Entry of the Visitor Theme (from 'Zone')

Witten and Recorded in 1991

This tune was written for a project of students’ theatrical performance called Zone, to which I was deeply involved during the autumn of 1991. In its initial phase, we started off with gathering random ideas for the project and I wrote some original tunes in accordance with the basic scheme provided by the director, who was my close friend at that time. In its initial phase, the director established a rough sketch of storyline that involved some characters and one of them was provisionally called ‘the visitor.’ The recording of demos was not conducted under the director’s watch but at my free will and when it came to writing a theme for ‘the visitor’, I simply took the main theme, which I had already written, to be converted to its acoustic variation. In doing so, to connect the theme for ‘the visitor’ and the main theme for the storyline, I had a certain consistency through my understanding of the story, however, the director changed his mind later and decided to use only this variation at a scene of the Visitor’s entry. In the actual performance, it was a brief fragment from the mid-section of this demo recording that was played as background music to enhance the atmosphere of the scene; its footage is presented in the video from the original performance. 

Later, I converted this variation, mostly without any modification, to a part of my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling, in which, it was called Somebody to Love (Reprise).

A Tragedy - Part II: The Demon

Written in 1990 / Recorded in 1990 and 1994

A Tragedy was an instrumental composition I wrote during the summer of 1990. In those days, I was working hard for writing an essay about a German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, as a course work, and was obsessed with ideas and facts I was absorbing from various books I referred for my essay writing. One of the most impressive pieces from this research reading was a famous quote from The Joyous Science, where Nietzsche introduced his idea called Eternal Recurrence in a form of asking readers through the mouth of a knowledgeable demon.

Part II of this composition is allotted for inspiration I obtained from The Demon, who reveals his knowledge on one’s whole life from its beginning to everything that happened up to the present and would happen in the future until the death. The Demon’s entry and exeunt are described by simple but a bit ominous organ solo played in the Phrygian mode. The contents of the Demon’s revelation – in other words, the key contents of one’s life – are presented by variations of key motifs from the main body of the composition, arranged for a string quartet. As I have already mentioned, the inspirations for creating this composition all came from books written by (and about) Friedrich Nietzsche. Therefore, the composition assumes the person, to whom The Demon reveals its knowledge, is Friedrich Nietzsche himself. This follows that the contents of one’s life mentioned above are all taken from biographic information of the German philosopher, though it would be confusing a bit. 

As I said, the initial demo recording was done in the summer of 1990. At that time, I was leading a three piece band consists of a drummer, a bass player who was capable of playing the guitar and keyboard, and me on the guitar and keyboard and I arranged this composition suitable for the three of us to play as much as possible. Later, I regretted for this arrangement and re-recorded some parts of the composition with a new arrangement. The audio track of this video largely consists of the new arrangement I made in 1994.

Secret Jewellery Box (Ending Piece)

Written in 1991 and 1999 / Recorded in 1999

 

This recording was meant to be the closing section of a long composition called Secret Jewellery Box, a re-working of my old stuff under the same title I had written in 1991. The re-working never completed and the preceding section that should directly concludes to this Ending Piece was never written, because the whole recording scheme was abandoned before it reached to that point. The reason why I recorded this Ending Piece prior to other sections to be assigned in the middle was due to technical convenience – sharing the same rhythm programme with the intro section.

As far as this Ending Piece concerns, except for a subtle change I made in the very end, basically nothing new was added to the original work. For other things relating to this tune, I would like to leave them to be written down for annotations of the main body of the tune.

Borram! Borram!

Written and Recorded in 1991

 

Sometimes I compose spontaneously from the scratch, whilst in other cases I plan before I start writing. This tune was written for a planned scheme of a conceptual work, which was supposed to begin with Green and end with Red. Actually, I wrote and recorded a couple of tunes and attempted another, which was later destroyed, but further composing was abandoned. Perhaps, the failure of the third composition changed my mind to convert the planned scheme from a collection of musical works to a literary work – I still remember I used to talk about a book I was preparing to write to my close friends in those days – but, after all, even a single word was ever written. 

