Things Are Unstable
Notes on Things Are Unstable
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-596493783/things-are-unstable
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdARNSSCvCo
(Also, the concert version of this work was released in January 2022. For further details please refer to "Leaked Live FMT".)
(TM wrote:)
Originally, we talked on working on Hip Hop because we hoped to show our great respect to the music, which is truly constructive and diverse, while we know many Hip Hop musicians listen to our tracks.
Having said that, we understand Hip Hop is never uniformalised because of its diversity and it’s obviously hard for us to “create something that doesn’t exist,” which is FURICO’s objective. We considered some form of irregular meters to be suitable just as a starting point. Actually, there are some Hip-Hop-with-irregular-meters works, but they were not very interesting. We hoped to create something we found interesting.
At the early conceptual stage there was another difficulty of “no rap.” I have heard many say “rap” virtually meaning Hip Hop. I did not feel the need and FURICO is basically instrumental. That’s why it was not quite easy for us to play Hip Hop. I thought that, however, we could develop the work further from Hip Hop, rather than play something like Hip Hop. That’s what I have meant by saying it’s just a starting point. We eventually adopted Buddhist chants, which was one of our largest developments, I think.
(TI wrote:)
When I opened the first MuseScore (notation) file TM sent to me, what soon came to my mind was “Fresh” by Sly & The Family Stone (in their album released in 1973).
The common aspects were not only the rhythms and phrases but also their boxy Lo-Fi sound (which was alleged to be by intention) and their posture as well, ie. of doing what they wanted to do just by themselves instead of doing what would sell.
In addition, there must be something with it being the first funk album in the world that uses a rhythm box*.
* ACETONE (Roland at present) rhythm box. I used to have one and was familiar with its rhythm. The first time I listened, I was so shocked that “they can make it so cool with that cheap rhythm box!!”
Notes On Each Section
Introduction
(TM) In fact we once contemplated if it was better to shorten this section. TI tried a couple of patterns but they were completely different. So we got it back and it’s what we have released now.
(TI) You may notice the three-voices sound like Hichiriki that expands wide to the right and left; I made it from scratch with the synthesizer called MaiTai included in the Studio One software: changed the pitches of two VCOs, set each of them on the right and left, supplemented white noise with the noise oscillator, and made extra AutoPanning, so that the MuseScore phrase of just one voice became more complex and richer.
Motif and chants
(TM) The first thing in this track is the four-bars pattern of the motif and rhythm. Having listened to several interesting Hip Hop works, I identified the tempo and composed the drums. Like many FURICO works, I made the motif atonal with frequent use of Suspended 2nd and 4th. I wanted it to flow attractively at the same time, which means to be far from chance music like many other works of ours (with complex arrangement made by TI).
(TM) I was responsible for the chant samples. At first we didn’t intend to adopt Buddhist chants, but I thought in the process of constructing the “Irregular meters Hip Hop” that it would really fit. Four chants are used here. Buddhist chants are so diverse - only amongst these four, the languages, rhythms and contents (lyrics) vary. I have loved Buddhist philosophies and arts since I was a student and I’m happy to adopt some into this.
(TM) The Buddhism music is basically strucutred with the veda scale, which consists of three notes, and that surpassingly fitted to the scale of the original motif. Although there is no particular scale used here, we didn’t use the chromatic scale, either, in spite of the atonality. I intended to go for oriental sounds without copying any scale of the ethnic or traditional oriental music. That’s one of the most interesting point in this track, I think.
(TI) After we discussed on the concept of the irregular meters TM suggested, my conclusion is that I shouldn’t stick to the irregular meters much. I arranged the first motif that TM made, just aiming to combine multiple rhythms, instead.
(TI) The time signature here is 7/8. You can recognise it as the combination of 3 + 4 beats (or visa versa) or as a polyrhythm of 3 beats x 8 bars (24 beats) and 4 beats x 6 bars (24 beats). As such, the 7 beats is attractive in the sense that it can be interpreted variously.
(TM) I chose 7/8 not only because it can be used for various interpretations and uses, but also because I wanted to exploit the groove of Sting’s “Love Is Stronger Than Justice”, which I think is the greatest irregular meters. Making odd beats very groovy is quite difficult, but that is superb.
