Back Entrance of Music

Re-Building

2011-03-03T19:46:00.002+09:00

If it gets broken, if it gets lost, if it gets forgotten, I just rebuild it. For a few times, I experienced building something from scratch in my life. I gain something as I live, and at the same time I lose something.

Well, nothing lasts for ever. If I feel happy today, the happiness will not last for ever. There is always an end to it. But, is that something sad or fearful? I don't feel like that. I don't think of my live like that.

Music is like that. Music the art bound to the time. Anytime I finish writing a piece of music, I am experiencing an end. An end is end. I just re-build my life. I have been living as so, as a composer.

I have finished a piece for my fellow musician. The piece was titled as Harp Suite. The harpist is going to perform it at the end of April. This is just like re-experiencing the process of re-building a life to me. After she performs the piece, probably that will be "the end" about this piece. Before she performs it, I am still in the process of builging it.

Just like slowly walking towards the end. After the end, that is the beginning of re-building it. Somehow, I don't feel any difficulty to re-build a thing since...I can't remember. My life has been always like that. I am already working on a new piece for solo violin. I am planning over 20 movements for this piece. It will be a long way to go, but there will be an end eventually.

Better Answer

2010-10-15T03:15:00.002+09:00

George Crumb said in a lesson with me one day, "there is always a way to make your piece of music better." Personally, I still don't like this sentense. Despite I dislike the phrase, it can be applied to most of the cases in the society, especially for something like "life."

For example, I have my own recipe of making an apple pie. I believe in the recipe is the best way to make an apple pie. However, by believing so, I am closing the door where the possibilities of "better" answers come in my life. I personally think that's what George Crumb meant.

Then, the question is where to decide the piece is "finished." Crumb's words only lead the never-ending process of revising the piece of music. So, I only take his words as "don't forget to question your answers."

In life, there are so many cases and situations for us to make some kind of decisions. In each scene, we all believe the answer we choose is "the best" decision. Crumb is just saying there is always an alternative answer in any situations in our life and they could be better answers.

Personally, I don't apply this way of thinking to my composition. I am always making the best decision "at that time." I might be able to think of better answer afterwards, though that is only the answer "I of future" make. That's not the answer made by "I of present." Time changes me minute by minute. The point is whether I make any compromise when I make each decision.

I personally don't make any compromise at least in music composition. I see lots of people in the society or around me make compromises when they need to make important decisions. I don't mean to criticise the decisions the others make, though I learn something from their way to make decisions.

Crumb said "doubt your decision." I want to "believe myself" at least in music. I can say "oh I was so young!" by looking back my pieces of music 20 years from now, but even in that case, I don't want to lose the sense of respecting myself of 20 years ago made the decision as believing the best answer. I am ALWAYS writing my masterpiece. I never make a rush work.

Process and Goal

2010-09-08T03:08:00.002+09:00

Is there any legendary guitarist who actually "tried to become a legendary guitarist?" I don't think there was any. Each of them probably was just playing the guitar just because it was fun firstly. The person was just keep playing the guitar and little by little tried to challenge something new.

For the person, probably the process was like walking up the long stairs. The process was made of daily practice of just making a single step higher. The single step might not be that tough to make. The person was just enjoying playing the guitar. The person was not playing the guitar because there was any clear goal such as "to become a legendary guitarist."

Keep walking...keep walking...that was fun enough for the person, I think. One day, the person realized that the society sees him as "a legendary guitarist." Well, cool - that's probably what he only thought. To gain the honor was not his goal from the benginning anyway. It was just an optional gift of some sort.

I see so many people who plays guitar because they wanna become famous. I feel something awkward to their way of setting the goal over playing the guitar. Why can't they play the guitar just for fun? Frankly, ALL of composers I met were writing music BECAUSE THEY WANNA BECOME A COMPOSER. Is that goal setting "natural?" - I questioned to myself the same thing so many times. My answer to the question was always "hell no."

I want to compose good music. I want to learn more skills to write good music. I don't write music because I want to become a composer. I don't write music because I want to make living outta composition. I love music. At least in front of music, I want to be honest and natural. Because I love music, I don't want to blaspheme music. I don't USE music to make money or for my own glory. Music is way too sublime to be used as a tool to fool the society and make money for me.

I am in the "process of music" now. I don't have any honor or prize or glory over music. Those can easily be seen as "goals," though luckily I am aware that those goals are in fact fakes. The real goal don't always locate at the summit of the mountains. Right now, or I should say so far, I have been enjoying doing music. What more shall I want? I like to be "in the process." Those fake goals are just dead-ends of music.

A Star-Shaped Peg In A Square Hole

2010-09-05T05:29:00.005+09:00

It's long enough after all was decided about Hiroshima thing. Frankly saying, the company was not the one I was expecting. The CEO took too conservative position against my innovative spirit. His words were very Japanese - "you are a little too young." Well, my words to you - "you are a little too old."

Anyways, the whole Hiroshima thing just made me realize the thing I was always aware of. I am a weird-shaped peg which can NEVER fit to those ordinal square or triangle holes in the society. My fellow basist said "well, you know, you are not the one to be a part of an organization. You are a solo player, as you always have been." I knew it. Then why tha hell I even thought about going to meet the CEO of the Hiroshima company? That's a mistery.

Well, even listening to my music, any of those pieces are just too uniquely shaped to fit to ANY type of music that the society expect. Then, why am I promoting them to the society? Isn't it always obvious that my music is not for music business? I stopped thinking about promotion of my music.

I am working on a new project, SOUND GATE TWO. This band is made of electric guitar, electric bass, vocal, and amplified violin. The suite of music we play has a story. An illustrator is going to make image boards of the story to be part of the final product of the project. The point I must not forget is that we are not making the are product to make money. Our goal is simply to achieve an art.

The environment surrounding the music business has been changing these years. I feel like I time-traveled to the medieval era when there was no such thing called music business. But there were musicians in medieval time. What did they do music for?

Playing the violin on street is probably the most similar way to do music for myself as the musicians in old time. It's simple. I make music, I play music, and people listen to it. What else? Hmm, well, I can make enough living in my other works, so I don't need anything else over doing music. At least, my star-shaped peg doesn't fit in any holes in the society. I don't think that can ever be a reason to change my shape.

There are people who are waiting for my music even though the number of them is few. I just keep making music. I don't care what follows that.

The Very First Step

2010-07-16T15:07:00.002+09:00

It is very difficult for most of people to put one's foot one step forward. Stable life is very confortable to lay down on. However, nothing keeps going unchanged. Even my body gets older. The society's fashion changes day by day. Stay in where I am is very easy. Moving on to the next world is always fearful.

However, without forwarding the very first step, my unsatisfactory situation also never change, either in good way or bad way. Because of the first step, I can possibly get into unrecoverable failure of life. The possibility is always there. I cannot deny it. The possibility of failure is very fearful. That's the same for everybody.

Looking back the walkpath I have walked, my life was full of challenges. I was always insecure and fearing the future. I had no idea what would come to me for me to make each action. Even writing one piece of music and having it listened by my friend, who knows what that would lead. However, I was always forwarding the very first step as holding big fear within me.

I think, the worst senario is doing nothing because I am afraid of the failure. Listening to my own pieces of music, they all talk to me that none of them are failure. Someone might find me and pull me up? Well, perhaps that is not my goal in fact. At least, making efforts, forwarding my steps even though each is very small, they are already enriching my life.

I quit my job at the beginning of this year. I have been jobless since then. However, I was such a time-rich since then. I could focus on writing music as making just about enough money to keep myself alive by part-time jobs. Last week, I received a unexpected offer from one company in Hiroshima City. The position they offer me is thrillingly good.

Getting successful is not constitute of only one step. There is no such thing that one guy comes to me and I will be a star musician tomorrow. Even though rarely that kinda thing happen, I can see how fragile such a success is. Life is made of lots of steps. Going to Hiroshima City is only one step of my life.

One step leads to the next step. The next step leads to the follwing another step. No one pulls your hands to make your first step. You must make your own decision and move forward. Even though a failure is lead by the step I make, as long as I made my own decision without any social influence, I don't think I would ever regret it. On the other hand, if I were scared off to make the first step forward even though the step might bring me some success, I would definitely regret such a chicken mind of mine.

Even though I get alone, I keep moving on. I keep writing music, and I keep shouting out my music to the society. Music is always with me. Fear cannot defeat my music.

Definition of Success in Art

2010-05-25T16:01:00.003+09:00

At the evening of the day before yesterday, I had finished writing a new song suite for my next project. The suite's duration is over 25 minutes only by music. Working on long pieces of music feels like that is where I am supposed to be. Keeping my concentration focus right on to the same piece of music for over half year long...it sounds horribly challenging, though I naturally enjoy doing it.