My interest in literature began when I first read Ulysses by James Joyce. It took me about six months to read it all through in 1988 or 1989 and knowledge I have familiarised from reading the book naturally turned my interest towards Irish culture. It didn’t take long before I picked up one of works attributed to W. B. Yeates, another famous figure in Irish literature, and dipped my imagination into the world of folklores and fairy tales. In the planned scheme, Green stood for either a state of naivety and the colour of fairies’ cloak whilst Red stood for one step before the accomplishment of Alchemy and the colour of fairies’ hat. I don’t remember how it worked with combining things related to fairies and alchemy any longer but at least, this tune was all about fairies. In this video version, I made the story that inspired for writing this tune to be shown in the screen.

         

Walking Blues #2

Written and Recorded in 1999 (or 2000)

 

Walking Blues was an instrumental piece I wrote as a part of The D-E-C-D Suite. It was just an idea to integrate a simple motif of the Suite into the chord progression of 12-bar blues. In the original version I recorded for the suite, the motif was assigned for the brass section, actually played by the synthesizer, and harmonica.

When the recording was done, I thought it would be worthwhile to make another take before deleting the backing track data completely from the digital multi-track-recorder. Since the original take was made purposefully for fitting in to the concept of the Suite, it was OK for that specific purpose but was not satisfying in terms of arrangement and its use of the guitar. 

Though I started out playing the guitar being obsessed with Blues/Rock music, opportunity for me to play genuine 12-bar blues became quite rarer by that time. As far as my personal demo recordings concern, this was the first recording of 12-bar blues since the early 1990s. In other words, since the backing track sounded quite well, as a guitar player, I suddenly felt my urge for playing the blues without being bounded by crappy self-regulations such as concept or the Suite. And here’s the result.

 

  

Am I So Wrong?

Written and Recorded in 1993

 

As a composer who mainly plays the guitar, I wrote some instrumental compositions for solo guitar. According to my self-assessment, a thing simply called ‘For Guitar, No. 1 in D Minor’, which I wrote in 1989, was the best stuff I wrote in this genre so far. Three and a half years later, when this tune was written, I thought it would be plausible to call this tune in the same manner; ‘For Guitar, No. 2 in D Major.’ The reason why I changed my mind to treat this tune not Absolute Music but Programme Music under a title of ‘Am I So Wrong?’ lied on some changes in circumstance where I lived. But I do not want to go into the detail. Instead, I would rather like to just say that I was no longer an optimistic student, who could enjoy naming my own composition in a snobbish way, by that time. One more thing I want to add to this description about the title of this tune is, that the words are specifically addressed to a girl, who made me measuring the weight of my own art/music against her value weighed on normal people's day-to-day life.  

 

Finally, I have to confess that I have borrowed some knowledge I learned by ear and gained from practicing to play Steve Howe’s Mood for a Day for writing this tune.

Dr. Tarci's Experiment (from 'Music for a Story-Telling')

Written in 1991 / Recorded in 1994

Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn’t exist long enough to perform it, or works for a students’ theatrical project that failed to feature the whole works I wrote for them when it was performed. This tune consists of re-workings of a couple of tunes I wrote for the latter. 

The initial recording of the main body of this tune, first played by the piano then replayed by the strings, didn’t go well due to a mechanical failure and my incapability at playing the keyboard. Needless to say, it was failed to be featured in the theatrical performance at that time. In this re-working, I simply converted the hand written sheet music, note by note, to a digital programme to run the sequencer. I remember there was a certain rule set for composing this quasi-classical tune but I cannot recall what it was. In Music for a Story-Telling, this tune is used as background theme music for monologues of a character called Doctor Tarci. The middle part, where the Experiment is depicted with the audio, was used in the original theatrical performance for enhancing the actors’ strange moves. 

As for the story-telling, viewers are expected to learn that even someone like Doctor Tarci, a prominent figure in the fictional regime, does not know a very simple and fundamental fact such as every life has its end and it takes him conducting this silly Experiment, and a sacrifice of innocent one’s life, to assure himself that death happens at the end of life.