Leaked Live FMT 2
Notes On Leaked Live FMT 2
1. 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.
2. Micro Adoromics / Live introduction / Saint-Germain-En-Laye / Member introductions (Live)
For SuZanne Ledwith's version of "Saint-Germain-En-Laye" called "Somewhere I've never been - Saint-Germain-En-Laye" please see this page.
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, about which 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…
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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