Writing music, catching lots of fishes, harvesting mashrooms, growing rice...I don't really see much big difference among them. Music is for mental health and foods are for physical health. That's all. At least, neither of music nor food is for money. The ultimate goal is for our health. It is not for money. Money is the "process" of health. Health is the "goal." Money can never be the goal.

Then, what is the definition of success in art? Finishing making one piece of art can already be a success. Alright now, is "selling the works for lots of money" what success is? The answer is "hell no." At least I answer like that.

Economic depression? Cultural barrier for arts? Social misunderstanding and belittling of artists? For making livings of your own family? Hmm, those are all fuckin excuses which can work like opium to affirm your identity. In other words, relying on those excuses is just avoiding any responsibilities come on. And all of these excuses are based on misunderstanding the goal as stupid money.

Artists' first goal is to accomplish the expression of our identities within the work of art. At that stage, why the hell do we need to care whether the work of art would make money or not? Where did the real goal go?

The difinition of success in art is definted by myself, not by anybody else. If I believe the success of art is making lots of money out of it, then that is the truth of my world. If I believe the success of art is giving a performance with my music on street and making one or two people's mind healthy, then that is the truth of my world.

At certain point where you can define yourself as an artist, you'd better stop walking once and re-consider what is the definition of success in your own art. Is that money, or else? I have my own way to think about this topic. Whenever I am about to lose the strong belief in my own definition of success in art, I always "ask to my works of art." I just ask to my music if my belief is where I am sopposed to go. My music always gives me a strong answer.

When I asked from somebody how to find the definition of success in art, I generally answer like this: Firstly, fill your mind with complete darkness and throw away all the definitions of the real world, such as a spoon is no longer a spoon for you. Then, the first thing comes out from the darkness is your original definition, such as "oh, I can throw this piece of metal!" when you see a spoon. There is always reason, process and goal in the first inspiration you have. After finding the definition, all you have to do is to just do it.

Money and Art

2010-03-19T19:42:00.002+09:00

I hate such things so called "social common sense." What a hell is "standard?" Why can't I be original - in other word "different?" Hmm, since last month when I quit the fuckin "white collar" jobs and started focusing on composition, one topic has been sticking in my head and provoking my soul against the society.

People go to work to make money. They don't really want to work from the bottom of their heart. However, they kill their feeling and wake up at 7am to go to work 5 days a week. That is because they want money. That is because they need money. TO MAKE MONEY, people shape themselves into specific shape of the gear wheel in order to function as a piece of the whole mechanism of the machine of society.

I don't blame that kind of life. I in fact respect them. The reason is simple - because I cannot live like that. I once tried to do that. I tried it in December and January. I just couldn't stand it. I couldn't live as "fake I." I cannot stupify myself to act as a good gear in the society.

The point is very simple. I don't live in order to make money. I make money in order to live. The reason and the goal cannot be placed in wrong way. Here I say the above two lines in MY words: I don't write music in order to make money. I make money in order to write music. There you go. It makes so much sense in my life.

I am a composer. I am not a money maker. There are so many people around me say the same line: "whatever you do, it is pointless if you cannot make your living." Ha! Ha! Very funny. As experienced the society of "standard" people, now I can shout back this line to them: "you people cannot identify me from the side of the world you live!"

Woking in order to make money - it is one of the sociel common senses. Over 99% of people believe this common sense. However, I think IT IS WRONG. How come we cannot MAKE MONEY IN ORDER TO WORK? Why the reason and the goal is in that way? Now I can totally understand that it is impossible for the "standard" people to make it any sense.

I am an artist. I am not living for money. I write music even though I don't get paid for it. I wanna inquire "why do I have to write music for money?" If you write music to make money, that is no longer an artist. That is just USING music to make money. That is not MAKING music. How pointless is that! If you write music to make money, you can no longer write what you want. It is very simple - by considering the salary of the composition, the composer must judge one's music on the scale of money. $1,000,000 is bigger than $100. However, who can put a price to each of two pieces of music as $1,000,000 and $100?

Here is the confliction of money and art. Who can say 2 minute long piano solo piece is cheaper than 74 minutes long 4 movement symphony? WHO CAN SAY 2 MINUTE LONG PIANO SOLO PIECE IS LESS THAN 74 MINUTES LONG 4 MOVEMENT SYMPHONY? What a hell is the "value" of art? Who decides that?

I am afraid to say that I don't write music to make money for the above reason. My music should be paid whatever the client thinks. 1. I receive a request of composition. 2. I write a piece of music. 3. The client listen to my music and pay as much as she/he thinks appropriate considering their allowance. That is the RIGHT way. I hate the system of commission. Don't bring the value of money into my composition. I don't care how much you pay to me as long as you pay something. "How much" is not the point.

Anyway, I just keep writing music. I don't care if I get paid or not. I write music as art. I don't write music to make money.

At The Same Eye Level

2010-02-07T22:01:00.003+09:00

I have been doing music for almost the entire my life. In the society, or shall I say in specific culture, people believe that the more you build something the higher you can be. I in fact disagree to that belief. I should be called "a specialist" in certain field of music, though I have never even thought about considering myself as higher than anything.

I am at the same eye level as where I was when I began composing. I don't describe myself of now as "better" than before. I think that's wrong. I am always I. I just keep changing as the time pasts. I can never be the same I as 10 minutes ago. However, I don't say I am better than 10 minutes ago.

As getting more and more skilled, it is very easy for one to think she/he is getting "higher." That is such an illusion of the society. In the society, there is what so called "promotion" in each job. One becomes the chair of the section of the company if the one does good job. However, that is not natural at all. In the nature, there is no such thing as promotion. Even though you get skilled, the ultimate goal of the job should not be different from the time when you started.

I graduated from a school. I am making living for my wife and myself now. Does that changes anything? The answer is no. If my music gets "promoted" in the society, does that change anything? The answer is the same as above. I write music. That is all. Do I write music "to get promoted?" Again, the answer is the same. In fact, lots of people around me misunderstand this point. I don't write music to get promoted. It's the other way around. I get promoted in order to write music.

I am applying to music production companies in Tokyo soon. Right now I am gathering all the materials and documents for the applications. In my PR document, I am writing the point right at the beginning. "I am not writing music to make money. I make money to write music." If one company hires me, then the company must know that premise of my music philosophy.

My eye level is always the same whether I get promoted or not. I never look down anybody or look up anybody. I am always I. That fact never changes.

Mr./Ms. White Collar

2010-01-09T14:45:00.002+09:00

Sinde the beginning of December, 2009, I have been working in a very traditional Japanese IT company as a infrastructure manager to promote the installations of the company's WAN product to partner companies in Europe. Simply saying, this is the very first time I worked as so called "white collar" business man as a piece of the whole organization of people.

I just wanted to experience the socially stantdard style of life, which was almost unapproachable from "my standard" way of life. My academic background, working history, anything means nothing in the world of "white collar." What they expect to workers is "a standard" of the white collar custom, such as taking a good minutes of the meetings, being good at writing good reports to appeal to the elder officials to be promoted, etc. Well, the point is that I HAVE ALMOST NO EXPERIENCE TO DO ANY OF THE ABOVE.

I have been living to become an original creative artist. To be so, I and all the colleagues around me were trying to find a way to be "outlaw" which means literally the opposite of "standard." My behaviour, attitude, even looking, any of them could impossibly fit to "white collar" tradition. The aftercome of one month of belonging to such a company, they simply fired me despite how good I was at the actual management of the job.

Right now, I am in very unique situation. Right after my resignation was decided by the elder officials of the IT company, another two companies raised their hands to show their strong interest to me as a talent to be joined to their companies. I am now waiting to be decided to be taken by which company. Very funny thing is that my environment reacts almost the same as when I was in the US even here in Japan, even in "white collar" culture.

One cloud of people simply cannot allow, accept, stand me. The other cloud simply fall in love with me at the deepest point of heart. No one's there in between the two clouds, who has gray emotion to me. Just like to my music, there are haters and lovers but nothing in the middle. Black or white but not in gray zone.

Well, Mr. and Ms. White Collars first reaction to me is to force me to decide either completely focus on music to be a professional of it, or keep music as hobby and be a professional "white collar." This question is completely non-sense. Life is not as simple as A or B. There are always C and D and E and F and so on. Only white collars think there are only A or B as choices.

However, I take their strong interest and reactions to me as a person. Probably, that is like a small part which implies the whole society. This is what I take: the society is now questioning to me how I am going to do as an originality, Ogino, in the society.

Since last year's project, SOUND GATE ONE, I have been in an almost ideal situation to create my art works just as I want. This year, I have already started writing pieces for the next project, SOUND GATE TWO. I am going to keep making the annual products for three consecutive years - until SOUND GATE THREE in 2011. Right now, I am 99% focusing on MAKING my works, but not yet interested in promoting/releasing them to the society.

