Undine

Written in 1990 / Recorded in 1990 and 1991

This tune was first performed in October 1990, accompanied by my solo organ with lyrics to be sung by myself. It was shortly after the song was written but I do not remember which came first, I mean, I cannot recall if I wrote the song for the performance or the song was merely a handy new material when I heard about the occasion to play some solo act. Despite the tune itself was rather orientated to Hard / Blues Rock or even a bit Psychedelic, what the lyrics delivered was a fairy tale. Since the fairy was related to water, I called this thing Undine.

In those days, I had a small number of fans based on students’ musician union and this became one of the popular songs among them, largely because of the fairy story, and I played it live for a few times within a short period of time up to January 1991, either as a solo act and accompanied by a provisional band. 

The audio track I made for this video consists of following three materials: (1) instrumental remix from the original personal demo from October 1990, (2) live performance with a provisional band from December 1990, and (3) a studio rehearsal take with another band took place sometime in the spring of 1991. To be honest with you, the discovery of the last material encouraged me to make this video because my singing voice was almost inaudible entirely in this studio take whilst it captured the rough aspect of the tune, especially when it was played by a guitar band like this.

The patchwork-like editing was done for enhancing this aspect of the tune.

Beloved Lady

Written in 1993 / Recorded in 1995 with Culotte

Apart from my personal experimental stuff, things I wrote for my band Culotte were usually supposed to present Pop stuff sophisticated with musical intelligence mainly gained from the field of Prog Rock. In this view point, this tune might be one of the finest examples from ours. When I wrote this tune in 1993, I was still obsessed with the idea to employ digital sequencer as the fourth personnel of the band, simply because I wanted to be liberated from playing necessary backing part by the guitar. As we experienced on such attempts, I took to recognise that the idea was unrealistic, unless we could access to better monitoring system, and unnatural for a band like us.

It took us two years to record this tune in studio since the time of writing. By the time we recorded this demo, the drummer gradually gained confidence for dealing with this kind of material. Other parts are not much important; acoustic, electric, and bass guitars are only repeating basic patterns in accordance with the programmed synthesizer. In addition, I have to admit that the contents of this tune are pretty poor, especially in terms of chord progression. The decline in my creativity at that time can be excused by blaming on a lady, to whom this tune was addressed to.

Got Something to Tell You

 Written and Recorded in 1990

I do not remember exactly when this tune was written and the demo was recorded. All I can say is, this was the first tune I recorded for a collection of my original works. Making of the collection was finished when a 46-minute cassette tape was mostly filled with those demo recordings in early 1991, and most of the works were written and recorded during the final quarter of 1990. A clear difference between this tune and all the rest featured in the collection is the synthesizer that used. In this demo recording of Got Something to Tell You, an analogue synthesizer was used, which has been borrowed from my friend. Sometime in 1990, again I am not sure when exactly it was, I returned the synthesizer back to its owner and carried on recording new materials by using a digital synthesizer I newly bought shortly after that. 

Apart from guessing of when this tune was recorded, there are little things worth to be discussed here of this tune. The main idea for writing this tune was to present an example of a Pop tune played by a Prog minded musicians. This idea gave rooms for tricky rhythm signature and some playful licks for each instrument in the plain sections, whilst the chorus (or bridging) section accommodates sophisticated chord progressions. At the same time, since it was originally designed to be a Pop tune, the degree of tricky stuff is restricted within a modest range. One thing I regret about this recording is, the guitar part is too modest to be neither tricky nor playful, despite the fact that the eloquent guitar solo in the quasi Twist and Shout section clearly implies that I must have been in a good condition as a guitar player back then.

Fancy Your Heart

Written in 1990 / Recorded in 1990 and 2012

This tune was written a bit hastily at the end of 1990. In those days, I was obsessed with exploring what’s available on my new digital synthesizer, especially in terms of trying out each built-in tones, and this tiny tune was written as a result of countless hours I spent on learning the new equipment. The basic idea for the initial demo recording was to write a typical stuff for a four-piece band and play it exclusively by the synthesizer. This initial attempt, needless to say, didn’t go quite well.

In the meantime, I thought the tune was handy for filling time for a forthcoming live show for a provisional band and I played it by a trio consists of a percussionist, a contrabass player and me on the electric piano.

