The Root Of FMT's Style
This article shows you the history of FMT's style being developed along with the Team's classic sources.
The Start Only With MuseScore
The FURICO Music Team started music activities in June 2016, when the Team only used a free notation software, MuseScore.
TM: Beginning with Reflexion (remixed later) and Early Exit (Notes), every piece was so intense and unforgettable, but our experimentalism became stronger gradually. In that sense, Pluto was a little big shift.
One of the experiments in it was a challenge to the rhythm. People recognise the time distance between “this tone” that has just sounded and the previous one as a rhythm. They then expect the next one to sound after the same distance, which is a beat.
But what if the tones do not sound on beat? For instance, the first tone sounds slightly late from the exact beat and the next one slightly early from it. If no tones sound on beat precisely, what is the “beat” after all?
That was Pluto’s question. In the track all the tones that seem to show the rhythm are an illusion - located off the "beat" actually. (For details see the Notes.)
Pluto
TM: In terms of the beat, Bangriddim 594 was also a unique track. It's a mixture of a Bangladesh folk song and Riddim (ie, a sub-genre of Reggae), in which the swing or shuffle beat locates most of the tones at 0.594 beats. Although there are many rhythm machines that can alter the degree of the swing beat, we found 0.594 so suitable for many types of ethnic music.
Besides, being patternless has been a central style of FMT since that time.
On Bangriddim 594, FMT wrote the notes later.
Bangriddim 594
Studio One was Installed
From “Re-Views” to “Roses” it seemed another period when FMT began to supplement the production process with a DAW software, Studio One.
TI: FMT transferred from only MuseScore to a free Studio One Prime (S1P) around late 2016 when we were to work on Re-Views. At that time it was just replacement and mixing of the sounds with S1P. The sounds and effects were so simple and thus mixing was not difficult at all.
TM: On Re-Views I wanted to make an ambient piece, making most of TI's motifs. It seems to me now that the track uses so many chordal parts and challenges the notion of the melody. But it's structured in a traditional form like the drums, bass, chords and solo part.
Re-Views
TI: After then the software was upgraded, which hugely expanded the possibilities. We tried to do various complex things and reached a peak when making “Blue Rose / Neue Rose” in early 2017.
Only a few (if any) creators could use more of Studio One than FMT, I would think.
TM: The Rose series is very fun and funny to me. It's nothing but the sound of New Wave (or British Invasion) in the 1980s, which we love a lot, but New Wave cannot be like this in part, which is so funny. It's a serious parody, or a practical parody, I would say. It shows many typical phrases but then those get off to something tricky. On the other hand, the drums do not get off from New Wave at all, but FMT never design percussion that way in the other tracks. I imagine it might be hard for everyone to understand FMT's sense of humour like this, but if you do, welcome to the club!
Neue Rose
After this, while TM had some break between 2017 and 2018, TI created works including "Family Trip" (by himself; see the Notes) and "Vamos Do-Re-Mi" (with his daughter; see the Notes).
Considerable Shifts in the Composition
It was an important period, when we changed composition especially of Scale Music released in November 2018. FMT’s style being exhibited today was established around that time.
TM: After the break, I planned to make an experiment into practice, which I had been developed in my mind for five or ten years. That is what I called the scale music.
A saxophone part plays in C Ionian Mode, for example, whereas the second part in the clarinet appears in D Dorian Mode. The combination shifts afterwards to C Lydian and D Mixolydian and gets thereafter more complicated. The combination would generate unheard complex harmonies. That’s how the track “Scale Music” was constructed.
Of course, the scale music in general means music following one particular scale such as Gregorian Chant. But by the scale music we meant music comprising the combinations of two or more scales.
TI: We changed the composition in Scale Music to aggregates of monophonies and unintended harmonies, which today's FMT have on its ground.
Also, that track has few tones and a rule of using only acoustic instruments. I planned to learn the mixing procedure systematically and did a variety of attempts. It’s to standardise preparation (to put the Fat Channel and EQ onto all the tracks) for an individual track base. Then, create the sounds, fix them, and afterwards adjust the whole. That makes the total sound clear and settled; Scale Music is typical.
On making the track, Studio One was upgraded to version 3, which improved the user-friendliness and sounds further.
Scale Music
The period of FMT’s composition shift continues, when monophonic construction was developed in “Life In Hanno” and basically just one chord was used in “Mercury.” Dyads and polyrhythms were centred in "Testing Combinations And Flows Of Dyads," released in 2019.