The point is my behaviour. If I want to release my works to the society widely, then I'd better show my mind to the society. Otherwise even if there were some people who could be my patron, they only see my negative attitude for the wide distribution of my works to the society. They cannot raise their hands to be my patron in the current situation.

Now, the question is: do I want to get into that area now? I am self-questioning this for a couple of weeks. I am yet in the age of 28. I think I still have some time to think about it, maybe until I turn 30. I hate to mention this shit, though the economy of this country is fucked up completely now. All investers look for certain project which recovers the initial invests shortly - within a year as the latest. How to make the B-ranked products by the lowest cost and to make a small but certain cost recovery - that's ONLY what they are going after. In this economic environment, I don't find any chance to be successful in the music distribution business. That's one reason why I'd feel like focusing on creating works rather than releasing them.

For now, meaning maybe for at least this year, I would probably stick with the "white collar" companies to make my living. At least I am learning lots of things in the tradition wether that is useful to my creative activities or not. I like learning new stuff. But at the bottom of my heart, I cannot become a "white collar." I am already an artist. I will probably experience many nice or unconfortable events and judges from the society this year. I can handle that. My maing focus of this year is SOUND GATE TWO project anyway.

Run Further

2009-09-12T03:07:00.005+09:00

On 25th of August, John went back to the US after accomplishing recording all six pieces planned originally. Since then, I have been intensively working on mastering the recorded raw materials. At the same time, I was designing the jacket of the CD. Now, Imai is working on the website.

I have been too lazy to keep my daily running excercise since the end of last year maybe just because I was too busy on my job. After John left here, I started running around Osaka Castle almost everyday. Six months blank of running made my body quite heavy and weak. I could only make one circle around the castle for a few days. Interestingly, the more I used to running, the more I know how to use all of my energy just to make one circle instead of knowing how to go further.

Running one time around the castle is about 5km. I take about 20 minutes to run that far. When I come back to where I satrted, I am about to run out of breath, and my legs are about to scream for the fatigue. Then, what shall I do? Do I want to go further? Do I want to just keep the amount of excercise for ever? If I go further, when is exactly the time to push myself to run further? When to do so, how far should I push myself? How should I estimate the limit of myself?

I hate to wait until I confidently feel ready to go further. I think that is just showing the weakness of my mind. In fact, I believe such a day, when I confidently feel ready, will NEVER come. I think like this: if such a day comes in the future, then why that is not today? Today, I ran two times around the castle. 20 minutes used to be felt like ever to me, but it no longer is. I can go 40 minutes without stopping now.

Challenging means that it must be facing to myself who I don't even know. Challenging to myself who I know is such a meaningless, pointless, egoistic, weak action to make, I think. Challenging can be real challenging only because I challenge to myself without knowing the conclusion. I never know what will happen when I challenge. That is why challenging is thrilling. That is why it excites me a lot.

I am thinking about starting a new business with a new networking system using Linux. It sounds like such a dream right now, but why not to challenge it today. I am also thinking about changing my "job for living" by the end of this year, meaning as soon as I can. My current job is very flexible and well paying. It is very easy to just sit on it for ever. However, I think I learned a lot from the job and experienced as much as I could. It is about the time to go to the next step.

Changing in your life is often painful. Well, I think it is rather thrilling than painful, though. When I went to the US, I threw away everything I had before, such as my own rock band and connections to teachers in Japan. I became "just one person" in the US and started re-building my identity in Indiana University. Meanwhile, when I came back to Japan, I again threw away lots I had such as my pride, connections, status, anything. I again became "just one person" in Osaka and restarted working on forming my identity.

I am used to change. I don't even feel painful or risky to throw away my identity. Whatever I do to my status, music never leave from me anyway. Lucky me, I now have someone who understands this eccentric life style of mine and wants to be with me.

I do know, to run further, it is necessary to challenge myself. Maybe it's just me, though I always need to reset my status when I challenge to myself seriously. I have to become nobody when I seriously face to myself who I don't know. Of course, most of people around me never understand such an idiotic behaviour like throwing away all status I have. Of course, if you are normal, you wanna settle down in one place with one solid job which you can keep until you retire. I just don't live like that. I am different. It's as simple as that.

Summer Of The Project

2009-08-02T19:23:00.004+09:00

It is already August. I have a reason why I haven't updated this blong for such long time. The reason is because I was communicating to a guy in English almost everyday. The online music score publishing organization, which I was one of the main three members, was completely closed without even a notice to me. I don't object the other two members. It was just for me that the time to shift my life has come.

The guy, John Astaire, was sending me e-mails almost everyday. We were mainly discussing about how to make our ideal comes true. We took long enough to plan out the every detail of the recording project which would be done in this hot and humid month of tyhoon in Osaka, Japan.

There was a plan to have my university fellow move to Osaka and form a new age ensemble, SOUND GATE. We spent really over a year for the plan, although it would have never been real. I had written over 40 minutes of music for the new ensemble to perform right after the fellow could move to Osaka. The five pieces of music were put in the depth of the drower of my side-desk since last summer.

John was the one. He was the one said it to me first. "Why don't we record the cool five pieces in Osaka?" His word put a big fire on my spirit. I started preparing for the recording project. I hired a professional guitarist in Osaka. I hired a professional photographer. I made a contract with a recording studio about this project. I hired a recording engineer. I bought lots of music equipments to be used for the project. I spent over $5,000 worth of Japanese yen only for the preparation. John and I are meeting at Temmabashi Station tomorrow. Is it real? I cannot yet digest the truth happening right in front of me.

It is not about whether the project will be successful. It is the matter that we actually do it. I thank to my fellow, John Astaire wholeheartedly. Without his word, I was just being a chicken and avoid taking the risk of failure. Right now, John is on the plane heading to far east islands. It is...it is really becoming true. How long have I kept walking? How far have I come since I left the normal people's society? It is now when one milestone will be set in my whole music career. My fellow musicians often get weak and uncertain about the project, even including John. However, I would never be insecure anymore. I always smile to them and promise them the project will certainly be successful. I am the one who will make it true.

Life is full of challenges. When I stop walking, that is where my gravestone will be. We are doing music. How great that is! What else do I need? Music is my life. Glory is not my life. The art of sound will become real as a recording product in this summer. Hopefully, I can inform my accomplishment to my university friends including the two members of the online organization.

Coffee and Music

2009-03-18T17:29:00.002+09:00

Coffee is very good with music. At least, that is so in my daily life. Since I moved out from my parents' house to a new apartment, I often walk to Imai's apartment. His wife, himself and I drink some wine I usually bring along and talk until 2am or something rather late. Hopefully, my wife will join us soon.

Anyways, nothing serious about the above personal comments. Here I go in my usual tone. It is very common in music world, or I should rather say "in life," that people judge you by your career, which is literally what you have done in your own history, in other word in the past. This was one point I still hate the academic, or general classical music world. Everything follows after something achieved already in the past. Then, my question is, how something new can possibly happen in that environment?

'd better look the business field. It's almost like chain of "buying on credit," in other words venture investments to future possibilities. No wonder starting a new company or business would be easier than achieving something big for the first time in the classical music world. To start something new in the classical music world, you need to have some kind of trustful career, like you won some fxxkin fellowships or competitions or those sxit. To win them, you need to be a good student of an authority person first, then keep kissing the guy's ass, sometime even pay rediculous amount of lesson fee or even "sleep" with the guy. Very very funny. All I do is to stick up my middle finger to that kind of people and society of music.

Ah, coffee is very good with music.

Recently, I received an e-mail from my old friend in the US asking about my recent music business. I had to take some time to choose words to describe my current music projects in proper way to him, because my music projects are completely different from what I had been doing in the US. All I could say was something like "I do stuff not academic. I just do music for people."

Even my compositions are shifting its genre from classical to more like "world music." I have very strong policy that I never use synth sound in my music products unless ordered from the clients. I stronheadedly stick with "raw" music, played with actual instruments, played by real people. After the new female vocal member joined to my group, our group is changing our style of music more towards mysteric, fantasic, hm, very hard to describe, though I simply try to write our music which sounds like "music of different world."

I am in fact shaping my career by myself. I no longer rely on somebody else to do that. I have my group, technologies to create music products, media to distribute them, my own studio to concentrate on composition, then what else do I need, I ask. My income is getting stable these months. I don't really need to aim for anything like "success." I do music by myself. There are some people who want to listen to my new works. In this good situation, it is almost nonsense to dream about making my own living only by writing music as business.

We, my group, of course keep releasing our music to the public. However, we don't "promote" our music to the society. We don't care whatever the press writes about our music in magazines or blogs. We don't care whatever prizes would be given by some kinda organizations to out music. Our music is not for money-making purpose. Our music is for people.

Well, I only have few days to finish up Sound Gate Suite No.2. I'd better go back to the work.

