Hooray!

Written in 1989 and 1990 / Recorded in 1990

This tune was originally written for an abandoned conceptual work, which was supposed to deliver a story, in the summer of 1989. In that conceptual work, this tune was given a role to put a twist in the storyline that would cause a bitter split between the main characters. Its original lyrics also referred to a new guitar I actually bought at the time when the story was set, a few years before the writing of the conceptual work and some other trivial things surrounded me back in the days. I do not remember if the original demo already featured the analogue synthesizer played in its arpeggio mode since the abandoned work was entirely destroyed, anyway this might be my first attempt to synchronise programmes made on different machines; the rhythm set for the arpeggio mode on the analogue synthesizer, and a digital programme provided by the rhythm machine. Though this was relatively a primitive attempt that required little accuracy in terms of synchronising, I think the result was not bad for the first attempt at this sort of things.

Another unique ingredient in this tune is an attempt to insert something sounds like Scottish/Celtic theme in the middle and in the end. Again, I do not remember whether this theme was already featured in the original demo or not, but at least I can say that my interests in traditional music might have been linked to a collaboration album by Van Morrison and the Chieftains called Irish Heartbeat, which was originally released in 1988. It was one of my favourite albums back then, along with some Jethro Tull albums that had similar taste and a CD album full of Scottish bagpipe music. 

For making this video, I used some photos taken at the Fujiidera Stadium, Osaka, when I went there with my friends for watching a baseball game in the autumn of 1989, in order to make the tune sounds a bit like sport-inspired stuff.

A Tragedy - Part V: Collapse

Written and Recorded in 1990

 

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. Along with his philosophical thoughts, I was also quite impressed by Nietzsche’s biographic profile; especially over his fanatically busy writing in his later life as a sane man that resulted in his dramatic mental collapse on January 1889. 

Part V of this composition is designed to focus on the moment of his mental breakdown. Its external bizarreness – the incident took place in the street of Turin – is depicted by rough sound of the analogue synthesizer whilst the protagonist’s inner world is assumingly reconstructed by the middle sections, which provide victorious harmonies and even an uplifting piano solo that may indicate that his external insanity might have been a joyous liberation for his inner self. The piano solo section is written in an unusual time signature of 15/16 because this kind of joy of liberation should not be treated in a usual manner.

Goodnight

Written and Recorded in 1993

I have written a handful of saying-goodnight themed tunes and perhaps this one was the latest stuff so far. These tunes were all associated or furnished with mixture of Jazz and Blues elements and so was this. When I wrote this tune, I had a particular place and a person in my mind for saying goodnight. As for the latter, I was still connected with that person but as for the former, I had just moved out from that place. But now I recall this kind of tiny details as nothing but silly things and I have nothing more to talk about this tune, instead I would like to go to bed with saying a very goodnight to you all .

 

Aggression from Mars

Written in c. 1991 and 2013 / Recorded in 2013

 

In between 1985 and 2001, I made countless amount of recording materials from my own musical activities. As far as my original contents concern, I tried to organise them as well as possible, especially in early years, but there are some exceptions in any human conducts. While I was working at converting these original materials, mostly recorded on cassette tapes, to digital mp3 files, I came across with a very rough sketch recording of this tune. It was found in a tape that contains other materials from 1990 and some other pieces from 1992, but there was no mention of this unknown tune on its hand-written label. The tune was played by a synthesizer with no accompaniment, contained many mistakes and its loose rhythm keeping was quite horrible. I could not remember on what kind of occasion I have recorded this thing but I could acknowledge certain elements particular to my own composing style back in the days. On top of that, actually I thought it would sound quite cool if only the tune was played in a proper way, therefore, I decided to make a new demo recording to make sure how it would sound like. 

In this new recording, conducted on May, 2013, original synthesizer part was converted to the piano sound and its recording scene was captured to be shown in the video. I also added a guitar part that was newly written for this occasion. For I felt something similar to Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War, when I listened to the original sketch demo since its discovery, I put a title referring to the planet onto this untitled/unknown tune from the past.

Fence of a Farm

Written and Recorded in 1993

 

This tune originally had its lyrics, which were not a peaceful depiction of rural scenery but were full of cynical views on human society ornamented with a metaphor of human herds; vast majority of conformists inside of the fence, and quite a few outsiders outside of the fence. To describe my personal position at the time of writing this tune, in accordance with the said metaphor, I was a born outsider, who was being held inside of the fence mostly by surrounding ‘others’. The ties between me and these ‘others’ will be utterly cut off within a few years but such future was not foreseeable in the early 1993, when the tune was written. 