Furthermore, FMT featured such particular artists every piece as Tchaikovsky, Debussy and The Beatles: “Corps De Ballet”, “Saint-Germain-En-Laye” and “Lovesome Liverpool”, respectively, all released in early 2019.
Life In Hanno
TI: The way of making sounds I established in Scale Music is virtually the same as today’s. I opened the file of Life In Hanno, and found it very easy to check the mixing. We began to use new-version Studio One and that resulted in far improved sounds.
One of the biggest differences between Scale Music and Life In Hanno is that I operated the waveforms in the latter while not in the former track. That is the same as today’s way of ours, too.
TM: Several things we did in “Life In Hanno” had a large impact to me as well. Firstly, we structured similar motifs on various parts in a canon-like form, which might be our very early work to apply a counter-point.
Secondly, the original motif is another monophonic motif that TI hallucinated and we treated it as an intermediate phrase. That sounds dramatic to me.
Thirdly, as for the beat, we aimed at a mechanical beat with a little bit human one, but it’s not easy in general to make such a groove on 80 BPM with drum machines. There is, moreover, no rhythm pattern and the percussion is entwined with the monophonic phrases. That was very new to me.
"Saint-Germain-En-Laye", the track of FMT's homage to Claude Debussy, was another turning point.
Saint-Germain-En-Laye
TI: An impact of Saint-Germain-En-Laye (SGEL) on us was the use of the phrase generating function of Studio One and the dub methods like a heavyweight bass of sine wave.
I used the phrase generating function just for extra groove, rather than for generating a phrase. But it was finely manipulated after generated automatically. It was our very first time to realise that sort of groove.
I had heard about the technique of supplementing the bass with heavyweight sine wave, but I learned at this timing. The key is managing the bandwidth.
Similarly, I set a one-off delay for a particular waveform for the first time, which is also a dub method. It’s very interesting that the dub methods fit our music very well. If they are applied radically, comprehending the acoustics logically is an essential requirement. It’s hard to deal with them intuitively, actually.
TM: SGEL is also important to me. There is only a single tempo and beat, but there are two types of momentum at the same time: The piano (with strings) and rhythm parts like the bass, drums and gamelans. Since SGEL I have taken a structure like that for such tracks as Vista At Takeoff/Landing, Deconstructing Motown, It's Sticking Around & Worked In, and Hyper Chase For The Ruins.
For the other details please see the notes on SGEL.
Testing Combinations And Flows Of Dyads
(TM writes:)
"Testing Combinations And Flows Of Dyads" is perhaps another work in the Composition Shift period as well as another important work for me. Every track is important, of course, but this is especially so. I know such an academic title in a way does not attract SoundCloud listeners at a glance, but it was actually a big next step to me.
I came up with an idea of using dyads (two-note chords) as shown in the notes, so that it should enable us to make harmonies and phrases unintended.
"Unintended" ones FMT often aim are completely different from improvisation. As a matter of fact, all our tracks are programmed with the notation scores and do not contain improvisation at all. I like improvisation in theatre arts and music but it heavily depends on what I call physicalism. I mean, what detemines physicalistic art works is the physical conditions and constraints like the performers' techniques, experiences, physical habits, instruments, site, acoustics, audience and whatnot. I'm not going to say it's non-sense but it's just one way.
Just one way but it's all the way so far. There must be something suitable for the 21st century (or the 2000s) and that is what FMT is pursuing with great help of technologies. (For more details please refer to "What Is FMT's Music?")
Atonality, complex beauty and unintended harmonies were experimented in this track.
Collaborations
In 2019 and 2020 FMT started to create many collaborative works. For instance, the contemporary dance film artists called Sagi Tama asked us for the sound tracks of their dance film, including "Sound Track One For M To W: The Realm Of Mother Nature," for which Gary Rees joined us. Gary and FMT have made many joint works since then.
FMT rearranged and remixed Mirjam Keijnemans's song called "Lying On The Beach" under the title of "Recamouflage."
There are many other collaborative works made along with Echo Garage, Allen Anderson (in "Alaska") and EmmaJack (in "Climbing") in those years, through which FMT broadened the musical style.
(Although some of these tracks were released in the collaborators' pages on SoundCloud, which are conjoined in the extended play "Collaborations.")
To be continued.
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