The audio track of this video consists of a couple of different demos I made in similar time in 1992. Both had the synthesizer part played mechanically through the digital sequencer but had different themes; the earlier take had the lyrics on Jupiter and its metaphoric aspect in a certain mysticism, whilst the later take had the lyrics on the Moon and its metaphoric aspect in relation with women's periodical elements. I discerned and concluded that both lyrics had some issues for general public's casual listening and duly decided to remove from the final mix for the video.
In the musical aspect, 99% of this tune simply owes to one of the best-known songs by The Steve Miller Band; Joker.
An instrumental piece I wrote for jamming with my band called Flowers in autumn 1987. In those days, I was into the music of Jimi Hendrix, especially in his later years' works, and I hope this piece could reflect such source of influence. Personally, Jamming this tune was more about practicing the soloing on the guitar for me, as a result, I admit this take contains too long such soloing and improvising with a narrow extent of creativity. Unfortunately, this was the sole take we recorded as a band playing A New Way.
The piece was later converted to be a part of my long composition titled Life of My Own in the following year.
The very first song I ever wrote back in 1983, when I was 16 years old. By that time, all the guitar chord I knew was A, E, D and D minor and all of them was used for this simple stuff. Musically, I can sense the direct influence of Have You Seen the Rain by the Creedence Clearwater Revival. As for the lyrics, I picked up some words from John Lennon's Oh Yoko to sing along but they never settled.
The writing of this tune was too early to be properly demo recorded so that I made the first such recording in 1989. For making this video, I decided to make a new version from scratch and the initial process - the rhythm guitar part - was filmed for the resulted work.
This was more about a tryout of a recording method I came across in a Syd Barrett album, Madcap Laughs,in which, every recording process began with capturing Syd's rhythm guitar and vocal parts, then all other accompaniments - including even the drums - were later overdubbed. I even tried to reconstruct the atmosphere of the album by featuring unnecessary guitar noise in the intro and a fake correspondence with the recording engineer in the end. I tried to play the rhythm guitar occasionally out of the rhythm in order to make accompaniment parts harder to play, deliberately.
For making the video, I tried to remove my voice part and replace it with the newly added lead guitar part. However, since the microphone used for capturing the original rhythm guitar part also captured my voice part, I could not perfectly remove it from the final mix. In addition, due to a mechanical problem occurred during the video making, I had to struggle to make the new guitar part synchronise with all the rest. In this sense, the song is yet in its unfinished stage whether or not it is deliberately...
This was initially written for an unfinished conceptual work that had nothing to do with any cat in summer 1989. Around a half year later, I decided to pick up some well-written tunes from the failed work and convert them into individual, no-concept-binding compositions. In this way, this tune was newly associated with my personal love and adoration towards cats in general - though the strange lyrics have been removed from the final mix for the video.
The arrangement that features the flute part was largely inspired by one of my favourite Al Kooper songs called Peacock Lady.
A catchy Rock'N'Pop tune I wrote in 1989. Except for the guitar solo, taken from its initial demo and embedded in the middle, I remade the demo recording of the entire tune. The original idea was a song about a light of love, who comes and goes like passing notes but in the new recording, I removed such meaningless lyrics and simplified the title in this way. If I could have an opportunity one day, this is one of my past materials I would like to play the most.
This instrumental piece was directly influenced by a composition written by Lee Ritenour that I watched on TV. The programme featured a recorded live show edited into about 60 minutes or so and one of the tunes caught my attention. Unfortunately, I don't recall the title of the track but I am sure that most elements I put into this tune are largely stolen from that piece by Ritenour.
It coincided with a period when I began to be influenced by different kinds of music, especially people around me who were into so-called 'Latin Music', therefore, it was a natural tendency for me to try something like this, at least for once. It also marked my potential beginning for becoming a multi-instrumentalist - on top of the guitars, here I played solos on the bass guitar and the keyboard as well.
One of my creations that I am proud of. This was written during a period when I was personally suffering from a mental crisis. I don't want to talk about it much so I would rather just mention of the elements that made me write this thing; breaking up of some relationships between I and those who had been close to me, a girl who took the advantage of my vulnerable situation for her business purpose, and a social crisis and anxiety in the background.
This piece was actually written as the closing section of another separate tune called Feeling. However, since these tunes had nothing in common, I decided to treat them as different compositions and converted this closing piece as a corresponding track for another experimental recording I made in the same year that I called Welcome.
The idea of speeding up the pitch was inspired from the ending of Cirkus album by King Crimson.
A song I wrote under the influence of Paper Sun by Traffic, And You Tried So Hard by Gong and That's It for the Other One by The Grateful Dead while I was suffering from bad flu in early 1995.
For making this video, I added the rhythm tracks and removed some pieces for making the entire work shorter and better. Due to the incompatibilities between the 8 track recorder used for the original recording and a 4 track player used for digitalising the material, the bass guitar is not synchronised with a slight delay. Therefore, I hope the listeners to 'get stoned' so that you could adjust the delay in sound within your brain due to the effect of some substances or, at least, you could feel comfortable for the delay :D
The intro section was occasionally featured when I played improvisation, live with my band called Culotte back then.
Written in 1986 and 2015 / Recorded in 1986, 1988 and 2015
The initial demo was recorded in 1986, which was a mere attempt on practicing the arrangement of four parts of instruments - three strings parts + electric guitar - in the form of 12-bar blues.
The rhythm part was later added when I first acquired the rhythm machine in 1988. For making the video, I further added the melody line for the lead guitar, played it and finalised the composition in 2015. The outro is a remnant from the initial demo where I improvised by the keyboard layer by layer.
