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.