(TM) We used only one sampled sound in the drum kits: a high note like the ride cymbal. It’s modified from a sound of my range hood hit with my finger.
(TI) This range hood sound was originally just a short metal noise. The sound in the track has been cut through the high-pass filter in the sampler, whereas long reverb has been inlaid. That is how we made that a clear cymbal sound unlike a cymbal.
(TI) The rhythms (from the drums & bass patterns to Electric Piano refrains) have been carefully examined. TM’s first rhythms were typical for drummers; had accents upon beat 1 (the first meter of every bar). I thought it showed stablitiy but lacked a sort of ruggedness. Then I tried to omit kicks on beat 1 and/or replace afterwards, etc, but he revised totally back my changes.
After that, I tried to make changes in the combinations between the drums and bass(es), but actually I found the rhythm patterns so well-desgined that I couldn’t even touch. For instance, even if I moved a kick backwards, there appeared a bass note. It’s just like defenders are always standing and waiting there for my passes : )
Rhythmical chants
(TM) Very unobviously, perhaps, the meters here are 9/4. I don’t know music using 9 beats. I guess there could be two-bars patterns of 4 and 5 beats, but I needed to mark off in 9 beats as it was a bit too strenuous and annoying to make two-bars patterns on MuseScore. Furthermore, we can make an attractive polyrhythms with 3 beats x 3 sets. Actually, one part here was made that way.
Back to the motif
(TM) Like every other FURICO track, the motif that appears again in this section is “patternless” as well. While it’s basically a 4-bars pattern, actually there is no repetition of the same phrase. That is because the patternlessness well reflects one of the most important Buddhistic notation of “things are unstable.”
(TM) My design here is to overlap two samples of Sanskrit and Japanese chants. So accidentally, they are entwined as if were a lead and background vocals.
(TM) I took another sampling of the voice of “Things are unstable,” the same as the title. I used a screen reader software for this voice. The software tells us the voice belongs to one Briton, Graham, according to my memory. Thanks a lot, Graham, you have a really good voice!
(TM) At the end of this section there appears a French-language narration, but I don’t understand what it means. I like very much the effects on this voice TI added.
(TI) I had a lot of trials and errors in making the sound of the voice, too. Since it didn’t sound clear as it was, it was important to adjust the balance with the background sounds. If you merely reduce the volume of the background, you must scan the bandwidth where the voice and background interfere each other, then tune the compressor in order for the volume only of the bandwidth to be reduced.
This is a technique called sidechain compression, which was originally developed for TV/radio broadcasting and films -- only when dialogs or narrations get in, the background music is made slightly softer. Today, whereas the technique is thought for the boosted bass and kick drums of Electronic Dance Music, it’s intrinsically like that.
(TI) The beats TM created was very favourable, but sound sort of ruggedless when continually running and I thought I should add some accents.
During the early minutes of relatively fewer notes, delays work as accents, whereas reverse echoes do it later. I carefully contemplated the timings, times and feedback lengths for the delays as well as the lengths and timings for the reverse echoes.
The reason I chose reverse echoes is that using delays would have been buried in the increased notes as a whole such as strings and somehow unrelenting.
I made these reverse echoes one-by-one manually by inverting every sample. On leading the echoes to the original sounds, I managed it in various manners, such as making it groovy by leaving one vacant moment, rather than just connecting them side-by-side accurately.
Towards the end
(TM) This section is again the rhythmical chants. I spent a little while to think about putting this section again at the end, but I decided to put it in as I didn’t want to finish with the motif.
(TM) We sampled the chant in the Pali language, which sounded so beautiful.
(TI) I brought two different strings motifs of 3 and 4 meters. Those sound like repeated patterns too but actually are not. They are completely patternless and one-way phrases.
(TI) This track is structured in the low sounds, comprising so many low-sound parts like two kick drums and five basses. They take place one after another or appear simultaneously -- so demanding!! I analysed and detected the most attractive bandwidths of each low part, distributed them into right and left, overlaid like a millefeuille for each bandwidth in order to avoid interferences.