One of my original compositions from my early years. This thing was written for my then band Flowers and performed live by them for only once in summer 1987, which is what is featured on the audio track of the video. At the time of writing, the band had another member who played the keyboard so that I could expand the range of my knowledge on chord progression I have acquired by then into this new creation. However, the keyboard player suddenly left the band in the last minute run up to the scheduled live show and I had to convert the tune to be played by the band left as a trio.
This change of the line-ups caused a disastrous mistake that occurred during the second half of my guitar solo section. Needless to say, I have cut off that disastrous piece but as a result, I could make the entire tune shorter and more comfortable for casual listening.
The title of the tune was taken from a line from one of my favourite songs back then - Crazy Fingers by the Grateful Dead - though musically, both had nothing to do with each other...
This tune was all about mixing a couple of different musical ideas popped up in my head separately. I made this demo recording simply because I wanted to know how it would sound if these twos are played together - the brief piano motif in the intro and main chord progression with the riff that follows the intro. Since the impression of the first half, which is played faster and lighter, reminded me of some Surf Rock stuff, I coined the title. Nevertheless, the core element of this composition rather lies in the second half, where the experiment of 'playing together the twos' occurs with a bit slower and heavier playing style, which could be described as Garage Psychedelic :D
The pictures used in this video have nothing to do with the composition, except me, the composer, is captured enjoying surfin' nearly a couple of decades later from the writing of the tune.
The rhythm machine programme was recycled from the ending section of my other composition called Sides. Probably, I wanted to indulge in the mood of the uplifting rhythm for a bit more when I finished recording the said composition. In this recycled one, I simply gathered my favourite musical bits such as the intro from Promenade, the main theme of Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, the famous chord progression shared by Sex Pistols (Anarchy in the UK) and The Doors (Love Street), guitar phrases from typical Rock'N'Roll style to the use of an exotic scale and so on...
The entire framework of the tune, which consists of a mere repetition of very simple elements, was definitely inspired from the title track of a Brian Eno album, Here Come the Warm Jets.
I didn't mean it but what I did here was summing up my whole musical activities into such a simple and playful piece of music, which became the final demo recording of my original compositions except for a few materials I later recorded for making YouTube videos in the 2010s.
This tune was more about associated lyrics that described how foolish to waste one's time. The idea was largely inspired by the impression I had while dating my then girlfriend. In order to make the composition a bit more interesting, I wrote the backing vocals' parts sing only 'Time' in odd (but written) timings. Except for this mischievous device, musically this is relatively a normal composition from mine.
A fine Rock / Pop tune I wrote under the unconscious influence of The Sweet - Fox on the Run. The tune consists of too many ingredients - including Baroque-like fugue section and Jethro Tull-like organ backing during the guitar solo - so that I had to cut off another ingredient that had been inserted for making the key changes smoother. Hence, especially at the ending, this edition has hiccups in the flow of the keys but at the end of the day, I believe it's got better and more suitable for being a Pop stuff, along with a shorter running time.
The title was taken from its removed lyrics, which had nothing to do with Buddhism nor had any significance at all. In addition, the second guitar part was added for the video edition for recovering the original guitar part lost during the digitalizing process.
Another simple and meaningless composition of mine. One thing worthy to be mentioned about this thing is it includes a brief quote of the main theme from Gymnopedies by Eric Satie.
The tune was performed live twice, by a provisional band called The Show in late 1990 and by my solo act in early 1991. The former take was edited and uploaded onto YouTube under the title of Based on 'Gymnopedie No. 1' by Eric Satie. This version is not bad but I didn't like the change made by the keyboard player, who tried to play this tune sounds like kinda cocktail jazz.
The melody line I originally wrote for the voice part was replaced by the tricky-toned guitar in making the re-do video in 2015.
The inspiration for writing this thing came from a moment when I noticed a very ugly, inhumane product sold at the shelve in a shop, where I worked as a part-time staff. That dark impression given from the encounter haunted the atmosphere of the tune entirely, despite it began from relatively light and cheerful piano arpeggio.
Although the voice part that conveyed my notion on the product has been eliminated from the audio track for the video, it had an impressive line that still inhabits within my head, which said:
白痴が白昼、薄情な街に迫害される。 Hakuchi ga hakuchu, hakujo na machi ni hakugai sareru.
that means:
Idiots get persecuted by the ruthless city in the broad daylight.
When I first bought me a multitrack recorder that recognises each of four channels of the normal cassette tape, i. e. left and right channels for Side A and Side B, as a track during the summer holiday of 1988, I was so excited to the fact that finally I obtained a magical equipment that enables me to record whatever I like in a proper way. As soon as I have unboxed the multitracker, I began to make my own recording by carefully following the instruction, which included explanations on some tips on recording technics such as ping/pong, punch-in/out and so on. By the time I reached to the last page of the instruction's recording section, every part of the trial recording has been done, which consisted of rhythm machine, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, lead guitar and my voice. Then, I turned the page for looking at the mixing section and turned over the cassette tape for trying out the reverse tape effect. The result of the mix-down then is what you hear in the audio track of this video :)
I gave this title, addressing to the prospective listeners in the future to mean 'welcome to the world of my personal recording experiments' as an initial greeting from me.
Written in 1988, 1994 and 2015 / Recorded in 1988 and 1994
The audio track of this track consists of a couple of different materials; a free improvisation performed by my band Flowers, featuring me on the guitar, in 1988 and a demo recording of my personal improvisation made for a part of my own composition in 1994.