First Movement

2009-02-17T19:15:00.002+09:00

When I was in The Netherlands, I met a very good friend singer. He and I stayed up very late and talked a lot about religions and music. In the discussion, I mentioned how similar cooking and composition are. I said the point of the both is to entertain people, to see their smily faces. However, my friend said the two are very different. Once you eat the menu, cokking is accomplished. Nothing should be left after the eating. However, in music, my compositions will live and last after they are premiered or recorded. That was what he said. I was quite shocked by the way.

In my recent life, I live for myself, meaning I am doing music just for myself. It sounds horrible in English, though. I used to believe that I am writing music to be admired from the society in the future, even including the time after my death. However, I somehow don't do that these days. I more focus on my current emotions and feelings rather than being scared of the future and doing nothing. My present moment is the truth in my life. I no longer doubt that.

I have just finished the first movement of my new piece, Sound Gate Suite No.2. I have also already started the second movement. The theme of the whole suite is "death." It is nothing like subculture or underground sense of "cool" death stuff. One is my own death. The other is the affect of my death to somebody next to me. Maybe there is hope after my death. Maybe there is sorrow. Maybe there is the unexplainable feeling towards the memories the one shared with me. And one main point is that how social values are such tiny meaningless clues in our real life.

There is no right or wrong in the life. I somehow believe so in my recent life. Also, no one must be able to judge the other one's life right or wrong. It happens often between parents and children, but there is only one truth and that is in each of our soul. Unchangable present time is where we all live. I think we should at least try to enjoy and be proud of being in this world.

Sound Gate Suite No.2 will be the main piece in the first maxi-single of my band, SOUND GATE. The CD will be on sale around this fall from the record label, Riax Japan. The CD will be available by online order only.

Busy Life

2008-11-20T23:46:00.002+09:00

Last weekend, I finished a new piece for solo piano, Piano Suite No.3. It is a commissioned piece which was ordered to be finished by this winter. I had already submitted the piece to the client, so at least I completed my job.

The piece has 4 movements and total about 13 minutes long. I was ordered to fit the piece within 10 minutes, though after all I wrote longer than that. It's better than shorter, so I don't really mind.

I have been paid crazy lot from my computer engineering job these monthes. I really don't have any problem in money now. I am even thinking about buying another pair of condencer microphones which costs about 300,000yen. Actually, I received an another commission from a clarinet player, though the actual order of the piece will be submitted to me around the end of this year. At least, right now I can focus on writing pieces for my current trio band.

I am also working on preparing a project with my fellow drum player. I am still gathering members for the project. I am enjoying my current trio band, though in order to achive something solid with the drummer, I really need a guitarist for the project. One of my fellow guitarist is being interested in it, though he is even busier than me, so we gotta have to talk first, with Imai.

By the way, I said trio, though right now my band is e-bass, female voice, and I who can be keyboard player or drum player. This trio group is working quite fine right now. The singer is the newly joinning member. She doesn't have much background experience in music, though her enthusiasm is respectful. She is now working on putting words on my new song for female voice, fretless bass, and piano.

Again, still, since summer, my life has been quite busy and enriched by music and money. I totally have no complaint to my life. I really enjoy it. Challengin new things is very fun and thrilling. I probably already said it here, though I never stop doing music for any reason. I never stop writing music. New things keep coming to me and never end. I have no reason to say this life is boring.

Personal Music

2008-10-11T19:52:00.002+09:00

Music ought to be personal. That is my belief. A couple of days ago, I went to Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan in order to attend the premiere performanceof my piece for bass clarinet and piano, Song of the Sea. It took me 4 hours to get to the city by Shinkansen and express trains. However, since I was really tired of my busy life these days and desperated to give some relaxing time to myself, so the trip was in fact very fine for me in this time.

It was very small hall, or just a chamber which could have only about 40 people. I was very anxious about the acoustic of the chamber, though after the show began, I felt rather fine in terms of acoustic environment of the hall. Two of my fellow Japanese musicians performed my piece right before Piazzola's History of Tango. I didn't like the programming, though still, their performance of my piece was very very strong and personal. It might have been the very first time I could give my thumb up to the performers who premiered my pieces.

People misunderstand this point. People think there should be some kind of "fashion" in music. For example, in these days if you want to win competitions in Europe, you gotta have to write some kind of spectrum music using computer generation or calculation to find right notes. If you want to sell lots of CDs, you gotta do some kind of rap music or dance music. I think those are all bunch of bull shit.

Music is not "common" type of art. Music is something very very personal. On the other hand, paintings are much much more "common" kind of art compared to music. It is very simple. Everyone can tell red is red, or blue is blue. However, even though one person say "this music is blue," the others would not think so.

Firstly, the composer write music which personally the one could feel touched. Secondly, the performers play the piece with personal emotion and expression which makes the ones feel touched. Finally, the people who listened to the music would feel personal, somehow. This "somehow" part of music is what I so call "Magic."

Personal music is actually what major music should be. The clarinet player who permiered my Song of the Sea told me in the afterward party that day. "I was thinking back of my old memory during the performance. When I was about 13 years old, my parents were always fighting and yelling at each other. I though it was not good to show that kind of stupid scenes to my younger sister who was only 6 years old. So, whenever my parents' fight escarated to dangerous level, I always took my sister's hand and took her out to the sea shore near by my parents' house. The sea was very dark and scary to my young soul, but it was much better than the house where my parents were fighting stupidly, like children."

This is what I was always looking for, when I was in academia. However, no performer could even try to do that. Everyone was only playing my notes but not my music. This time, perhaps the first time, I heard "my music" performed properly in live. Luckily, the performance was video recorded as well as audio recorded. I should get the data within a week or so. I really cannot wait.

Music and I

2008-10-04T20:11:00.004+09:00

It is horrible how seldom I can only update this blog. I am terribly busy since late June and the days are still going on as so. Too many things are happening in my life since June. As the matter of fact, I cannot handle everything really. It is always good to have something to do almost like being time-poor workaholic. I like to live as so. There is no way I complain my current life.

Next week, I am going to Mastuyama City in Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Two of my fellow musicians are premiering my piece for bass clarinet and piano. They both are quite poor in reality, so this time I am really going to listen to it by myself. I have money which I cannot really use it all, so this trip would be really just as my short fall vacation. I already took 2 days off from my current job. I cannot wait to spend a whole day to get there by local trains. I really love that kind of trip.

When in happiness, you don't realize how happy you are. Humans are that kind of beings. We always feel something is missing in our life. We always feel that our life is not perfect. That is totally normal. And in fact, we always realize how happy we WERE when we look back our past. When in happiness, we never appreciate the happiness. We only appreciate how fun the moment was when looking back from the future.

I think I live very fun life now. Of course, nothing is perfect or anything is not even close to my ideal. I lost too much of my soul in my life. I envy and at the same time respect my friends who have rights to be happy. I never mean to disturb them. They should forget serious and severe truth and just keep laughing.

I cannot really laugh from the bottom of my heart anymore. All of my friends know that. Of course, I laugh once in a while, but it is always on surfice of my personality but not from the core of it. As I said, I lost too much. I don't have right to be happy.

However, people always misunderstand when I say that. I never even try to convince them because there is absolutely no point in such action. Life is not how much the others admire you. Life is how much you believe yourself. I think I am happy. Whenever I lost something big from my heart, there was always music for me. Whenever I was in trouble, I always had music. Why do I feel that I was not happy?

I have no right to make someone happy. I have no right to make myself happy. However, the god gave me a talent to create music. Music was always my partner. How could I feel unhappy? I do have the right and talent to create music. In this situation, if I stop writing music or publishing my music in the society, I think that really is a sin. I must keep going in my life with music as my partner.

Music is not a tool to make money for me. Music is not a tool to be respected in the society for me. Music is not a tool to indulge myself for me. It is very simple. I have been always living with music. So, I do so in the future as well. Environment? Situation? Glory? Nothing matters. Music really is my life. I only live my life.

In Tokyo

2008-09-06T22:41:00.002+09:00

I have been spending these days in Tokyo. I came here for a job of system engineering. I will be staying in Tokyo until 17th. In fact I am writing this from a local business hotel in Minami Senju.

Next weekend, I have a couple of plans to meet my friends who live in Tokyo area. Two out of the three friends I gonna meet are the ones who recently commissioned me to write pieces of music. One of them said he recorded my piece in rehearsal and would bring it to have me listen to it. Besides music stuff, I am going to get paid after this Tokyo trip quite a bit, actually way more than I need. I sort of imagined about how Shostakovich was writing many string quartets for his neighbour string players without any expectations of money.

I really don't need to ask money to write pieces to whoever commissions me a piece of music. I get paid way more than I need from my daily job. I really don't need to think about money in my music activities because I already have quite a bit of money. That is why all I have to do is to write music for anyone who looks for new music. All I have to do is to ask them if they want my music. If they say yes, then I write one for them. There is no way for stupid money to screw up my music production in my current situation.