When I discovered the master tape of the original demo, I could not resist re-recording the tune in a bit more proper way. The attached video above was the result, which also features intro from the original demo and outro from the said live version.

A Tragedy - Part III: Love Theme

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. Along with his philosophical thoughts, I was also interested in Nietzsche’s private life and his relationship with relatively modest number of women including, most famously, Lou Andreas-Salome.

 

Part III of the composition is assigned to focus on the philosopher’s love towards a younger girl of nearly a half of his age, being provided with quotes from his own words and an account made from objective view point by a researcher.

 

The tune was written before the idea of conceptual work emerged, and was played live on stage as a solo piano thing by myself. Even at that point, I called this tune as simply Love Theme, because there was a source of inspiration – a muse like beautiful girl – back then. The original demo recording followed shortly after that but it was not a satisfactory one. Four years later, I made another demo recording of this tune with a new arrangement featuring re-arranged string section and lead guitar. For making the audio track of this video, I tried to use the best bits from these three different versions to be patched together in this way. 

Snowy Day

Written in 1989 / Recorded in 1990

This tune was originally written for an abandoned conceptual work, which was supposed to deliver a story and its demo recordings were made during the summer of 1989. In that conceptual work, this tune was given a role of Nocturne – a brief inner thought of the main character at night. Though the original demo had been destroyed, the idea of the composition remained in my head and when the season turned to winter, I made up my mind to re-record this tune. I still remember it was a snowy day and I thought that this tune rather fits into the atmosphere of such a cold winter day.

I also wrote a short lyric for this tune but now I recall it was not a good one, partly because it was not written genuinely as a lyric but as a course work for my English class.

Exploring various styles (early demos)

Written in 1986 or 1987 / Recorded in 1986 or 1987 and 1989

The audio track of this video consists of a summary of demo recordings I made in the late 1986 or early 1987 that had enough amount for filling both sides of a 46-minute-cassette-tape. If my memory serves well, the original tape contained five or six tracks on its Side One and other three tracks on the Side Two. It was my second attempt to make a collection of my original stuff to be recorded in a primitive way – by using a double-cassette – but while its predecessor, done in 1985, was rather more about a heap of random original works, this second attempt was more focused on exploring various musical styles or genres and how I would/could function as a guitar/bass/keyboard player in each case. For making this video, I picked up following five pieces to represent the whole:

(1)  Blues Rock (0:00 – 1:19)… Obviously inspired by a cover version of You Don’t Love Me, featured in Al Kooper’s Super Session album. I changed the main riff, chord progression for closing the verse section, and added a couple of original bits; tricky intro and Jazzy bridging section. In other words, this tune was a transitional work of my young self from his core element, Blues Rock, to a certain kind of sophistication.

(2)  Oldies (1:19 – 1:48)… Again, this was also another attempt to furnish core elements of my musical taste with newly acquired knowledge over sophisticated chord progressions, in this case the basis came from Oldies style, which I had been keen before I came across with Blues Rock. Originally, both of these tunes had similar themed lyrics to go with and both were brought into studio to be tried out by my band called Flowers, briefly in the early 1988. Later, this Oldies thing was picked up to be properly demo-recorded but the Blues Rock thing above was never revisited.

(3)  Country Style (1:48 – 3:08)… This was done not for creative purpose but genuinely for exploring another style. Along with Oldies stuff from the 1950s, Country music was one of genres I fell in love with in my relatively early years as a music fan. I do not think this attempt was a successful one, but at least it shows one of my basic roots as a guitar player and in that sense, I reckon it was a meaningful recording.

(4)  Psychedelic Jam (3:08 – 4:29)… The running time of the original demo of this tune exceeds over fifteen minutes, which features written theme for one guitar and a couple of bass guitars in its beginning and its ending. For this video, I just picked up a tiny bit from its long jam section that could represent the entire atmosphere of the tune.

(5)  Blues (4:29 – the end)… This is not a composition but just another 12-bar blues played in a basic jazz manner. This simply reminds me of a harmonica I occasionally played in those days was tuned to the key of A and that was the reason why this blues was played in the key of E. This demo also features me briefly singing La La, quoting from a song by Fats Domino.     

In addition, the rhythm sections played by the manually operated rhythm machine did not belong to the original demos but were later added, sometime in 1989.