In both cases, what I aimed at was to play instruments deliberately ignoring the traditional music theory. In the latter case, I tried to keep this principle in playing the guitar, bass guitar and creating the electric noise by making use of a microphone and other audio equipment (I don't remember how I made the noise, though). In the former case, I gave the principle as a direction to my band mates and let them play freely. This was played and recorded in the last minutes of our final rehearsal session took place in March 1988, except for our unexpected few-day reunion later in the same year.
Despite these recordings were made for utterly different backgrounds and different reasons, I would like to acknowledge that when these two materials were combined in one, in a form of this video, the final composition titled Junk was written and completed.
An instrumental bit from a work I wrote for the students' theatrical performance titled Zone in late 1991. This piece was written almost spontaneously during a rehearsal session and one of such practice sessions happened to be recorded in a proper way. It did have a couple of other sections for accommodating a poem to be read by one of the performers - both sections were also written by myself. The audio track of this video is extracted from the guitar solo section in the middle, where I have improvised under the influence of Robert Fripp of King Crimson.
The title of the tune was taken from the poem to be read during the omitted sections, which was also written by myself.
A brief and simple piece of music I wrote that was supposed to be the intro section for a conceptual work - an alchemy-themed work which would start from Green and end with Red. Unfortunately, due to my lack of knowledge in alchemy itself and other failures in the consideration for the concept, the plan was soon abandoned. Nonetheless, it's a soothing little tune I reckon.
A quasi-original tune heavily influenced by MC5 track called Kick Out the Jams. Partly out of frustration, caused by poor creativity because of my personal situation, I made use of the distortion effect pedal plugged to the organ-toned synthesizer for gaining this weird tone. That's the only thing worth to mention regarding this thing.
I had a friend from my university days who lived in my neighbourhood at the time of writing this tune. We were not close friends but worked together in a students' theatrical performance titled Zone in 1991 and due to the locational proximity, we visited each others' places occasionally, spent a formidable amount of time mainly discussing music and other cultural / philosophical things, usually along with some other friends. As years went by, the number of the friends who gathered together kept on shrinking and by the time when the tune was written, in 1993, I was the sole remaining friend who was still seeing him. We both recognised being strong at drinking but with a hindsight, we might have been simply developing our alcoholism through our visiting habit.
He had so many vinyl and CDs that covered a far broader range of music than mine and I still owe him for being familiarised with some artists like Nick Drake and Tim Buckley. I respected him while he was playing Rag Time or Polka with his acoustic guitar but despised him too while he was playing the records of Free Jazz, Noise or Avant-Gard music. After I moved out from the area we lived, our seeing occasions became quite rare. The last time we had such occasion in 1996, we had a bad dispute about stupid politics. I felt bad about my own attitude at that session but deep inside, I rather felt at ease to seeing him off from my life forever. Looking back on those stormy days, it would be fair to say that at least I wrote a piece of music for paying tribute to the respectable side of this individual.
The audio track of this video consists of a couple of different materials recorded by myself separately. As for the longer one, which covers the entire running time, I can hardly recall when and what for I made it. It features free improvisation of myself playing the guitar and keyboards and my own voices. The shorter one in the middle, similarly features my guitar improvisation, is mixed with audio tracks taken from a porn video. I remember this attempt was made in late 1989 just for fun. Whatever the case, all I can say is that these are nothing but junk recordings from the past.
My second attempt at writing a twenty-minute length composition, following Life of My Own in the previous year. Unlike the first attempt, in writing and recording this new stuff, I planned carefully to the details before I started recording the first note. As a result, the recording itself went quite smoothly in comparison with the previous attempt but I recognise this later work being more boring than the earlier one. Especially, the mellow section after the brief fugue-like section could have been written or arranged better.
The initial demo was made by May or June in 1989 and was brought to then my band called Timeless to be considered as our repertoire for a concert already set in July. The keyboard/bass player urged to re-work on making the new backing track for the live performance and I agreed to do that. The keyboard parts were mostly replaced with better sounding Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer he possessed at that time and unique ending section was newly written and added. The performance was not bad but this was the first and final performance of this tune.
The basic idea for writing this composition was to present a story of a person who has been wandering in a maze made of crystal - through a long struggle - finally, reaches to a way out from the maze. The crystal is used as a metaphor for signifying something transparent, in other words, the person trapped inside could see through where is the way out in the first place... I tried to build a musical maze based on such planning and probably failed to complete it, I guess.
I have added minor but important missing instruments by taking the opportunity for making the video edition in 2015.
Another almost meaningless demo recording from mine. The initial idea was to write a relatively simple piece of music that would be suitable for jamming. Actually, I recorded the demo that features a very long jamming section played all by myself. While I was working, it was OK but when I the mixing was done, I noticed the tune is too boring for merely listening. So, I just edited the long demo to present the written themes and a brief piece from the jam section only.
A blues-oriented Rock tune I wrote and recorded in 1992. I feel a certain influence from Pink Floyd's Money here but I don't remember if it was the intention of writing this thing. The writing of the tune coincided with some messy period in my private life and I have to confess that I was not into music in general. It is a bit ironical that things I wrote relatively half-heartedly sometimes sound better than far more serious materials...
One of the earliest tunes I wrote when I was still a high school student in 1983. I don't remember if I made the demo recording back then, but regardless to if I might have made it or not, one thing is sure that every recording I made before 1985 has been destroyed. Because of this reason, after I have acquired a multitrack, I recorded some of my old materials mostly in 1989 and the audio track of this video is taken from one of them.
The initial motivation for writing this tune was to utilise the guitar harmonics sound into an original composition. Despite the associated idea for the tune was rather an uplifting theme, due to my lack of musical knowledge, it ended up to be a sad tune. The title has a personal implication which I do not want to share with anyone else.