I actually like this life. As long as I don't ask for money, many people ask me to write music. I mean, I just don't ask for the initial payment, which is the commission fee. I of course keep my all rights in my music, so some of the money happens by my music should be paid to me as loyalty. I just never care about performing my music. If anyone wanna do so, then they should do so. Fortunately, no one come to concerts to listen to my music yet, so I have no reason to consider some part of their ticket income should be paid to me.

Anyways, I am planning another audition for a female singer after I go back to Osaka. She and I have been communicating via e-mail quite a lot. She doesn't really have much experience or background, although her soul and mind toward music is very fascinating to me. I will be auditioning her soon after I return to Osaka, though I am not expecting anything already useful to her. This time, I will check her potential and really train her to be useful even though that takes time. Someone who already have technique and experience no longer sound interesting to me, because 99% of them have their own world already, and they have already lost the mind to challenge to create something new from scratch, which is just like challenging Bach at the first time.

Technique doesn't mean anything in music. Before that, the right soul must be in all ensemble members' hearts in order to make good music as a group. If there is someone who has soul to challenge without any background experience and technique, then the one should keep challenging with me until we achieve something good in music. In any level, any musician must hold that kind of modest and challenging soul in order to play my music. I can even tell even Yo-yo Ma will have lots of hard time playing my music, just like when he tried Bach for the first time. The point is that Yo-yo Ma will surely keep challenging until he really gets my music, since he is such a good musician. However in real world, 99% of performers don't have that soul. That's why, I'd rather train amature musicians from scratch than looking for "already useful" musicians. I don't like them anyway.

Imai and I have been quite busy before I left Osaka to look for new members of SOUND GATE. We already auditioned a few people, though none of them had the right soul even though some had good skills. After I get back there, again we will be auditioning more people. One of my fellow band's guitarist who is a guitar instructor in a technical college said he is interested in challenging my music. He knows quite a bit of theory, and he really is looking for a path to lead his own band to the next step. He thinks playing my music would be a hint for it. Imai and I will be meeting him soon, and if we agree with the project, then we will start working on preparing a live show which would be in this winter.

So, really this time when I am in Tokyo would be the time for me to take some rest. I will be super busy in Osaka from now on, so I should gain back lots of energy in Tokyo by resting a lot in hotels or by meeting my friends. My life is functioning very well since June. Just I am too busy to update this blog weekly. I will try, though.

Revolution Doesn't Happen In One Day

2008-08-25T00:15:00.002+09:00

It is stupidly obvious reality why only such bad music has been produced in recent years in music business. The answer is, yes, money. The music business world did lose the method of making money which was the norm of how the business would work in last few dacedes.

Internet completely destroyed the meaning of recording products such as CD in terms of business. In order to sell large number of CDs, wide promotion must be practiced by the production companies in mass-media. However, nowadays, even only once some kind of promotion material has been broadcasted in mass-media, within a couple of days from then, the product would be on internet, such as on YouTube, for free download. If one knows just a little about audio technology, it is stupidly easy to record anything played on internet even though the actual audio file cannot be downloaded from the site.

Music production has become very close to ordinal people, who are not professional. Very high quality synth-sounds, very easy-to-use sequencing softwares, grahpic applications and plugins which don't require professional knowledges or trainings to operate...really nowadays anyone can make songs or recording products. Creativity? Well, all you have to do is to imitate something pre-existing. You don't even have to think about making something new. You don't even know much about harmonic progression theory. You can buy some sample scores in music shops and steal some chord progressions and use it as your original music products.

Because the music business can no longer rely on selling recording products, which has been the main income for all major record labels and productions, now they even have troubles to find projects and jobs. In this situation, how music production studios or major record labels would even possibly be able to hire new young composers who have no gurantee to make big hits. Even though "possibly" the composer would be successful, but if not? In job interviews, this is what's always asked to the applicants: "If our company would hire you, what specific merit would our company gain?" In this moneyless field of business, it is way too risky to invest to a possibility which doesn't have any clear reason to be successful, even though the person MIGHT have big talent to create good music. That's why all the music business can do is to revive some old music as cover products and sell it, in which way the productions cost much lower and since many people know the pre-existing music already, so at least some income would be guranteed. In other way, many bands and units release new songs which are "tied-up" to other fields such as movie, animation, TV drama, etc in order to get paid from the productions of the other fields.

I must declear this: music is not the tool to make money. Music production business is almost dead now because they are still believing "if you cannot make enough money to live, then that's pointless," or "you make that music? then how you would make money with it?" I must say it again, MUSIC IS NOT THE TOOL TO MAKE MONEY. You people who are in music business world are the ones who completely forgot the ultimate reason of why the art of music has been part of human culture from ancient time to now. I want to ask them as gradding their necks, "why? can you explain why? can you?"

Music business world must change its own system and philosophy. I am sure there are already so many people who are thinking deeply about how the music world should go in the future. I, personally, do have my own ideas. One of them is I call "The Second Ars Nova Project." However further the technology would progress, the real core of music production, which is in fact composition part, must rely on human beings' sense. I will select right people who has potential to create new and high-level compositions which cannot be imitated by any other people or machine. I will gather those people in one city and build a guild of musicians and start a new brand and fashion in music based on a small local area, if I pick a bad example, like Wiennese School. How to lead the selected people to totally new level of music composition? That is definitely my task. It is true that I still don't have enough power to invite even one chosen composer to my city, Osaka, though this kind of huge project wouldn't happen in one day.

Why in a small local area? I have my own answer. How to build the brand of the new trend? I do have my own answer. To explain everything about my future big projects, this space is too small. One day, when some of my projects get their shapes, I will speech out the details of my project and goals in front of mass-media. Right now, I just started the whole thing as I being the beginning possibility, as "1." I am starting from 1. However long it would take, I will never give up on my ideal in music. However many people would betray me or drop out from my projects, I would still keep going. It is really a revolution against the old-fashioned music business world. Revolution like this would never happend in one day. I just keep working on it until it gets achieved.

Perfect Imperfection

2008-08-14T02:19:00.002+09:00

Chinary Ung taught me this some time ago. Regarding to him, "good music" often (or always?) has this "perfect imperfection" in it. It was a very clear words which explained a big theme I was always feeling in composition.

Any serialist composers, any atonal composers, really anyone around me in academia was trying to "perfect" pieces of music. They really were trying to write "perfect" notes in every single measure or beats or whatever. It was seemed as very awkward attemptation to me. I knew, since long long time ago, there could be no perfection without imperfection. If there were only perfect notes, they automatically become imperfect notes because they are all perfect.

What I thought as looking around the faces of composers around me was that perhaps they all were very uncertain and fearing to write "imperfect" notes. I thought like that because I could understand there was no definition or method to create "perfect imperfection." In order to get good grade, to be considered as good student, to win competitions, they all must have been "perfect." If some of them had been trying to be perfect for any other reason, then I don't even understand that kinda people.

I always left lots of imperfect elements in my music. When I said this imperfection stuff, lots of people automatically started writing imperfect "notes." That was a very funny phenomenon to me. Is music really made of only melody(pitch), harmony, form(structure,) texture, rhythm, and tempo? Very funny. That's what's taught only in schools. Nothing like that is true in the real world.

Imperfection in music could be anything. How about titles? How about instrumentstion? How about performance? How come composers don't think about performance? Actually I used lots of imperfections in "performance" in my compositions. Yes, I wrote lots of impossible expressions in order to have the music performed imperfectly. I almost never ask performers to play my music perfectly.

At least, finding one's original sense of imperfection is not such a thing to be taught from teachers. It is a tesk for the one to search and find that by oneself. One thing I enjoyed in the relationship with Sven-David Sandstrom was that he and I both knew how to create perfect imperfection in music. He and I both write very quickly probably because of that. One huge difference between he and I was that he was accepted and admired in the society because of his sense of imperfection. On the other hand, I have never won any awards or received good reputations from the society because of my sense of imperfection.

Remembering

2008-08-08T20:55:00.003+09:00

For some reason, I bought a CD of Louis Andriessen's "De Staat" via Amazon. The CD came a couple of days ago and since then I am sort of listening to this piece which I haven't even thought of for over a couple of years. This is a very well-written composition with a strong soul in it. Besides that, a few things come up in my head over this piece.

It is true that I met this composer in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. It was, I suppose, in February, 2006? I cannot remember. Meanwhile, I am remembering some things I sort of forgot since I left academia. First of all, this piece for very awkward ensemble was written because he was successful and lucky enough to be able to write for such an ensemble. Whatever he says in liner notes, he was definitely lucky.

