Light Through Leaves
Notes on "Light Through Leaves"
From the series of "Placid Wanderings"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional, Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 52
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Aug 6 2022 - Dec 12 2022, Apr 30 2023
Complicated monophonic instruments in 6-6-4 beats pattern
(TM writes:)
You might say it's like jazz, like ambient music, like industrial music or like something else. Yes, to some degree. But, unfortunately to me, there didn't exist specifically this kind of music, even though I hoped to listen to. That's why I first composed it early in August 2022.
The tentative title when I composed this piece was "6-6-4", meaning it's based on a pattern of 6 beats, 6 beats and 4 beats. The rhythm sounds odd enough but actually the 6-8 time is quite normal and so is the 4-8. Just for my convenience I wrote a notation in the 4-4 time, where one set of the 6-6-4 pattern was settled in two bars. 6 eighths + 6 eighths + 4 eighths = 16 eighths, which is two bars in 4-4. The claps were added so that those could imply that the length of one pattern was 2 bars or 16 eighths.
If you feel the rhythm is somewhat strange but not too unnatural, that's because it's structured in 6-6-4 or, in other words, the combination is odd while the rhythm itself isn't an odd time.
Experimental? It could be. But in fact my experiments are centred on another structure. In the notation my notes reads:
"The guitars and pianos are basically monophonic, with different sounds played at different times. It's like scale music, but it's assumed that the scale will change rapidly without deciding on a particular scale and the other parts follow it. Then the harmony exists, but it is constantly changing. I want to use the word or meaning of colours or light in the title."
So, just like light or colours, the tones and harmonies are always changing and you can hardly "grasp" them. We FMT have a past track called "Things Are Unstable"*, but this track is really unstable... or something intangible.
* There is no writing on Things Are Unstable since it was released before we started this website, except in the page of the album "Real & Unreal." I refer to the work in Section "5", which is linked here.
This work uses four pianos and three guitars, all of which are monophonic except in the interlude. You could say it's playable on just one piano and only one guitar since both of the instruments are polyphonic. That might be true but I'm not sure. The timings of every note are quite complicated and the slight changes occur very frequently. Human players have to memorise the whole but that should be extremely hard, I imagine, even if they don't have any problem with fingering.
The interlude is only one exception. I made this section in November 2021 under the title of "Guitar Scale Arpegio", which was then more funky. I arranged it to fit into Light Through Leaves. But having a listen to Guitar Scale Arpegio now, I like to make it some very different way.
I like the interlude a lot because, for example, the first chords are very, very complex but very attractive. One guitar plays Fsus4, while another does something like A-flat M7 (with 3rd omitted). The fourth on F plays a role as the ninth on A-flat (which is B-flat). The tension note of the major seventh on A-flat plays a role as, again, the ninth on F (which is G). But madly enough(!!), a guy called TM put the bass on D-flat. He's just mad. The augmented fourth sounds beautiful rather than dissonant, whereas D that another guitar plays in arpegio sounds rather sad and elegant rather than dissonant. I love such wonder.
I'd like to add just one more thing, the groove. The central rhythm is 6-6-4 as mentioned above, but the percussion plays in 4-4 instead. It's a little like a polyrhythm, but I'm not sure if I can say it's polyrhythmic. Well, I would name it an alternative polyrhythm. The 4-4 rhythm on the percussion is designed to be zero-groove, meaning very mechanical. But all the sounds in this piece including the percussion are played on acoustic instruments only. A similar design is shown in our past track called "Me And My Shadow."
A long, long time ago, I went to a show by Miles Davis's band. This work reminds me of that, though the music is far different, of course. That show was held in August and that might have led me to write this (in the same hot month). I can't make sure.
I have to admit that Light Through Leaves seems to have something like jazz, not because this is based on jazzy structure -- it isn't at all actually -- but because this is what we call scale music. Modal jazz may be the only one genre of music that centralises the scales/modes in the recent music and that should be why this track reminds me of modal jazz, reasonably enough.
But, this is something I haven't told even TI so far; my worry while producing it was whether it too much resembles some modal jazz, specifically, John Coltrane (even though it doesn't contain a saxophone solo). I tried to make it getting far from his music. I love Miles's and John's music, anyway.
At the beginning when I started to write this text, I was feeling "there are just a few things I can notify..." but now I've forgot that. I can't stop myself writing. I've remembered that excitement.
Mixing
(TI writes:)
This track took more than half a year from completion to release, during which time I listened to it many times and re-mixed it.
Also, Studio One was updated to version 6 during the process, which has more functions (especially more precise adjustment of localization), and there were times when I had to redo the mix to take advantage of these functions.
The TMs also made detailed requests centered on volume balance, and we repeatedly worked to realize these requests and balance the sound without causing musical breakdowns.
For the balance, we not only adjusted the volume for each phrase, but also the EQ and compressor.
In addition, we not only adjusted the individual parts, but also combined the individual parts into Bus channels according to their acoustic and phrase characteristics, and used compressors to adjust the sound quality of each channel so that they would sound cohesive.
For example, the part played in the back has a slower attack and a longer release, so that the phrase itself can be heard even though it does not stand out.
For the bass drum and the bass guitar, which are considered to be the core of the rhythm and acoustics, the sound image of the bass drum is narrowed down and the attack is emphasized, and for the bass guitar, the low frequencies of the other parts are cut to support the bass sound, and the bandwidth below the bass drum is emphasized.
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