Train From The Airport
Notes On "TRAIN FROM THE AIRPORT"
(From the series of "Placid Wanderings")
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 49
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Jun 3 2023 - Jun 12 2023
Acid-Jazzy digital music that doesn't sound "electronic"
(TM writes:)
It's one of our endeavours to make minimal music more attractive and more interesting musically. It is so throughout this series of "Placid Wanderings." To do that, particularly in this piece, it's been made acid-jazzy to some extent.
In my view, as I might have written about similar things somewhere else, the electronic music tends to be very electronic in general; I mean it sounds electronic. In other words, it still remains as it was after rapidly developed in the 1980s. Although I understand what such musicians like to make, they have been allowed to do much much more various things thanks to the technological evolution. "Electronic" was supposed to be just a means, rather than a narrow and closed genre.
Many rock musicians start to create "what is thought to be rock" since they just love the existing rock. That's fine, but can't be new. And that's also the case in the electronic music.
Musicians equipped with synthesisers and samplers in general have tendencies to make music that is extremely electronic. I like it but it may sound more natural and may be something that widens the existing ways.
Also, there are countless electronic works for chill-out like meditation. That's great too, but very, very few of them are interesting enough musically.
"Train From The Airport" is a challenge of ours to such things by making it sound natural and relaxing.
This is chordal, even though we often avoid (heavily) chordal music. What appear first in the track is a sort of the main motif with a chord like G# on C#. In other words, it's C# with the 5th, major 7th and 9th. Then it goes to something I can't name... D# with the 6th and major 7th but without the 3rd... something like that. So, it has a lot of tensions and thus mild, modern harmonies, but it's still slightly atonal, I mean, without the 3rd notes. But it's unbelievable that it's atonal, isn't it? That's what I wanted -- something that sounds almost natural and relaxing but a little bit differently- or weirdly-structured, which is very FMT-esque.
In the middle of this piece I made a quick phrase on an oboe, which I like a lot, but one day during the production I wondered that that didn't contain intervals enough for breath. No, it didn't, of course, but that doesn't matter at all anyway because it is a digital oboe. I knew that but I just liked to make them because it made me imagine the player. It seems like I would choke her/him. When I talked about that to TI, he said like "what are you talking about!?" But just think about it. The composer eagerly thinking about making breath intervals for a wind instrument has become now "ridiculous." It's just funny, isn't it?
(TI writes:)
Composition
The score that TM sent to me was very complete, so I just added some phased synth string phrases for sound effects.
However, in parts where the pitches did not match the instruments specified by TM, I changed the instruments, or took the phrases apart and applied the instruments that matched the pitches.
Mixing
The finished image (sound quality and texture) was intended to be a "digital version of 70's fusion". Or a fusion of live music and industrial music.
Also, in terms of sound quality, the original creative image of TM was Acid Jazz, and I was conscious of the atmosphere of the MO'WAX label of yesteryear.
I also had an image similar to the type of music called "Balearic," so I envisioned dance music with Chill Out elements.
I put together an On/Off sequence of train noise as specified by TM. This ensures that the train noise is perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of the drums.
After re-reading the production notes for this song, I realized that the production time was quite short for us (9 days).
It is by no means a simple or easy song, and I remember that it took a good deal of time and effort to program the train noise.
As we listened to it again, we would find things we wanted to tweak, but we did very little of that, and even in the final check before release, we didn't make any changes. Perhaps this may be the song that took the fewest twists and turns of all the FMT songs.
The possible reasons are that "the image of completion was clear," "the musical structure itself is an existing genre," and the method and theory of mixing were well established. The only deviation from the theory was the mix with train noise, where there was some trial and error, but in other words, that may have been the only part.
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