Of course, I remember what happened in Apeldoorn. I remember how I was exactly feeling when Louis Andriessen called up the name of winners from the 3rd place to the 1st place. I remember how exactly I felt after he named all winners. I surely did my best...or I guess I had "overdone" in my composition. I understood why my piece was not chosen. I suppore it was the first and the last chance for me to be accepted as a composer from the society. Well, I missed the chance. That's all.

Now, I am in completely different environment since then. I have no glory in my life, though still some performers ask me to write music and they perform my pieces in Japan. No one would say my life is "successful" in terms of composition. I am not Louis Andriessen. I am not really a lucky person.

Starting a new thing from scratch is not really easy. It takes really long time. Of course, the society doesn't understand what I am trying to do. People think I can do anything. All I can do is to write music. I am such a powerless person. All people who like my music are powerless people. I have no complaint to my current environment, though often I wish if I had SOME luck to live my music life a litte easier than now.

To give away the last hope, I gotta write this here, where anyone could read. I submitted my final application for official competition a while ago. The competition is Takemitsu Prize. If I'm lucky, I might win. The result will be announced sometime in this coming fall. After hearing the result, whatever the result would be, I will quit applying for any competitions.

Only One

2008-07-27T22:44:00.002+09:00

I hate to keep a friendship with my ex-girlfriend. Honestly, I think that's just trying to keep the person as an insurance. If anything happens, the person could be my partner again? Ha, funny, hilarious, bull-shit. And the funny part is that usually women tend to keep their ex-lovers as insurance, and they ended up with their ex-boyfriends. Funny, very funny.

For me, my girlfriend is always the only one and the last one. It is true that I at least had a relationship with a few girls. However, I have no idea any of them does what right now. I don't even know where they are. They lost my contact for sure.

The other day, Imai took me to a bar with his female friend. I talked to her over the table that I never forget or "go to the next step" in love. There were two very important girls in my life. I loved the first one as the only one and the last one. She dropped a stupid bomb, and we broke up. Whatever stupid thing she had done, I was always living with the experience. I had never forgotten the fact that I loved her even a second in my life.

The second girl, in fact, overcome such heavy life of mine. I am living as carrying all of my past. She changed and influenced me a lot in art. After all, she also made an innocent mistake which brought her life down into very sad place. She changed her personality completely over the experience, and I, in fact, could not take that big change of hers. We broke up a few years ago. Since then, I haven't had a lover. I am now living as carrying the two heavy experiences. I don't expect anybody to overcome this super heavy and stupid way of living.

If anyone asks me like this: "if one of your former lovers would tell you that she wants to be your lover again, what would you do?," I don't even think for a moment but say "no way." If I could make one of them happy now, I could have done it when I was dating with one of them. They are already my past. Not future.

I don't think I would ever even fall in love with anybody until I die, because I loved the two girls as the only one and the last one, already. I don't think anyone could overcome such heavy past. The female friend of Imai's said, the way of my life in live sounds like blue fire. It looks very calm, but in fact its temparature is way higher than red fire.

Next Challenge

2008-07-16T22:26:00.003+09:00

I really gotta update this blog more often than now. This month is going super crazy for me. I only had one day off so far this month, then I will only have one more day off until next month. I might get paid a lot at the end of this month, though the money is paid back to my life which has been cut off and sold to the society. I really hate this kind of time-poor life. Stupid money doesn't even mean anything compared to my life.

Honestly, I am very stressed to so many things especially about my music related activities. It is true that I already wrote one piece this month. It is true that I have been working on a couple of recordings with Imai this month. It is true that I am preparing for performing in Imai's wedding. Only one word comes up in my head - that is not enough.

I am tired of waiting for something to come to me. I am the kind of guy who needs to move onto the thing and grab it. My days are super busy now, although it is not as bad as when I was in academia. I used to spend lots of time for academic courses and house works in the US. It is way better than those days back then. What different is that now I tend to go to bed instead of working on music until late night. It would cause my health problem again, though I'd take that risk instead of selling my life and get paid with that stupid paper crap bills.

I need something new to challenge now. Imai will be busy for preparing his wedding events until the end of September. My American dudes are unsure when they can even get VISA. I think it really is the time for me to do some kind of my personal project. That gotta be something I have never done before.

I don't know if I can accomplish it, though it is big enough for me to challenge - I am planning to publish a CD of all new pieces which are mastered and mixed as Desk-Top Music by the end of this year. I hate to have over 20 new pieces of MIDI realizations on my desktop. They should be listened by way more people than just me. There are a few people who always ask me when I publish a CD. I can no longer help doing nothing for them in music.

There should be no time to be wasted. I should move on to the next challenge.

Dream Life

2008-06-20T15:53:00.003+09:00

I have never won lottery. I in fact buy one almost every week, though I have never won. It is true that unless I buy one, there is absolutely no possibility to win one. However, even though I buy one, it doesn't mean I win one. Funny, how people are smart in money making.

I always have a dream. Right now, my biggest dream is to have Anthony Joseph Lanman living in Osaka and actively perform and record/release my new compositions in front of grass-root level audience. That kinda days will be such exciting and fantastic like a dream. We are little by little getting closer to the dream, but the process is almost impossibly tough. We never give it up anyway, though.

One of my most recent pieces, for bass clarinet and piano, Song of the Sea, has been scheduled to be in a tour performance in Ehime Prefecture in 4 different locations. Of course, this kind of honor doesn't create any money or any further projects. Only I can hope is through the tour is to gain further connections to local music productions and producers. This kind of event is not my dream. It is my life.

"Dream" sounds as something impossible to accomplish. The one about Lanman I wrote above SEEMS impossible, so I said dream. However, without challenging to dreams, life cannot be exciting. Dreaming of dreams is free for anyone to do. However, challenging dreams is not easy for all people to try. That's because challenging dreams always cause some kind of unstability. Unstable life means you must struggle with fear to the future almost all the time. No wonder almost all people tend to give up challenging dreams and spend most of effort to gain stability in life.

I cannot think of having even a girlfriend for long long time since I went to the US. This is because my life is almost completely full of challengings to dreams. That simply means my life will perhaps never be stable. My age is getting higher and same generation ladies almost always believe "my next boyfirned will be my future husband within 5 years." There is no way for me to be their boyfriend.

I at least love my current unstable life. Everyday is just full of changes and variety of events. This means there are of course lots of good things and bad things in my life. If any lady who simply wants to join my exciting unstable life, I have no reason to reject that, though ladies never like unstable life. For me, I am busy enough and having enough fun in my exciting unstable life as challenging to my dreams everyday. My life is like a narrow path towards the land of ideal. The process of walking the path is what my life is. I don't really need a partner for that. At the same time, if anyone wanna join my fun life, I never say no. But it also means I don't look for ot ask anyone to join my life. I know how not easy my life is. I have no right to force anyone to share it.

Memories

2008-05-30T22:04:00.002+09:00

I have just finished a new piece, Til Death Do Us Part, as the gift for my best friend's wedding. I took a while for preparation to this piece, though once I started writing, I only took half a day to write it down. Now, I am drinking super dry Japanese sake made by Haru-Shika, a sake brand in Nara.

How happy the new piece sounds. It's almost funny that I write such happy music. As ringing the pice in my head, it reminds me some of my good happy memories. This time, especially somehow about me and Xian, my former girlfriend. She was definitely the closest person who could share my philosophy and thoughts in art. 99% of ladies don't even understand me in music or art. She was, by the way, a visual artist.

She and I no longer contact each other. I can tell the time I was her boyfriend was one of the most happiest time in my life. I don't even think anything of my real life when I write music, though after finishing the piece and as listening to it, the piece made me think back of the happy time in my life. I'd say that the piece will be really successful in my best friend's wedding. He and I are going to play the piece in the party after the wedding in September. I gotta have to practice piano from tomorrow...I haven't performed the piano in front of people for over 5 years. I should be fine, though.

Anyways, people think I don't fall in love anymore, but of course I do. I just don't go for it. I just don't expect it anymore. If I would never fall in love, I don't care. This kind of thinking would never be understood in the US...well, not in Japan either. People just say "man, you gotta move on to another person." Their words sound even funny to me. They never understand what I really feel about love. At least, I don't think we humans are all supposed to fall in love. From the beginning, those ladies and I think differently about love or even life. How would that possibly work out.

I feel so "fit" in my situation of writing a gift piece to celebrate my friend's happiness. I believe that is what I am after all. I am not the kind who should be in the middle of happiness. I should look at other people's happiness from the third person's viewpoint and write music about it. I have already experienced enough happiness in my life. I don't expect any more happiness in the future. If the god would give me another time of happiness, he should give it to somebody else who really needs one.

Sense of the World

2008-05-18T19:21:00.002+09:00

I cannot find appropriate English words to describe this Japanese word sound like "Sekai-Kan." Literally, it means the sense of the world. It's how you as an individual sees and percepts the world around you. Here I'm talking about how it works in the world of music.