An instrumental piece I wrote in 1994 for no reason. I just thought this tune could be a nice closing track for concluding an album so I named it simply Closing... The rhythm tracks are newly added for making the video in 2015.
A simple song I wrote for performing in a gig in late 1990. Recording of the demo version soon followed (as reconstructed in the audio track of the video). The content of the lyrics was pessimistic so that I could not bear with listening to it any longer. For this reason, I do not hate this but also do not like this tune.
In March 1995, Japan saw a terror attack caused by a religious cult which killed and injured many innocent commuters in Tokyo's underground trains and stations. As an inhabitant of the city, I was affected by this incident and wrote some pieces of music as a result. This was one of them. The initial demo included the lyrics that denounced every major religion with providing seemingly a sound counter-argument. Despite the creation began with an intriguing attempt of synthesizer programming, it ended up to be a Pop / Rock stuff sounds similar to Todd Rundgren's One World.
In making the video version, I replaced my singing sections with newly recorded instrumental bits but decided to leave the title untouched, which coincided with the same title as the famous fiction by Aldous Huxley that I became one of my favourites when I read it in 2008, thirteen years later from the time of writing the tune.
One of the worst things I wrote ever, or at least, what I hate the most among my own things. This thing is too long for claiming to be a genuine pop song and every attempt I made in writing this should be deemed as a failure. That's it, full stop.
One of rare studio recordings with my band Culotte after the departure of its original drummer that took place in the second half of 1995. The tune itself has less or no significance but was written for casual fun purpose in the previous year. Initially, it had naughty lyrics that reminded one of third-party-listners a bizarre sexual act. Some parts are newly added for enhancing purpose in 2015 for making the video, but the arrangement has already been done in the initial demo, back in 1994.
A meaningless piano piece I wrote in 1992. This was all about an attempt for applying some numerical information into the music theory at all. I even don't remember if I actually played this for the demo recording or simply made a programme to do so.
I rarely practice playing the bass guitar but sometimes, such rare attempts could give a hint for motifs for writing a new material. This was a thing that came out in one of such attempts. Since it was all about playing basic chords by the bass guitar, I could convert them to the normal guitar to be played, but I rather wanted to preserve the feelings when they had first come out.
In order to make up with the absence of the drummer, who had left my band in the previous year, I made use of the body of the acoustic guitar as a provisional percussion in the closing jam section. The voice parts were all removed as always and replaced with the new recording for creating the video in 2015.
This piece was originally written as a part of my composition titled The Cosmic Eye in its initial form in 1991. Later, when I revised the work in 1994, I had to admit that this piece shares no common features with rest of the composition so that it should have been duly removed from the entire structure of the composition. So, here is what has been Rejected to be a part of The Cosmic Eye.
One of the final compositions I wrote for my then band called Culotte, sometime in 1995. This was more about exploring built-in tones in my digital synthesizer that I normally never used. With a relatively simple structure, I tried to expand the detailed contents by making the arrangement for various unnecessary tones / instruments.
For making this video, I had to resuscitate some 'lost' parts in the original master tape due to the nature of 'hidden' tracks that occurs when you play a cassette tape recorded in the eight-track format by a four-track recorder / player. The outro has nothing to do with the main body of the tune but adding this at the end would do justice to the composition, I reckon.
A song I wrote for a band called School, where I played the guitar between 1996 and 1998. As the years went by, School became quite irrelevant to its initial scheme, The Soft Core Project, and things I could do for the band as a composer tended to be more and more limited. I remember I gave the basic elements of this tune but entire structure rather relied on the lyrics written by the singer. Since I do not have any right on using the lyrics, I simply removed the voice track for making this video - expect for the non-lyrical section from their live version in the second half. I even don't remember if the keyboard part in the studio version was played by myself or the keyboard player who had been involved by somewhere around mid-1997. In terms of quality as a composition, this has nothing to do with my personal composing skills whatsoever.
In addition, the song title was also taken from the lyrics, to which, again, I have nothing to do with.
Probably one of my best compositions in the field of Progressive Rock with its unusual but cohesive rhythm structure and complex but aesthetic chord progressions. This was written in a confused period caused by a sudden breakup of a brief affair with an eighteen-year-old girl and one of the important motivations for the composition came from a dream I had, in which, I confined the girl in the cabin of a sailing ship, lit the fire intending to kill her and jumped into the ocean desperately. In the dream, I took my action as a vainglorious victory, but when I completed the composition, I rather took my behaviour in general during that period as a defeat (of youth).
An attempt to write something sounds like Psychedelic / Progressive thing ended up to a quasi-Led Zeppelin / Gong-like thing. The rhythm part in the middle was added for making the video in 2015.
Musically, this thing was a reflection of my obsession to Pete Townshend and his music, with an unintended quotation from Jerry Garcia's Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead. When I wrote this stuff, I had a prospective partner in The Soft Core Project, which was initially set up as my personal recording scheme though, and had lots of interesting conversation with him especially in the field of occultism. While we argued on the nature of divine thing, I remembered and quoted a line from Sensation, a piece written by Pete Townshend for The Who's the Rock Opera Tommy, which says, 'I am the light.' That's where the title came from.
In addition, the 'prospective partner' did not take part not only in this demo recording but all the rest I have uploaded to the public under the name of The Soft Core Project.
A quasi-unfinished demo recording of my original tune, reflecting the instability of the composer back then. I don't have any more words to talk about this crap.
Written in 1989 and 1995 / Recorded in 1989, 1995 and 2015
The idea for this thing stemmed from what I had left in a form of sketch recording when I was young. It was merely an arpeggio pattern for a couple of chords and its variation in the parallel minor key.
