Saint-Germain-En-Laye
Notes on "Saint-Germain-En-Laye"
"Saint-Germain-en-Laye: Cadence"
(TM)
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is the name of a city near Paris, France. Both of us have never been there before, but we entitled this track after the city because it’s Claude Achille Debussy’s birth place, ie, what he saw in his youth. Two of us have been greatly influenced by his music and have huge respect for him.
But at the same time we don’t like imitating his work. We couldn’t do so even if we wanted to. We concluded we should “draw what he saw” rather than “draw his figure.”
“What he saw” means our interpretation of the essence of his music. In brief, it’s to go back and forth over the border: for instance, between tonal and atonal, and between rhythmical and rhythmless.
(TM)
Although FURICO often releases two versions of one piece, that has been never our intention from the start. Just an accidental idea. That is the case for Saint-Germain-en-Laye” as well.
(TI)
In this version I wanted to take care of "Acoustics".
For that reason, I avoided using percussion sounds and thought to create rhythms with pitch instruments.
Also, regardless of the rhythm at regular intervals, I tried to change the tempo according to the sound.
The phrase of the piano was created by TM, and I wrote the sub-melody of strings and noises that intertwine with it.
While using tonal instruments, I did not care about tonality and pursued beautiful sounds.
(TM)
I composed the piano motif of 18 bars. Just a little I explain here “to go back and forth over the border.”
As the score shows above, the first notes have C as what seems like the key along with its 2nd, 6th and major 7th notes, but without the 3rd and perfect 5th, so that they sound somewhat Oriental on the slightly western basics and a little bit of anxiety or unstability.
The notes last 7 beats but the components gradually disappear. On beat 5, E appears to imply the major tone only on the reverberant notes.
On beat 8, the chord changes to something like B sus4 7 with 2, and the major 3rd (D#) appears next on the declining reverberant. Same structure.
As for the lengths, the former notes hold on for 4 beats before E, in which the length of the bar (or beat cluster) is relatively clear. but E lasts 3 beats and the latter 7 beats (3 + 4), which causes the beat clusters to be ambiguous.
I do not care if it’s like Debussy or not, but my intention was that something that reminds us of him goes back and forth over the border. “Back and forth” is, in this case, Oriental/Western, suspended/major tones (atonal/tonal), or clear/ambiguous meters.
(TM)
On the other hand, a sort of piano piece was not what we wanted to form. Therefore, this phrase was made up without changes in the touches and with effects.
(TM)
I’m so delighted and grateful that many listeners prefer the rhythm of “Cadence.” I like it, too.
Basically I planned syncopations on the bass and drums to highlight the contrast with the slow and down-beat piano motif. Or, mechanical versus human.
I usually position high hats to intensify the groove or momentum, but didn’t in this track. That was because I wanted to leave such long-and-soft-note sounds as the piano and strings prominent.
We first built up “Acoustics” having no bass and drums and put them on afterwards. The tempo was unchanged at 110 BPM or so. Then TI suggested to change it to much faster around 130. That was a breakthrough for “Cadence.” Feels far better.
In this score the top is bass. The bottom is drums. Based on this two-bars pattern.
There is no note on beat 1, and it can be said that accents lie on beats 2 and 4 (with the snair) or off beats 2 and 4 (with the bass and kick). The reason is that the piano motif sounds mostly on beat and the rhythm notes alter on and off the beat: nothing on beat 1, an accent on beat 2, something changed on beat 3, and an accent on beat 4 again. Especially on beat 3, there are a high-hat and delayed bass in bar 1 while no bass and only a kick in bar 2. Alternations.
Alternations were intended for off the beat as well. Off beat 1, there is a kick in bar 1, but nothing in bar 2. Off beat 2, it’s accented. Off beat 3, nothing in bars 1 and 2. Off beat 4, there is an accent in bar 1 whilst only the bass in bar 2. Alternations like this.
Also, there is another alternation in the combination with the piano motif. The piano is on the bass/drums note, and then the piano sounds solely. Repeat this.
Sorry it might be too detailed… Anyway, in a way like this we designed “alternations” in this track, ie, another interpretation of going back and forth over the border.
(TI)
About metal percussion. The sound of striking metal percussion played from left to right in Cadence is an image of "gamelan".
One of the pleasures of music that we think of is "shift" and "syncopation" (which does not mean only rhythm*), but the music and rhythm of gamelan are just what embodies it. We wanted to incorporate that element.
* It includes not only musical aspects such as the pitch and sound but also society, history, culture, some common sense and insane.
When this was first expressed by TM as a note, we felt that "This is it!!" "This is the key in Cadence", carefully assembled the note, and further processed it acoustically* in StudioOne.
* Gate with dotted notes, adjust delay and reverb processing for each place, etc.
(TM)
Alternations and syncopations as I have discussed above are also used for the gamelans.
We had two purposes to bring them into this track. One is to take place of a high hat in order to make more groove or momentum. The other is to have what signifies South East Asian music as “what Debussy saw.” He was also a researcher of the region’s music.
(TI)
On piano processing. As TM says, "We did not intend to create a piano song for this track," though we use the piano tone, but this time we did not need an expression method.
In addition, the piano is emphasized for a moment around 1 min 40 sec and 2 min 51 sec, which is alteration of the sound of the piano like TM says.
I tried to emphasize the “feeling of being alternated." The proposal of TM was to emphasize in the note unit of the bar of piano. Since we create songs with musical scores, it is not difficult to emphasize just that, but merely making the sound louder causes various inconveniences.
So, I made a separate track and tried to make the sound that the TM imagined by making trials and errors by combining PAN, effects, EQ, etc.
This proposal is what I did not notice. However, there was a discovery that "I see! That's it!"
In this way, it is possible to create new boundaries by combining the imaginations of multiple people. This is also one of the joys of co-production.
(TI)
In terms of the sound aspect, harmonies such as "dissonance" and "non-tonality" sometimes produce unintended sounds of fun, but in many cases they do not have the intended sound.
To overcome that, we used the various sound processing functions of DAW (Studio One) to create the intended sound. For example, from 3 min 20 sec to ending. If you created this only with Musescore (musical score creation software), the sounds will interfere too much, and the goodness of the combination would be greatly diminished.
These were adjusted, for example, to minimize interference and make the pitch and sound of each sound, by using, for example, “ equalize each sound, and panning”. (This is very similar to DUB's method. I like DUB very much).
So far, composition and arrangement, mix, and mastering were separate things, but we managed them and recognized that it was difficult to create FURICO's music if it was not "coming and going". Not only the border, tonality and beat, but also the production process should come and go.