How you sense the world of the piece, is I believe the most important point when you compose or perform a piece of music. To express the sense in effective ways, techniques are crucial basics to be learned in prior to the performance or the time when you compose the piece. Hm, I sound like a text book of a theory class.

Alright, I should sound like me. How you see the world is not exactly the same as how your friends see the world. There are some "common senses" which all of us are supposed to sense, although I never completely be persuaded to believe that. I see my world in my original way, but not even alike to anyone else's viewpoint. That's how I keep my music original. Since I am not you, I am supposed to have original sense of the world. Thus, since you are an individual, you are supposed to be able to play or write original music in whatever environment you are in.

I am about to go to the next step here. Now, it is the matter of how strong you can feel and hold your original sense of the world to the specific piece of music. I often say how "personal" you can feel to the specific piece of music. Some say this to me and ask me some advice: I don't quite "understand" music, but I want to, though what should I do? Well, go and search for the one which fits to your original sense of the world. You just have never met the right music yet.

The most important point is that your original sense of the world is ALWAYS different from what the others have. It means that what very popular in the society is ALWAYS different from what fits to your original sense of the world. This is how I feel about the top10 stuff in mass-medium. What is the point of ranking the pieces of music? Well, if you haven't known yet, it is because of money but nothing else.

I think it is like today's bread tastes different from yesterday's one. How? Well, you need to ask yourself, your own sense of taste. It is very hard to describe the small and slight difference in words or music. But the beginning is how strongly you can sense the difference on your own tongue. It is very hard to train such thing, though that's how music education is supposed to happen, I believe. If you cannot sense the different strongly however hard you try, then you should think about keeping music as your hobby. Nothing is bad about that, by the way.

Anti-Authority

2008-05-09T20:43:00.004+09:00

I see myself a very strong anti-authority type of person. Of course, I smile and talk in nice tone in front of "authority" people, though at the bottom of my heart, I never believe that one person is "better" or "more respectful" than the others. We all individuals are just all different, but no one is better or worse than the others.

However, as everyone knows, there are the ranking of social status in this world. Very easy example is teachers. Somehow, teachers are always better than students in this world. It could be true in most of academic fields, although not really in artistic fields. For example, in piano lesson, let's say if one student brought Gershwin. Then the teacher said "you can play these popular pieces, though you should first focus on more concrete repatories such as Beethoven and Schumann." Well, in this case it is so clear that the student plays and knows better about Gershwin than the teacher. In order to keep the "autority" of teacher, the teacher said bringing Gershwin to lessons is not good.

I always hate competitions. Why do anyone judge my music? I write music to entertain listeners but not to be better than the others or to kiss some "authority" people's asses.

I understand that in daily life, there should be some respect to elders. I talk to elder people with respecting Japanese words. However, I believe that we are all equal or just different individuals in professional field, for my case music. So, I actually don't behave anything rude or too friendly to "authority" people. They are the ones who see through my eyes and aura that I might be someone who would threaten their social status and title. I never acted wrong in front of "authority" people. They are the ones who feel fear in me because I have too many things they cannot even understand.

"Authority" people always love someone who never threatens their position and blindly respect them. That kinda people are so called "good students." I have never been "a good student." I am simply an anti-authority type of musician. I have never asked for money to any commissions from my fellow musicians, who didn't have any authority or money. I love to work with them because they do have heart and borderless mind to music. However, if anyone who is "authority" person commissions me a piece, I will just ask for quite a bit of money. They have "authority" and money. Simply, my attitude is for lower status musicians but not for "authority" people.

Orchestra performers are examples of "authority" people. They always believe that they are playing stupid young composer's pieces when they work on contemporary pieces. I truely hate that attitude. If a major orchestrra asks me to write a piece for them, I will definitely ask them lots of commission fee. If every single member of the orchestra swears that they play my music with heart, then I might not ask them any fee for writing a piece. I hope someday I will have chance to work with such a great group of people.

My philosophy will probably create quite a few enemies in music world in the future. However, I think this "authority" system in music field must be broken in near future. Normal people can judge music or choose which music to listen to. However, "authority" people should not judge other people's music.

Never Enough

2008-04-27T15:50:00.002+09:00

Life is never be enough. No one practice enough before a recital. No one has enough money to live an ideal life. Life is always not enough. However, it also means that live WILL never be enough.

As a performer, the more practice, the more you find how further you can go. As a composer, the better piece I write, the more I find how even better I can write. There is no ceiling in our desire. It is just like "Achilles and Turtle," the paradox that Achilles can never catch up the turtle walking in front of him even though how faster Achilles can walk compared to the turtle.

Life is just like that. We keep progressing, but we will never reach to the goal. The foolish behavior is to wait for the time when you feel "enough" to start the action because that kind of time will never come. The most important thing in this point is to start the action as soon as possible when you are not enough, in other words when you are not totally ready.

Life goes in 60% of what your ideal is. Here, another important thing is to keep doing it. It is easy to give it up in the middle of the way because you can not get successful "enough." Again, no such time will come to you. It is such a foolish way to see your life that no one performs or listens to your music so that you stop writing music. What important is to keep writing music, but not to wait for the time to come.

Life is never enough. That is why we keep walking out life. If we get satisfied or feel enough in our life, that really would be the end of our life. One funny Japanese proverb says "Marriage is the grave of your life." So many musicians or composers become bad musician when they get married or they have children. Life is not about to search for stability, because again, no such time will come to you. Life is the sequence of challengings to reach to the unreachable goal. As long as keep walking to the goal, life should be fun and exciting. In other words, walking to the unreachable goal really is what life is all about, I think.

Whom Your Music Is to

2008-04-20T22:54:00.002+09:00

The more specific whom you write or play music for, the actual music would become strong, I think. If you write music for "the audience who are musically educated enough to understand the performed piece in academically correct way," that's way too broad, I think.

It is totally ok to write music for just one person, who could be your lover or mother or whoever. One of the interesting affect of music is that even though the specific piece was not written for the specific listener, the listener would feel and be touched by the music.

I mean, for composers, what to challenge is to how strong they can make their music be. I don't say that writing for specific one person is the only way to make the music strong, though it really is one of the techniques, I believe. Especially when the composer has very strong message to express to a specific person, the music would usually become very strong.

It's the same in performance, I think. Some might believe that a professional performer must be able to play the best in any situation for any audience, though I actually don't think in that way. In my opinion, the professional performer is someone who can express strong message to someone specific anytime or in any environment. I don't think the specific person has to be someone present in each performance.

I actually don't really understand such composers who write music "for the victims of Holocaust." That is such an egoistic and capitalistic way of selling music in terms of business. And usually, that kind of music sound really really weak and thin. I think it's the same for composers as performers. The professional composer should be able to write for specific person to express strong messages in any piece she/he writes. Music without message is just bunch of sound or notes. That's not really music.

In that way, love could be such an important clue to write or perform good music because love is always such a strong message to a specific person. Well, love is only one possibility. As I said, it could be for anyone. It could be even for yourself as long as you have strong message to express to yourself. Actually, that's my kind of way to control the strength of new pieces. I in fact often write for myself, not always though. How to think of specific person is one method to write strong music.

Future and Past

2008-04-13T17:32:00.003+09:00

When I was in Sydney, H-san and I talked a lot about quite deep and philosophical topics. One of the most interesting stuff was that there are usually two types of people, who always finds romance in the future or in the past.

H-san said he is really the future type. He loves to think about 400 years from the present time or that kinda stuff. Like he once thought about what kind of creature would be the top of the food-chain or on the earth after the human-beings all extinct. Then he wrote a song called "After Man." He played the editted version of the song to me in his office at Sydney Conservatorium.

Meanwhile, I finds romance in the past, especially in ancient history such as myth. I usually use old Japanese rather than modern Japanese as the texts of my songs. Especially I love Japanese ancient documents such as Nihon-Syoki, the oldest Shintoism text. In the book, there are so many stories such as how the world was created or how the first married couple in the history had sex or all those interesting stuff. I wrote so many pieces which were referring stories in Nihon-Syoki.

I don't mean that I have no interest in the future stories. If I were so, then I wouldn't have been a composer now. Composer is someone who creates the future. In my case, I just don't like to ignore or deny the history. I studied Western music, but in my blood stream there is the history of Japanese music. I just think I must know and realize that I am only a leaf on the top of a gigantic tree of history. I am always connected to the tree, the history. It is just like the fact "I am Japanese," it is pointless to deny that I am a part of the tree. I met so many Korean friends who were trying to deny the fact that "they were Korean." I never agree with their attitude.