When I picked up the idea, in 1995, to write a composition based on it, I planned to write it in two parts for the major key and the minor key. This led me to a scheme for planning a conceptual work that starts with the former and ends with the latter and provisionally, I called it Lost Love Story concept. Although I had actually launched to write and record several pieces of music along with this concept, I lost my interest in the concept itself and suspended to work on it before reaching to what was supposed to be the closing track, Theme in the minor key.
For making this video, I excavated the 1989 sketch version and Theme in the major key demo recorded in 1995, mixed them together and added some extra instruments for making it sound better. The result can be seen in the video above.
A Jazz-oriented composition I wrote in 1999, based on an idea I had left in a form of sketch recording about a decade before. The initial sketch one was played by the guitar and was somewhat aiming at something closer to the image of Joni Mitchell's Black Crow - something like Crossover Folk! I used the idea for the intro, alternated by the piano, and naturally expanded the idea for a tune written for the sextet; guitar, bass, drums, piano, organ and woodwinds. The purpose of composing and recording this thing was not to show my ability in playing Jazz but the opposite; to show my inability to do so.
A well-written pop tune from me, based on an idea I had left in a form of rough sketch recording several years earlier. Though I had to re-do a guitar part or two for making this video for technical reasons, I think the composition has been perfect since the time of its initial demo recording in 1995. Perhaps, I reckon this to be one of my masterpieces.
This thing was written while I was in an infatuation with a girl I met at that time and for this reason, I don't think this has met the normal quality of my composition, especially in terms of its creativity. I am still wondering if the main melody was not my original creation but it might have been stored in my brain from something I had listened to in the past. Even worse, I still can not identify the source material if the latter was the case...
Written in 1988 and 2015 / Recorded in 1988 and 2015
When I began my personal recording by making use of the multitrack recorder for the first time in my life in summer 1988, I already had some ideas for this unique and new activity for me. I wanted to record some of my old stuff that had no opportunity to be recorded in a proper way. In a meanwhile, I was also fascinated for writing new materials and one of them must be a long stuff that could fill the half side of a 46-minute cassette tape. I had been accustomed to listening to such attempts since I was 15 years old when I first bought an album by Mike Oldfield, but most recently, I was given a kick-ass from the side two of the Todd Rundgren's Utopia album, filled with a long track called The Ikon.
The ideas I used in my first attempt for writing a long composition have been mostly accumulated for a few years by the time of recording. Nonetheless, when I began writing and recording simultaneously, in terms of the structure of the composition, all I had in my mind was merely a rough image so that I had to struggle to find a way through track by track, part by part... The result was, needless to say, not bad but no more than that. If I could take a time for planning the entire structure before beginning to work, the result must have been quite different.
For making this video, I made some changes for reducing meaningless repetition and that inevitably required to add some new recordings. Despite the audio quality of the original demo is obviously lowered due to the passing of the time, I think I did justice to my first serious work with these additional new pieces.
A catchy pop tune I wrote in 1991, being inspired by a series of contemporary pop songs aired on the radio back then. Prior to that, I had been quite away from catching up to the cutting edge pop music scene for a while, but I had to bide my time on the backseat of a car, listening to the radio, due to the nature of my part time job at that time and by being exposed to radio-friendly tunes for a certain extent, I noticed a common feature in most of these tracks - hitting hi-hat on every upbeat.
The initial demo recording was made during that summer and it didn't take long before the song became one of the repertoires of my band called Elegance, where I usually played the keyboard part.
In the following year, when I bought an 8 track multitrack recorder for the first time, I tried out the new machine by recording a couple of my original materials from the past; one of them was this tune. In this second demo recording, I made a programme for synthesizer played through the digital sequencer and the result is what you hear in the video above. The same programme was also used for some studio recordings of this song by my band called Culotte, a successor band of Elegance. Culotte also played it for many times until it broke up in the end of 1995.
Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of reworks from my past compositions written in 1991; which are either materials I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform them, and/or materials for a students’ theatrical project that failed to feature the whole of what I wrote for it at its actual performance. This tune only came from the latter occasion and was initially written as a theme tune for one of the key characters of the performance. Unfortunately, this theme tune was rejected by the director and was never used in the performance at all.
A few years later, when I decided to convert some of those lost ideas into a new conceptual work, all I did for this tune was adding the lyrics that suits to the concept of story-telling. In other words, since the initial version was musically perfect, all I could do was to simply leave it untouched. The tune was brought to my then band called Culotte, recorded in studios and performed live in various occasions. For making this video, I featured the initial demo version mainly with Culotte's studio take in the intro and outro.
In the story of the conceptual work, this tune has been converted to the theme for Kelp, one of the main characters in the story, and has a role of introducing him to the prospective audience by giving him a song where he gives his account on the situation he's in from his own perspective. This track was designed to be the second track following the Overture, in other words, this was designed to be effectively the opening track of the Story-Telling.
It began with a random piano playing of myself, on a winter day in 1989, slightly being obsessed with one of then my recent favourite track from Brian Auger & the Trinity, Tropic of Capricorn. Soon after what became the intro for the tune was made, I picked up a pen and a notebook and began the planning for composing something colossal. I wanted to create something that could sum up my achievement in the field of music that far and this idea allowed me to mingle various influences I had received from different types of music into this one composition.
Thus, it includes complicated rhythm structures (mostly influenced by Frank Zappa), melodies briefly quoted from Vivaldi and J. S. Bach, Baroque-inspired fugue for a quartet in the middle, followed by the Holst-inspired exhibition-of-the-themes section, and etc.