Along with Out for Walking (in the city), this tune was one of my initial attempts to feature programmed synthesizer played by the digital sequencer for replacing the role of the rhythm machine. I wrote several pieces of music in this fashion, especially in the first half of 1993, some went well and others didn’t – I assess this tune to be categorised as the former. Use of synthesizer in this way could reflect my attitude towards the trend in the music scene in those days; I still retained an ambition for trying to catch up with the latest fashion whilst, as the piano solo in the middle clearly shows, the core essence of my musical taste had nothing to do with such sort of ‘scene’ at all. My band mates wisely rejected to play this tune and no further recording of this tune has ever made. For making this video, I made the instrumental remix from the original master for the audio track to be presented with some pictures I took when I visited rural part of Ireland in the summer of 2001, in order to make the tune more enjoyable by getting rid of impressions associated with the cynical metaphor in its original form.

A Tragedy - Part VI: Eternal Reccurence / Theme

Written and Recorded in 1990

 

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 ideas that impressed me the most from this research reading was Nietzsche’s famous theory called Eternal Recurrence and it didn’t take long for me to write this composition by combining the theory with other elements taken from Nietzsche’s biographic information. Actually, I was so inspired that I could write this musical work long before completing the course work.  

Part VI of this composition has a function of conclusion in essay writing, therefore, for those who are familiarised with academic writing skills it would be obvious though, nothing new to the composition is introduced in this Part, but it is consists of replays of themes or motifs already appeared in previous Parts. In the previous Part, our protagonist – Friedrich Nietzsche himself – loses his sanity. Therefore, this entire Part VI is assigned for Nietzsche’s reflection of his own past life, on his bed in Weimar being cared by his sister Elizabeth. Following the previous Part, which depicts his mental collapse, this Part starts with the protagonist’s calm self-reflection represented by the piano. Then, the Demon, represented by the ominous organ, comes back to remind him  of its knowledge over eternal recurrence. The Demon plays a role of curator to guide through the protagonist’s past memories in his own recollection, in which he remembers insulting words thrown at him from the society surrounded him. Now his Love Theme is accompanied with ridiculous marching drum – it turns out that what he thought Love was nothing but a laughable comedy. Then the composition returns to the main Theme, which signifies a new beginning of another round of the protagonist’s whole life.

Although the music ends with this reprise of the main theme, the protagonist’s life would never cease to repeat itself exactly in the same structure infinitely. If the contents one’s life were not worth to live it all through once again, that life set to the Demon’s revelation – eternal recurrence – could be described as nothing but a tragedy.

 

Brainwasher (from 'Zone')

Written 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 the storyline that involved a scene that shows the execution of convict, by using a kind of sonic weapon. The aim of this execution was not to kill but to brainwash the convict and, we argued, that a doctor who has invented the weapon should be in charge of the ritual of this execution.

I volunteered to work on writing soundtrack music for the project and its demo recording was completed within a few days in late October 1991. For covering the scene of execution, I simply made a brief demo recording of four tracks filled with electronic spontaneous noises generated by a digital synthesizer I possessed at that time. Length of the track was suitable for the performance and the demo was used in the actual performance that took place on December 1991, being played background for an actor’s performance of the Doctor’s execution enhanced by the noise guitar he played.

The audio track of this video consists of my original demo recording and the live performance recorded by a handy video camera, which mainly captured the sound of noise guitar and the actor’s roaring at the end. Its footage is also taken from the original live performance, where I played a state official who places a headset to the poor convict before the execution begins.

A Tragedy - Part IV: Human, All Too Human

Written and Recorded in 1990

 

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 ideas that impressed me the most from this research reading was Nietzsche’s famous theory called Eternal Recurrence and it didn’t take long for me to write this composition by combining the theory with other elements taken from Nietzsche’s biographic information. Actually, I was so inspired that I could write this musical work long before completing the course work. 

Part IV of this composition tries to describe a huge gap between the protagonist’s mind and the society that surrounds him, which could be summed up in his own words, ‘Human, All Too Human.’

As I have already mentioned in the annotation for Part II of this composition, we assume Friedrich Nietzsche himself to be the protagonist here, and the composer ascribes simple slow arpeggio played by the piano and the acoustic guitar part that associated with the former in a musical way to describe the pure state of the protagonist’s mind. Other non-musical noises obviously represent another element; what surrounds the protagonist’s mind externally. In this video version, I also added some quotes from those who actually surrounded Nietzsche; Ulrich von Wilamowitz Mollendorf, a senior classical philologist notably criticising Nietzsche’s first published work from academic view points; Hans von Bulow, a famous conductor and a close friend of Richard Wagner criticising Nietzsche’s musical work from an expert’s view point; and Richard Wagner, the famous composer and a close friend with Nietzsche at that time, criticising Nietzsche’s private behaviour in a letter addressed to his doctor. I also added Nietzsche’s potential reply for each criticism, by randomly choosing from his words.