The Son Of The Sun & Mercury
Notes on "The Son Of The Sun" & "Mercury"
The track called "The Son Of The Sun" was released in August 2020, for which the track "Mercury" we released in Debember 2018 was remixed together with Gary Rees' newly recorded vocals.
The Son Of The Sun (Mercury remixed with vocals) Gary Rees and FMT
SoundCloud:
Track Data
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 4 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 4 Professional
Number of tracks: 98
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Aug 15 2020 - Aug 23 2020
(TI writes:)
"Mercury" was originally written with vocals in mind. I tried to keep the range within a human's singing range, and somehow incorporated phrases that sounded like melodies. I also tried to create some lyrics (like a very silly wordplay), but I stopped there.
So, when Gary Rees said he liked the song, I asked him if he would like to sing it. We asked him to write the lyrics as well.
Although it has yet to be released, we already created a sequel soundtrack to "M To W: The Realm Of The Mother Nature" and an extra version with Gary's reading. By doing that we knew he had a marvelous voice and singing.
Having said that, I find the structure of the song very different from normal pop songs, as Gary writes below, and I thought it would be very difficult.
Presumably, it has taken a few months since he offered it to us. At times having contacts with him, I mentioned to remind him of the offer. That was because I was confident that we would be able to do something good, based on our previous collaboration.
On the other day he asked me which Mercury means, the planet or the Roman god. We made it as a song for the Planet Series, but it can have any meaning. For me, it also has the meaning of the lead singer of a famous rock band of the same name*. I told him.
* But it's not the man himself, it's a Japanese gag manga based on him. (As noted in Mercury's Notes.)
Then the lyrics for this one came up. It was very witty and the kind of lyrics I was expecting. And it just so happens that the phrase "You're King Of Queen" in the lyrics he created was the exact same phrase as a lyric that I, as a non-native English speaker, had come up with**, which surprised me.
** I took one phrase out of that stupid lyric that I came up with, and I sang it and sneaked it in. It's a play on Hitchcock's movie.
[Creation process]
I sent Gary the master track of the original song and told him that I wanted him to feel free to sing it. Shortly after I got a message that he was going to start working on Mercury, he sent me the track and lyrics with a tentative song on it.
When I heard it, I told them that it sounded great in our imaginations, that the lyrics were great and that I wanted him to keep working on it.
About two weeks later, Gary sent me a file with 10 tracks in total, including the verse track, chorus part and effects parts, along with a message saying "Feel free to use it" and "I don't mind if you don't use some of the tracks".
Especially for the verse part, as he sent me the file with each phrase, not the whole song, we were also free to cut and paste the original lyrics without regard to their order or phrases. So the lyric card and the actual song are slightly different.
He and I both like Allen Ginsberg and other beatnik writers and methods***, and I think this is similar to the Beatnik cut-up method.
*** The first time I heard his voice was in a Ginsberg reading.
First of all, TM roughly arranged them in Studio One and sent them to me with the effects applied and mixed them in detail.
In terms of location, as long as the rhythm is right, it sounds right, but it was difficult to find the right location and timing. But it was hard to get the location and timing right, because it sounds like it's there everywhere, so it's hard to tell what's right and what's not.
However, his vocal file has a good tempo and pitch, and he has already adjusted the volume and compressor on top of that, so it didn't take much time and effort to mix the vocals.
However, it took a lot of time to match the backing tracks, and we went through the mixdown process over and over again.
So we re-mixed the backing tracks themselves. We didn't add any new instruments or phrases other than the vocals, but we did cut some of the backing track parts and re-balanced them and adjusted the equalization and effects.
I side-chained the parts with vocals so that the backing track would be smaller, but in the end, I cut each phrase by hand to get a more pronounced effect.
After I finished mixing the song, I played it back on various media to check the balance, but when I was strolling around listening to it on my smart phone, I decided I wanted some kind of voice because the interludes were still in the original song.
As for the phrase, as the lyrics say, there's a part of the song called "You're Mercury" after the phrase, but I wanted to keep it simple and repeat the riff, so I intentionally cut that part.
So I stripped out each of the 8 phrases of "You're Mercury" that I cut and added them SE-style through the delay. That used up all the elements.
And while I was working on it, I remembered that the vocal version of the song had a psychedelic folk feel to it, like "The Byrds". So I added a slightly flanged chorus.