Although it didn't take long from the emergence of the initial idea to the completion of the demo recording, when the final note was recorded, I realised that I was no longer enjoying to write and record such a challenging thing like this. With this realisation, for the first time in my musical life, I allowed myself not to go any further but rather to focus on what I really am. In other words, I realised that I can only do what I am able to do, at the end of the day...
The tune stemmed from a spontaneous jam Elegance had in August or September 1991, which was mostly led by Kataoka, the bass player, who gave the basic riff and the chord progression for the chorus and played them repeatedly for a while. Then, after having a smoking break, I got back to the studio and played the piano there for finding a suitable chord progression for bridging the riff and the chorus. When all other guys came back to the studio, I explained the rough structure of the entire tune and began to practice playing it together.
Within a few weeks, the intro, an arrangement of the chorus section, and the outro were added to finalise the creation stage. Though I don't remember who's idea it was, but the outro was actually suggested by someone in the band to make it like The Doors' version of Gloria.
It was followed by writing of ambitious lyrics by myself, aiming at delivering philosophical arguments partly in the form of reading style. For memorising the lyrics, I made a very rough demo version of this tune before we first played it live in October 1991.
The band continued to play this tune regardless to changes in personnel that eventually led us to rename ourselves from Elegance to Culotte in the following year. The song became a kinda theme song for us and was picked up to be a material for our official studio recording in summer 1992. For saving the studio time, obviously for saving our money, I prepared all the keyboard parts pre-programmed in a digital sequencer by May or June of the same year.
Culotte further continued to play Odorouyo Baby, literally means 'Let's dance, baby', at every gig they played even after the departure of the original drummer, who took part in the initial spontaneous jam by Elegance, in mid-1995. Prior to that, I asked them to retry recording this song because I was not satisfied with the mixing of the official one. The same programme was used for the keyboard parts and the recording was engineered by ourselves so that we could make the best result.
As for the lyrics, it didn't take long for me to regret to have written the so-called philosophical lyrics and especially in later years of Culotte, I felt a bit ashamed of singing some silly lines. Therefore, when I found the master tape of the 1994 studio recording, I made a remix with removing my voice parts. In this way, I guess it will become clearer the idea behind the title of the song - this was meant to be regarded as a kind of dance music.
The tune was initially written for a botched Rock Opera scheme in summer 1989 and modified into the current version in the later same year. Each of both versions had associated lyrics with little or no significance and they are removed from this final mix. I remember the recording of this demo was made in haste so that I could not enjoy indulging in the world of this composition much. Now, it's quite interesting to listen back this track that seemingly captured the zeitgeist of the early 1980s pop scene brilliantly although it was not intended but almost subconsciously.
The title was taken from a term in psychology which was new to me at the time of recording.
It began as a re-work of a thing called Madly, another song I wrote in 1992. The focus was not on adding but to reduce unnecessary parts from the source song and to change the lyrics for reflecting my inner thoughts more directly. The simplified work was reduced to a mere repetition of the same chord progression only.
The song was brought to then my band called Culotte and was recorded in a studio in an official manner in autumn 1992, and since then it became one of our usual repertoires in our gigs. When it came to playing it live, initially we had a guitar player who could replace the strings part in the intro and I could concentrate on playing the piano and on singing. After he left the band, the bassist became in charge of the intro and I played both the guitar and keyboard, occasionally making use of a foot pedal for sustaining the notes.
The audio in this video mainly features a demo version I later re-worked in 1996 and a live version from Culotte's performance in 1994. The silly lyrics is replaced with my casual guitar playing added in 2015 for making the video. I hope the concept that gave the title to this tune would have been finally fulfilled by being presented in the form of this video edition.
I began to be interested in Classical music largely through a close friend who was one of my university mates, who also played the bass and the keyboard in my successive bands from 1988 to 1990. Whilst his recommendation was Shostakovich's symphonies, I was rather attracted to some piano pieces by Eric Satie and Maurice Ravel that he played when I stayed at his place. After we worked hard for a relatively short period of time as a band called The Intellectual Gnomes in late 1989, I began to practice to play some pieces by Ravel on piano and this experience inspired me to write an original piece for piano. Within a week or two, I developed the idea into a composition featured in the video above.
Although I had to add some other instruments to complete the demo recording, I would like to congratulate myself for having written something like this, especially while being carried away with a fanciful infatuation towards a girl during the time of creation!
Initially, this thing was roughly written and recorded in a provisional unplugged form with a title I Will Try, which revealed my desperate mood caused fro my real life in early 1996. It was also a confusing period in terms of my relationship with my own musical activities - from breaking up of Culotte by the end of 1995 to establishing a new recording scheme dubbed as The Soft Core Project by the middle of 1996 - and this tune was most affected from the unstable circumstance surrounded its creation.
The instrumental mix was duly made for the Project but I also re-wrote the lyrics titled Girl, (the comma, in the end, is included in the song title), which, obviously, was addressed to an imaginary girl standing in front of the writer / singer - I came across with the idea from reading a book by Ray Davies of The Kinks. In the meantime, as the Project progressed, I had to make another demo version collaborated with a keyboard player, who came back from some of my old bands, for accommodating singers' voices and their own lyrics to go with the backing track. As a result, there also remain some different editions of this tune titled Moon Song, along with Girl, sung by the singer who wrote the former lyrics, accommodated on both backing tracks; the one you hear in this video and the collaboration version, and each version's instrumental mix.
Although I can smell some influence from Pete Townshend's Pinball Wizard on writing this tune, this is one of my favourite compositions from mine.
