Practice Perfect {musical notes}

Practice Perfect began life, in my early sketches, in straight 4-4 time. At some point it evolved into something quite different, verses comprising repeated sixteen-beat segments (two bars of 6 and one of 4 beats). In the end I settled on the final arrangement because I liked how it took you off guard, and had a metronomic quality, especially in the outro sequence. This seemed to fit in with the theme of the song, relentless dedication to one's art.

Here's an early version (without drums but including mistakes) in 4-4 time.



The effect is quite different.


This version also shows how I tend to work on early drafts: lay down a guitar guide track on the acoustic, layer over some other guitar parts (here including bass) and then do main and backing vocal tracks, often the backing parts sung along with the main part all the way through, just to see how it sounds. I seldom plan to use these other than in selected parts but this way you sometimes get unexpected delights. Mostly these are just single takes, improvised as the tape rolls.


Also of interest, to those paying close attention throughout the Setsu tracks, is this motif that appears in several tracks.





These chords are the main riff in the November track Harvest and appear in a minor key version in the upcoming June track about the rainy season. I have a feeling they're somewhere else but can't put my finger on it at the moment.

The lyrics also refer to other tracks (not published yet): the Shakuhachi man will make an appearance in the opening track coming in April and the son in this track has a Yankie Girl girlfriend, both of whom might be the subjects of the July track.

Cosuplay musical notes

Cosuplay was the last tune to be completed for the Setsu album. It was quite a struggle to get the parts to fit together but, in the end, it's one of the tunes I'm most pleased with. For a while I wasn't sure if the juxtaposition between dark verse and poppy chorus worked: the verses alternate bars of B major then C major and the chorus shifts to a good old-fashioned doo-wop kind of thing with a G / E minor / A minor / C, though that does have an unexpected Gmaj7 thrown in on the word 'Geek'. Anyway, it was meant to sound both conformist and subversive to mimic the way the girls follow the rules all week and cosuplay on Sunday. Of course, this in itself is typical of Japanese subversion: it should still be done according to a strict schedule and within clearly-defined rules.

The dream sequence in the middle section, where the girls imagine leaving their "small town shopping mall" behind for the crowds and glamour of Harajuku, shifts unexpectedly from the neat resolution of the C at the end of the chorus up a semi-tone to a D flat minor. Again, this subversion of the doo-woppishness represents the rebelliousness of the thought of hanging out with 'actual' weirdos (what would grandma think!). To me at least, the girls in this tune won't realise this dream; the thrill is just in the thinking of it. Any kind of cosuplay I saw in Japan to me was all surface and no substance: kids didn't dress as punks in clothes they'd actually made look punky, it was all bought like that, pre-fabricated with rips and safety pins in place. It could just as easily have been teddy boy fashion or an anime character. They certainly didn't identify with the spirit of the punk movement.

The lyrics in the verses probably zip past too quickly to hear on a first listen (but they're on the Soundcloud page in the song info). The first part of the verse is solo voice only but then the backing vocals chime in, highlighted in this excerpt with all other tracks (except one guitar backing) switched off.

The quarelling shrines

The insane custom that is the Katsuyama 'quarrelling' danjiri festival (勝山喧嘩だんじり) was one of the outstanding cultural experiences of my life in Japan. Danjiri - portable shrines dressed up to look like carts-cum-boats with branches attached - are pulled by liquored-up townsfolk in a sort of destruction derby crossed with tug of war. Just watch a bit of the video.

No surprise that one of the locals we knew told us that her husband had lost a finger, the chances of which seem pretty high even without the amount of sake and beer that is consumed in the hours proceeding the evening of the actual festivities.

The video doesn't really do the atmosphere justice. Banks of spectators crammed on either side of the street in a beautifully preserved historical precinct; chanting participants (Oii-saaa! Oii-saaa!); constant clanging of the 'shrine' bells inside the danjiri and beating of drums. Then the two danjiri are propelled by each team in a mad rush and - smack! Typically for this kind of thing, no-one really seems to care who wins. 

This was the inspiration for the November track for my album Sestu (though I know the actual event, as in the video title above, is held in October. More on the tune itself in the next post.

Harmonies hide bum notes: musical notes on Haiku

A tricky beast, is my October track for Sestu (original post here).

The two acoustic sections for the beginning and end were recorded as one, though always with splitting them in mind. Both sets of lyrics are haiku, though as I explained earlier the first is the more proper in the Japanese tradition. The time signature is the interesting bit, three repeating bars to match the sound pattern of a haiku poem: one bar of 5 beats, the next 7, then another of 5. It creates a nice circular feel as it goes around each time, I feel. You can count them out along with the first verse the 1 of the first bar of 5 is on the word "leaves" and the second bar begins on the second word "catch," with the extra two beats (6 and 7) on "mid-day" and then "sun" is the 1 of the third bar of 5 beats.

Two acoustic guitars are panned hard left and right, one playing the same chords but in a different shape with a capo to create a slight contrast between them. The solo is played on the mermaid guitar itself over the top of these two, recorded with a room mic at a decent distance from the instrument to give it a natural reverb.

Screen shot of left-side harmonies

Like the guitar the heavy vocals harmony parts are panned hard left and hard right. The screen grab here shows the left side: 7 vocal tracks of varying pitches (and quality! - you can see from the names I give them when editing that there are some dodgy notes, but I learned from this that 'choral' singing really does hide the bum notes). There's an 'answering' set of harmonies on the other side, though this one only has seven voices. I usually make up harmonies on the fly as I record, so there are always plenty of bum notes. I record listening to the main vocal, improvising a harmony, though obviously I have an idea of what it sounds like in my head beforehand. Then I repeat the section, normally keeping all the takes. Then later on I'll listen to the whole lot, taking each one in turn, labeling them as I go to indicate the pitch and quality. Some I just delete or mute.

The left side harmony sounds like this:

From there the electric segment kicks in, but that's probably best left for another post. Time to leave you humming "Leaves catch midday sun..."