C# F# B D#.. ALL of these are all slightly de-tuned... Both are open tunings and the best positions are just bar chords.. And Harmonics on both are nice... Not sure this will help.. But it is my best shot at it... Good luck with this...
(TI writes:)
TM’s drums are also very elaborately phrased and exquisitely groovy (594-Groove). This groove is difficult to actually beat, but even more difficult to program.
(TM writes:)
I love this early work as well, especially its concept of the combination between Bangladeshi and Jamaican music styles. I have been to neither of the countries, but I like both music traditions. “.594” in the title means it is designed to swing precisely at the timings of 0.594 (in a beat), rather than the thirds of triplets. Needless to say, I have never heard such a style of music.
When I first designed this track, I was strongly feeling like listening to its live performance in that it had much minimal and ecstatic features in its nature. I am so delighted that we have made it “alive”, together with Stonerjazz’s and The Windscale Blues Experiment's splendid performances. I really love them.
9. Mood Of Three (Live)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 31
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musician: The Windscale Blues Experiment(Sample)
Composition and Recording period: Jan 9 2022 - Mar 21 2022
The notes on the original version
(TI writes:)
This track was intended to include the saxophone of The Windscale Blues Experiment, but he was unable to participate due to circumstances, so we sampled his saxophone sound and programmed the phrases ourselves. The idea is the same as 'Primitive Dance' in this live performance. However, this song was originally a simulation of the PageR function of the Fairlight CMI of yesteryear, and by doing it live with the sound of The Windscale Blues Experiment, I think the result is interesting.
Also, this track has fewer notes than the other tracks, so I think we were able to make the mix more dynamic by making sure that each of the sounds were well produced. I particularly like the sound of the drums.
(TM writes:)
Re-arranging this piece was a lot of fun, especially its introduction. Throughout this live performance series, the first thing we did was my re-arrangement. I selected a work to pick up one by one, re-arranged in the notation software, and sent the file to TI. To surprise him was a lot of fun! That is why many tracks begin with “fake” introduction, so to speak.
I tried to emphasise the concept that the original version had: the neutral balance of jazz, electronic and progressive music. But very interestingly to me, its central concept was to make a unique groove with as many drum kits as five but I abandoned it and as a result the balance sounds quite differently. I remember I was addicted to this re-arrangement at that time.
10. Primitive Dance
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 24
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Guest musicians: STONERJAZZ, The Windscale Blues Experiment, SuZanne Ledwith, Western Boketto
Composition and Recording period: Dec 14 2021 - Dec 24 2021
(TI writes:)
This song was probably played at the end of the show or as an encore.
The supporting artists did not play this track directly, but sampled phrases played and sung on other songs by the members of the band, and used them like percussion.
STONERJAZZ noticed this immediately and complimented us on a good idea.
(TM writes:)
Primitive Dance was originally released in January 2021 with the concept of "there are a lot of unexpected irregularities, but overall it is very minimal" as well as our homage to P-Funk.
Even though the work had many irregularities and thereby complexity, I wrote it from a blank notation. Within this live concert series we worked on relatively late and my re-arrangement left a lot of space for the guest musicians' and TI's performances, which have been made eventually so great.
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