Actually, this is not a proper composition but a mere result of self-jamming in a psychedelic style; reflecting my admiration towards the music of The Doors, especially in their oriental elements revealed in The End...
Written in 1989 and 1994 / Recorded in 1989, 1994 and 2015
In early summer of 1989, one of my close friends then lent me his analog synthesizer, Roland - Juno 106, out of his favour. This was the first synthesizer I played ever before and it introduced me to another world. When I demo-recorded this tune, heavily inspired from Biding My Time by the Pink Floyd, I was so excited to add the sound of the synthesizer layer by layer; basic organ tone, brass tones and sound effect of stormy noises. You can listen to my over-indulgence in the closing quiet jam part in the end of this video.
The tune was later played by my band called Elegance in late 1991, with a newly added lyrics about Dandelion, featuring me on not the lead guitar part but on the keyboard.
When I re-worked on Dandelion, in 1994, I added the intro and fugue-like short bridging piece in the middle. The second guitar part was finally added for making the video in 2015, with a bit of soloing in the end.
A song I wrote for expressing my longing for going far away from home, physically and mentally beyond the concept of time. The audio was recorded with my band called Culotte in their very last days featuring a newly replaced drummer, and ironically, that circumstance helped to enhance the desperate feeling inside me while I was playing the electric guitar part. The tune could be presented in a better way but this was all we could at that time and only in this sense, it sounds fine... at least, personally.
This was actually a re-work of my earlier tune called The Blues of Mine. No new idea was added but this was simply played slower and smoother than the source track, that's it. In other words, this was kinda self-cover thing.
A silly thing I wrote being inspired by three young ladies I came across back then. Associated lyrics was so stupid that I had to remove from this final mix for uploading publicly :D
This tune first emerged almost spontaneously when I began to play the basic two chords with my guitar during a casual rehearsal session of my band called Elegance, in early 1992. Within a week or two, the singer added his temporary lyrics and gave the song a rough structure, while the drummer tried to give some twist in the later part. A couple of demo tracks were recorded before the bass player left the band by the end of March same year.
After the singer also left the band, I decided to re-wright the song with my own lyrics; not sticking to make it consists of only two chords and its demo recording was made in the autumn of the same year. My intention at this attempt was to introduce more pop feelings into the composition by making use of the programmed synthesizer parts and a newly written bridging section was also added (the chord progression of this section was later reused in one of Untitled tracks in the Soft Core Project scheme).
In the meantime, I found the initial two-chord version handy for my later successive bands to play and thus became a repertoire for Culotte, with the original lyrics and additional words by myself (1994-95), and for School, with a brand new lyrics written by the singer of the band (1997-98).
The audio track of this video was taken from the 1992 demo version, from which, the additional bridging pieces are all removed for make it consistent with the title given to the track. The structure conceived by the original singer and the drummer is loosely reflected in this demo and I thought it would be the best way to present the original ideas that formed the notion of OUR two-chord thing and pay my tribute to each of us.
I remember the 'thoughts' here were mostly inspired by a girl aged six years younger than me, with whom I enjoyed hanging around for a little while back in the days. In those days, I didn't take seriously about the difference in our ages but probably she did and in a sense, she must have enjoyed leading our conversation towards ending up to always create a certain sort of an enigma, at least, for me.
I thought the tune was written in a bit old fashioned style but put a stupid lyric on and brought it to my band Elegance, which played the song in some of their gigs while changing their personnel and its name to Culotte from late 1991 to early 1993. In that sense, I liked to play this thing simply because it's easy to play and has a relaxing atmosphere that would appeal to the audience temporarily. In other words, this tune can be nothing more than such thing.
What I wrote for this thing could be summarised in a less than two-minute demo recording, which consists of merely some ideas that formed the basis of what later developed to a song called Rakuen. When four of us initially launched a new band later called School, all of us agreed to co-write our original songs as a team. This allowed me to reduce the amount of my time and effort for making demos and this thing was one of such attempts in our early days - later, I even dropped being bothered with making any demo recording for the band.
When the demo entered to the hands of the 'team', despite the demo was quite a short material, some of my ideas were cut off and length of the song was hugely extended by meaningless repetition of the same sections required from the lyrics written by the singer. While my intention was to write something in tune with contemporary music scene, a bit danceable, modern and light stuff, the singer put almost irrelevant lyrics about Rakuen, literally means a paradise, based on a sort of fantasy world where she was mentally living in.
The video here contains some best bits from the song recorded in various different occasions including; the original demo, School's studio / live materials. Due to avoid any copyright issue, I have cut off any single word that belongs to the lyrics written by her. Alternatively, it contains a few guitar solos played by me repeatedly in which, I wanted to pay my tribute to Daevid Allen and his band Gong, especially during the period they featured Steve Hillage.
By the time when I worked on writing the D-E-C-D Suite in circa 2000, most of my equipment relating to play; write and record music has been replaced with digital stuff. In this particular composition, everything you hear came from those digital stuff; rhythm machine, digital sequencer and digital synthesizer, except for the guitars (I used both electric and acoustic ones). All parts were recorded on a digital hard drive recorder and mixed down to a mini disk (and a cassette tape for the backup purpose).
The tune was written under the common rule shared with other materials within the Suite and focus was placed on the contrast between machine-cold and human-warmth - in other words, digital and analog - with showing my interest for the minimal music. I have to admit that the length of this track is too long to present relatively simple and poor amount of actual contents as a composition.
The title was inspired from then my girlfriend... or, in general, through observing her as a woman from a close range.