[About the mix]
In the mix, I have a habit of making the vocals louder, which has been pointed out to me several times before by other collaborators and listeners. This may be influenced by the mix of Japanese pop music from the 70's and 80's that I listened to as a child. The popular songs at that time in Japan had a great vocal balance.
At the time, the vocalist was the star of the show musically and promotionally, and was clearly separated from the backing band. Even in Japan, music fans tended to scoff at this kind of music, calling it "the balance of a songbook," but I wanted to make sure the vocals sounded good.
However, there should be still a balance in music, so I tried to get the vocals to sound properly in that appropriate place through the trials-and-errors process.
"Loud" and "solid sound" are not the same thing.
(Gary Rees writes:)
I was honored to be asked again, by the mighty musical talents of The Furico Music Team, to work with them on another piece. The vessels they build, the crucibles for their musical engine, the means by which TI and TM set off on a voyage of musical exploration… it's always remarkable, exceptional, and sui generis. So it was when I listened to their online post of Mercury, an earlier version that transported me where only FMT can, along a tantalizing and challenging path toward the light.
The team asked if I would sing, if I would add some lyrics and vocals. Although I've spent many years singing and have written a small number of songs for which I wrote lyrics and a vocal line, I thought this song was not going to be in any way simple. As with all FMT pieces, there is no simple structure like verse/chorus/bridge.
The chord progression was not strung along a basic progression like 1-4-5. I guess I could have written a complex line, like something from a John Adams opera, and sung it from sheet music. I opted instead for a more spontaneous, half-sung, half-spoken approach to something approximating verses. Then I donned my choirboy cap and sang a soaring line for the main theme that doubled what FMT had crafted as a coda of sorts. At which point, some great fun ensued. I recorded several parts in which the lines "Son of the sun" and "You're mercury" were delivered in repetition with some experimental FX added.
So, while I passed up the opportunity to invent a true melody worthy of Mercury, I believe the variety of vocal elements I recorded for this proved to be of good service to this excellent song. And I must give credit, of course, to my esteemed co-writers for their excellent work weaving my vocal lines into a new mix. The best that one can ask from a collaboration of this nature is that the overall work is improved and given new life by virtue of combining elements. I'd like to think this joint effort has.
Lyric
When you're the son of the sun
When you're planet number one
You're Mercury
When you're the king of Queen
Lost too young from the scene
You're Mercury
If you go by H.G. (not Welles)
[NOTE: In English, the symbol for the element Mercury is HG]
And you answer to number 80
You're Mercury
When Venus is following you round
88 days but you're never found
You're Mercury
If it's 1959 in the U.S.
[NOTE: Project Mercury was the U.S. space program before Apollo]
And you're after a trip into space
You're Mercury
If you're Roman and of the gods bred
With wings on your feet and your head
You're Mercury
Quicksilver is sometimes your name
You're deadly to drink all the same
You're Mercury
If it's the paper in Silicon Valley
[NOTE: There are a few newspapers in the U.S. and U.K. called the Mercury]
Or in Somerset it's what's to read
You're Mercury
(TM writes:)
Gary's writing and singing are truly fantastic. The original concept of "Mercury" was just one chord using the second and forth notes frequently, as if it presented a fictional "Mercury's folk song." Gary gave an expressive interpretation of a certain story, which I found so great.
If you have a listen to "Mercury" you will not find out any story. It's like zero gravity and like neutral forever. Those are our intention, but this time, as TI mentioned above, I managed to locate Gary's vocals to highlight the story they gave to this track. (Interestingly, since Mercury is one-chord track, every vocal would be locatable in any way.)
The outcome was amazing. It sounds like "Mercury" was sequenced from its beginning as the intro, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus... etc.
I entitled this as "The Son Of The Sun" simply because I love the phrase in particular, and also because I was inspired to some extent by (the British band) Japan's "Sons Of Pioneers" and "European Son" in composing Mercury.
Notes on "MERCURY"
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-596493783/mercury
YouTube: https://youtu.be/mD3Puqlp9PQ
We created this track in December 2018.
(TM writes:)
Had a title before composition
What triggered this was a comment from one listener to our past work “Pluto,” saying “I like it. Don’t you make other tracks for each planet in the solar system?” I thought it was an excellent idea!!
Actually I love astronomy and cosmophysics very much. Although for all those interested in music are not necessarily interested in them, but let me just start the notes with talking a little about Mercury, please :)
Mercury is the small, light planet closest to the Sun. Its revolution period is as short as 88 days (from the Earth’s viewpoint), and a year has just 1.5 days (from Mercury’s); the planet axially rotates 2/3 as short as the revolution.
