Sonna Mono - Rock (Would You Mind If It Were Called Rock?)
SoundCloud:
(TM writes:)
If a particular genre of music is vividly “alive” there tend to appear various alternative sub-genres. I don’t know if there are phenomena like that in Rock in recent years (or decades). It seems to me to stay stable in what it use to be in the 1970s or 80s.
One of FMT’s values is the posture to deal with everything neutrally. We don’t hope to create only experimental music and don’t distinguish amongst the classical, rock, jazz, ethnic, electronic dance music, and noise around us, etc, etc. Appreciating influence we have had from various music, we would just like to create what doesn’t exist anywhere.
We take Rock as the theme this time. So did our past works of “Lovesome Liverpool” and “Blue Rose / Neue Rose.” Specifically, the theme of the former is Merseybeats and the latter New Wave. This work, on contrary, pays attention to “Rock that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere.”
When I say “take Rock as the theme this time” some might respond “it’s not Rock.” We know that. That kind of comments include a serious anti-artistic assumption that “past Rock is Rock” (or the same for any other genre). I understand such feelings but we would break the past style, at least in part.
I don’t know whether we will have finished an article on what is FMT’s music by the time when this page is uploaded, but it’s historically the first age that music becomes independent from physicalism. Even in the “electronic music” most works have not been free from physicalism, like a human plays an electronic instrument with his/her body. They have got physicalism before transformed into data or codes. But what FMT is doing and aiming is to process music all in codes without physicalism, from the very beginning at even composition to the point just before the listener’s earphones or speaker. We could call it “Code Music” -- or, “Codeshare Music” could be funnier.
That is also the case for this track “Rock.” The musical genre of Rock is like a symbol of physicalism. We took out all physicalistic aspects from a Rock piece, which come from intuitive movements of the player’s fingers, hands or legs. Direct to your ears from FMT’s brains. Nothing in-between but the codes.
We thus composed the original motif in a way that Rock doesn’t seem to pursue. We fixed the Rock parts like the drums, bass guitar, guitar and Rhodes (electric piano) with two players (all of whom were data that just two of us input!) playing each part a little bit improvisationally (though not on any phicalistic basis) and assumed thus that there would appear a lot of unpredictable chords, patternless phrases lacking particular tonality and scales and ambiguous transitions from section to section.
One of our intentions here is to seek a new way of the section structure. Predominantly, the music structures implicitly assume that sections should be clearly split and characterised differently. That’s fine but isn’t there any other way? We intended to make transitions before listeners recognise them. In other words, we structured to make listeners a little unable to find where it is playing and where the border is.
As I thought so many rock fans would blame us lol, I tentatively entitled “Would Be Blamed If We Called It Rock” during the production. What I found quite attractive is TI’s words, “Like an intelligent punk band Bryan Eno would produce.” Actually, I was bearing in mind Pink Floyd slightly. Oh, PF fans might blame us, though.
One of the most significant aspects in Rock is, I think, “being electric.” This track plays the beauty of electric with electrONic sounds. Rock uses such electric instruments as electric guitars, electric bass guitars, electric pianos and organs, mics, amplifiers, speakers, recorders and players so that it should enable a small group to realise huge ensemble and to maximise individual performances which attract millions of enthusiastic people.
As symbols of such electric power, I sampled the noises of several gigantic electric motors in plants, which are used in the track after mixed. Noises of plugging in a cable and touching the plug with a finger are used for percussion. Guitar squeaks are quite loud. I love them all very much.
(TI writes:)
[compositional intent]
I tried to create music that made no sense at all differently than it did, using parts of "Rock" that were "completely established in their public reputation, position and meaning. "*
*It also means "bones (of a corpse)" in the sense that the state has been completely fixed.
For me, this time, I felt like I was creating visual art rather than creating music.
For example, in the sense of "intending to exclude intention and meaning," isn't it closer to Dadaism in visual art, the Fluxus school, etc.? I was thinking, "I'm going to do this.”
Nevertheless, while it tries to eliminate meaning, the emotions find their way into the work. That's what makes it interesting, and I take advantage of that in places.
[On composing]
The phrases that make up the track are scattered around as they are (without any development or structure), the chronological development is not coherent, and the harmonies and combinations of phrases do not have a fixed focus.
By "parts with an established meaning (= "intended use")," I mean, specifically, the iconic phrase in rock.
It simulates the typical guitar riffs, cuts, etc. that "Chuck Berry" and "Keith Richards" used to play, for example.
I'm trying random combinations, and they don't harmonize at all.
Emotions come in when we intend this "non-harmonious" thing
Unlike many of my contemporaries or older generations, I have very little rock influence in my life or in my music.
Rather, the influences are music and artists like "rock as a style, but what you're doing isn't rock" and "rock frontier".
For example, in this track, Talking Heads, DEVO, DNA(Arto Lindsay), Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Pop Group, Japanese Friction, EP-4,...
It seems that they too have produced a different kind of rock style.
[Mix]
It's a lo-fi quality, but it's high-fidelity. It's ugly but beautiful. I aimed to make the music wild and elegant.
It takes the form of a rock band, but mixes it up so that each instrument doesn't or doesn't play a role in a rock band.
The whole time I was mixing it up, I wasn't sure what the right balance would be. I'm still struggling with that. I think it shows itself here.
We wrote out three different types of mixes, each with a different sound image and sound quality, and prepared stereo and mono versions of each.
A total of six different master mixes were combined into a mosaic, which was then combined with the original tracks of some of the instruments to create the final mix.
Some sound images simulate the sound of an old record, others are mono-tracked, and some sound images are mixed differently at the same time.
(TM writes:)
The superordinate title "Sonna Mono" is a sort of a lament in Japanese that means something close to "the way it is."
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