The idea that motivated me for writing The D-E-C-D Suite was a cassette tape that I brought out with me on a thundery evening set in a portable recorder. On that evening, I think it was late summer or early autumn in 1995, I had an appointment to see my lady friend and I thought it would be interesting to capture available sound on my way to see her. In those days, I was a bit obsessed with casual recording because I thought anything could be usable for furnishing studio recorded materials of then my band Culotte.
Four or five years after the recording on my way walking, I discovered the cassette tape and thought about writing new materials long enough to cover the entire casual recording of the sound-effect. Since the main part is the sound-effect, the musical work should not be a one-go material but be divided into several pieces so that the intervals between each piece could accommodate enough time for the background sound-effect track to be properly heard.
Theme was written for representing the core element of the entire concept, the fusion between something primitive-humane and something digital-material.
The video below is a version of what I initially aimed at:
This tune was, as well as the case of F-Girls, the second or third composition I wrote for my self-dubbed solo recording scheme called The Soft Core Project. Because of the nature of this scheme, initially, it had no title and simply called Untitled #2 or #3. Then the project developed to feature some guest musicians and singers and in due course, it was suspended for launching a new band called School, by the end of 1996.
This untitled tune was picked up for the new band's repertoire and the female singer there wrote a lyric titled Jump Up (to the Sky). The song became one of the band's trademark songs and usually played as their closing track in their gigs. After the breaking up of the band, I recycled some ideas of this tune for my renewal version of Secret Jewellery Box, which was re-written and recorded in 1999-2000,
The jam part, in the end, which is called For Kyoko (Part One), was rarely played by School during their rehearsal sessions. This section was not particularly dedicated to anyone called 'Kyoko' but while these demo recordings had been yet called Untitled, each of them was also associated with some female singers who came to join the team of Soft Core Project earlier than forming School. One of these singers was called Kyoko and, if my memory serves well, this tune was associated (or assigned ) to her.
Written in 1991 and 1996 / Recorded in 1996
For Kyoko (Part Two) refers to the brief piano piece in the end, which is based on a similar recording I made in a collaboration work with my close friend then in 1991. The key was set different to the Part One deliberately, despite they share common playing time while both Parts cross-fade. Additionally, the Part Two has nothing to do with a girl called Kyoko.
A piece of music I wrote for the solo piano following the concept of the D-E-C-D Suite. I could write music like this but was not able to play piano at this level so that I had to programme every single note you hear in this demonstration into a digital sequencer, in order to actually listen how it would sound and also for recording an audio material. I think this composition eloquently speaks of my taste in music; a bit of respect for the traditional classical manner with a modest understanding on jazz and blues music.
This was the second or third composition I wrote for my self-dubbed solo recording scheme called The Soft Core Project. Because of the nature of this scheme, initially, it had no title and simply called Untitled #2 or #3. Then the project developed to feature some guest musicians and singers and in due course, it was suspended for launching a new band called School, by the end of 1996.
This untitled tune was picked up for the new band's repertoire and the female singer there wrote a lyric titled Girl Friends or Girls Move Forward. The song was performed by School for countless times and its synthesizer solo section was replaced with my guitar soloing.
After playing a set of same songs including Girl Friends repeatedly, my initial motivation for playing this thing has been gradually faded and when I was finally fired from the band, my feeling was more about for swearing towards the 'Girls' with using the F word. For this reason, I renamed the tune in this manner.
In addition, when I first wrote this tune, I thought this might be a good tribute for one of my favourite The Who songs, Substitute, which I played in various bands when I was young.
The final track I wrote and recorded for The D-E-C-D Suite. I don't remember if it was originally meant to be the closing track for the Suite or not, but since it ends with the major chord, it sounds suitable for presenting a conclusion of the entire work. It also typically represents my musical and recording abilities back then. Its powerful sound is divided in a bit complex rhythm structure, somewhat floating in the deep ocean of digital reverb... something like that.
A half-hearted composition of mine left with regrettably low audio quality. After my band called Culotte broke up in the end of 1995, I decided to continue recording my own works without asking help to any other guys. Shortly before that, while Culotte was still in action, I bought a digital eight-track recorder aiming at improving the quality of the band's materials. The combination of the decision I made for going solo and inexperience in handling the brand new recording machine resulted in this horrible material. Because of the decision, I rejected the idea for going back to make use of the rhythm machine but booked some studio time for recording the drum part played by myself! Also, because of the inexperience, I could not capture the sound of each instrument lively and hence the disastrous debut for my solo career...
This 12-bar-blues was written as a part of an unfinished conceptual work titled The D-E-C-D Suite. It was just an idea to integrate a simple common motif within the Suite - from which, its title came from - into the chord progression of 12-bar blues and in this piece, the motif is assigned to the brass section, actually played by the synthesizer, and harmonica.
I really liked the backing track, especially the piano part I played, and later re-used for Walking Blues #2 - for more details, please refer to the entry about the tune.
In addition, the key inspiration for this recording all came from The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's fantastic version of Everything's Gonna be Alright, performed live at the Woodstock festival in 1969, featuring Buzzy Feiten.
If my memory serves well, this tune was originally written for the Lost Love Story concept and was initially titled Here She Comes. However, since the concept was then abandoned, and the sequencer programming was ready to go, I converted the tune to another ongoing concept which was The Soft Core Project. I don't think this thing was written well but more importantly, its original mixing was horrible. In those days, I have to admit that I could not mix the programmed synthesizer parts and later added guitar parts in a well-balanced fashion.
For making this video, I had to struggle to synchronise the original mix stored in a digital format and a remix made from the analog master tape. Since each of these mixes focused on different parts, mixing them enabled me to reconstruct an ideal mix to present the tune was supposed to be heard.