The track of “Pluto” was, on the other hands, accidentally named as “Pluto” (on which I’ll write it later in details). So “Mercury” is perhaps our first and only work that had a title before composition.
I wanted to take up Mercury because it’s the nearest to the Sun in contrast with the farthest (dwarf) planet Pluto and its characteristics of the quickness, lightness, heat, brightness of the Sun and so on would fit with FURICO-MT’s music.
I had an image of “woozy between melodies and no melodies, between shifts and just one chord, between tonal and atonal, and between mechanical rhythms and human ones.” I had this for almost all the FURICO works, but especially that time I felt we could realise it well.
I remember I got the framework of this track done very quickly (as below), and later TI further developed it. The work-in-process title was “Bottomup,” meaning creating from rhythms first to melody-like phrases at last.
This track uses only the chord of “F sus2&4” meaning the Suspended (without A/Ab and almost C of 5th) 2nd (G) and 4th (Bb) notes.
Since I was a teenager, I was (and am) a big fan of a British band called Japan. Its drummer Steve Jansen is definitely the largest influencer with my start of drumming at that time, when I was playing keyboards.
This track took his style at his days at Japan in it: mechanical 16-beat high hats, the super combination of open and closed high hats, tom-based patterns, no kicks and cymbals on beat one, snairs repositioned from the back beats, etc. Of course, I didn’t intend to copy his style, though.
Having made the drums “Japanese,” TI and I fooled around on the other parts. With a lot of love and respect for them, we made a melody like “Gentlemen Take Polaroids,” a bass line (as well as drums) like “Still Life In Mobile Homes” and so forth.
(TI writes:)
Background and influence
This track is influenced by JAPAN especially in the sound part as TM writes, but I found that the process was different from TM. However, it is very interesting that the place where it arrived is the same even if the circumstances are different.
I suggested to TM, "How about making a song as a planet series?" But I myself had little knowledge or interest in the universe, and I could never imagine what it might be, even if it was said to be an image of Mercury. So I was writing songs with a nonsense worldview while being aware of the Japanese "gag manga (comics)" described below.
Composing
The melody and harmony are, as the TM has written, conscious of the scales used in the early music of England such as Sus 2 and, in turn, the atmosphere of the Beatles around Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When I think about it later, I felt like it was the prototype of "Lovesome Liverpool".
As mentioned above, I tried to create a Beatles-conscious phrase for melodies like "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" that TM says. When it was replaced with marimba, it was "Oh, that's what it feels like ”Gentlemen Take Polaroids". I was not conscious of "Gentleman..." from the beginning. It was a moment when I found something similar to JAPAN and The Beatles.
The rhythm that is the prototype of the hi-hat of 16 beats was originally created by me, but it also adopts the rhythm style of JUJU represented by African popular music such as King Sunny Adé.
The rhythm of the hi-hat I put in was a simpler, flatter image of a preset rhythm machine as used in African popular music. TM has developed it into more complex rhythms. Similarly, on organ-like sounds is also their influence.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, the development of one chord is probably influenced by African music rather than directly in the universe.
JAPAN is also influenced by African music, but I think that I was directly influenced this track by the aforementioned King Sunny Adé and Fela Kuti, rather than through JAPAN. However, it is very interesting that we came to the same place although the source of the idea is different.
Sound making
I struggled with the sound creation to create a sequence of sixteenth notes that are split left and right, "like the space tweets" coming out of places. Initially it was a normal hi-hat, but the TM was stuck to that sound, and I created a sound that floats up and down through the filter to the sound that resonates with the sine wave and noise of the synth. TM is very strong in this sound, he referred to various songs. I had a hard time making sounds. However, I think that this sound is accented.
Actually this track was intended for vocals
And this song was intended to be a vocal song in the first place, I was thinking about the lyrics. Because at that time, I got a condenser microphone and audio interface at the Presonus sale.
It was a very nonsense lyric that would not be written here. Characters that appear in "Japanese gag manga". It is a surrealistic and psychedelic thing that sang "The Freddie (with the same name as the title of this song, with the motif of the vocalist of that world famous band)" and the manga world.
https://storgram.com/post/BvEGE0Fl6qW
I intended to put a Beatles-style chorus on this. And after all, that condenser microphone has not been sealed yet. When will it be cut?