All I have to do is to admit and love what I am. Beofre doing that, I don't think I can make anything "new." My style is "knowing the history to open the door of the future." Some composers even think Beethoven is their enemy or something in terms of "breaking rules" style. I don't think like that. I think all composers in the history are my supporters. Because they wrote so many pieces in the past, I can write new piece of music in the present time. Of course, I feel the same to my contemporaries. I don't feel hostility to other composers unless they feel it to me.

That's one of the reasons why I hate competitions. Why do I have to compete with someone who died a hundred years ago? The past is the clue for me to create the future, but not something to fear or compete. I mean, without understanding the past, how do you even imagine the future? But what I said in the first paragraph is that there are two types of people who find romance in the future or in the past. No one should deny the past.

Relying on Fashion

2008-04-06T22:50:00.003+09:00

My days have been quite crazy since last time I updated this blog. Phisically I had no way to spend my energy to update this blog rather than living my life. Anyways, finally the wave has gone once, so I gotta get back to weekly update.

Soon after the offeer from Chicago was canceled, I got another order of film scoring from Philadelphia. The project was organized by one independent film maker. The film is about Issei-immigrant Japanese people in mid-19th century in the US. I'm not supposed to say too much about it, so please just wait for the film gets finished and published.

I'm writing music for the whole film. I've been working on some digital music stuff these days as well as a couple of acoustic sound clips. In fact, I have already written the title tune for violin and steel guitar about a week ago. Imai and I are planning to record it within a couple of weeks.

As I was working on the pieces for the film, I thought about how free I have become since I left academia. Even in small point, I used to title myself as "contemporary composer," though I don't do that any more. Now if someone asks what I do, I usually answer that "I am a music-person." Right, not really musician, but a music-person. That's what I think I am now.

For example, when I went to Paris for a month to attend Nadia Boulanger School's summer program, I really had to consider a lot about what my teachers would think about every single action I made. Frankly saying, I had to kiss their ass to survive in such a community. However, I could never be able to cheat myself in music, especially composition. That's why any of my music won a prize in any size of competition. Actually, at the same time, I was feeling inferior than other prize-winning composition students around me all the time.

I listened to my pieces written for the film scoring order from Philadelphia. Hm, there is NO WAY for the pieces to win a prize. However, I think they are all really really good music. I am quite confident that the film will be very high-quality art. I just would never even think of writing the kind of music like the pieces for the film when I was in academia.

What I am doing is just not relying on fashion. It is so easy to write something in fashion of specific community or society or culture. For example, it is very easy to write computer-calculated spectrum oriented pieces of music including electronic media in order to win some European competitions because that's what is popular in the society. I, personally, no longer do that. I now have my own fashion which is different from fashion in the society. I value music by myself rather than effected by fashion in the society or culture.

The bass player in my band, SOUND GATE, Imai, once described my music like "this is really what original music is." I am in fact very confident that my recent music is very original. That's simply because I no longer rely on fashion to write music or play music. I really cannot wait for more progress in the film project from Philadelphia. I believe the final product will be something really cool.

Moment and Sequence

2008-03-11T17:13:00.002+09:00

I think there are two kinds of music in history. One is momental music and the other is sequencial. Momental music has very srtong impact when the music gets listened for the first time. Sequencial music would usually not be admired at the first time but later people's fashion catches up the music.

For example, photography is stilled form of art. Meanwhile animation is sequencial form of art. Even though a film is a form of seauencial art. They are just sequencial representation of stilled picture. Momental and sequencial forms of art are very different things.

It is so easy to fall into a wrong belief that if every single picture is perfect, then the sequencial movie constructed with all perfect pictures would be also perfect. Right, that is wrong. It is the same to music. Many young (and elder) composer fall into that wrong philosophy. They try to write a "perfect" note to write a "perfect" piece.

On score, it's so easy to see the music in vertical perspective. However, in sequence, each stilled picture would gain completely different meaning compared to when they are exhibited as each. In music, if one trieds to write a perfect note of C, although that C's meaning changes in the context of sequence.

Well, if you just stop walking and think back about your life, it's something totally natural. If you felt very strong happiness with your girlfriend at one time, but the happiness would mean different as the time pasts. Depending on what would happen afterward, the happiness would possibly be such sorrow. That's so natural and normal meaning shift of events in human life.

Honestly, recently released music in the society is almost all monemtal. They sound great at the initial listening, but they really tire my ear quite soon. Of course, as a composer, I can control myself to write either type of music on purpose. Mainly, I have been writing sequencial kind of music, especially in classical genre. Recently, I tend to write momental music. I just control it depending on situation and commission.

How to write each type of music? Well, think by youself.

Think Of Tomorrow To Live Today

2008-02-24T20:39:00.002+09:00

As this blog is only weekly updated, I feel like I write about new pieces every time I write an article here. Right, I again wrote a short piece for my band. I was thinking what to do as encore piece, then this piece, Jet, was written. This is a very fast and driven piece. Many might hear some hardcore spirit from this piece, though still I put lots of spices of art music. The biggest spice is that I inserted blank 1/4 measures in very specific places of the piece where I, the drum player, shout out meaningless voice. That is very Asian style of acoustic effect, and very unusual for rock band music.

Anyways, I am going to travel to Sydney, Australia from tomorrow for about a week. This time I am going there in order to learn some audio mastering techniques from my friend who is the associate dean of the technology center of Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Well, of course, I will sightsee the city as much as I can. It will be a fun trip, though what I really cannot wait is summer of the southern hemisphere. Osaka has been annoyingly cold these days, and I have been quite tired of that. I will go to sea shores and enjoy the warmness in Sydney...that's my biggest goal through this trip.

My colleagues at my work all say "how light your footwork is!" Well, I admit that I at least fly to different country once a year. I am single, you know. I am supposed to be free to go anywhere anytime I want. I make a lot more than what I need anyway. Well, even though I stay in one place for a while, I still consider myself as a traveler of life.

I always imagine the case what if I die tomorrow. If I die tomorrow, then I should use all the money in my bank account since I cannot die holding bills. That's the beginning of my thought, then as I follow where my thinking would naturally go, I always end up that I gotta write music today if I die tomorrow.

I don't take it for granted that I will live tomorrow. Well, nobody knows what happens tomorrow. I might die for some kinda new epidemic. I might die in an accident. Tomorrow is never certain in the life of traveler. The traveler always fear about tomorrow, but at the same time the traveler is always excited about tomorrow.

As living in one place for long long time in the same environment, it seems to be normal and stable that tomorrow would always come to you. That is a complete misunderstanding of daydreaming, though that kind of life might be happy. I don't blame that style of life. I just cannot live like that personally. That's all.

"Oh well, I can write music tomorrow." I don't think like that. I always think "Oh well, I gotta finish this piece now because I don't know if I can live tomorrow." That might be one of the reasons why I write music quickly. At least, I never wait for an inspiration to fall on me. I always go to grab an inspiration on purpose. As I think of tomorrow in my way, the meaning of today becomes very special. Today is always special to me. I hate to waste my time because the present time is always special to me.

Anyways, I will not have an access to internet for a week from now. I won't be able to update this blog next week, though I will update it in the following week from next week. I won't bring my lap-top or cel-phone or anything electronic with me to Sydney in order to enjoy a kind of week off in the weather of summer. I cannot wait to drink some Australian wine as viewing the sea for all day long.

Secure Belief

2008-02-13T16:16:00.003+09:00

About a week ago, I started writing a piece without any practical reason. The piece was titled as "Ocean." Of course, I was not writing this piece for anybody specific. I was not even thinking about which instrument to write for. Now, the piece has been already finished, but still I don't know which instrument would be the best to play this piece. It could be done by organ, piano, harp, guitar, string orechrstra, brass quintet, wind quartet, large choir, really anything. I actually don't really care about instrumentation for this piece. I can imagine most of my former composition teachers would say "come on, Mutsuhito, you gotta have to specify the instrument! You can't let it be like that!" Ha, kiss my yellow ass.

Anyways, around the time I was working on Ocean, I wrote an article about "How to Hold a Secure Belief" in my Japanese blog. A few days later from the time, one male person contacted me and asked me an instruction for him to hold a secure belief. His tone was very serious, so I wrote him back how I train myself to build my own personality secure. He answered me quickly and thanked me in respecting tone.

Recently, to my Japanese blog, some people leave some comments asking me to instruct their life. Most of them are about music, though this time it was much more about general life or philosophy. I only write them back what I think about their inquiries. One guy even quit his job after he read my response...it was a little too heavy even for me.

It seems to be true that people see me holding a secure belief in music. However, I myself believe that there is no such belief as completely secure. Well, perfectly secure belief means just a stupid stronghead who doesn't accept any idea from the one's environment. For example, if one person believes "1+1=3," then somebody else told the person that "1+1=2," but the person doesn't change his belief. That's a very secure belief.

What I write back to the guy who asked me about how to hold a secure belief was something like the following. There is no such threshold after passing which you don't have to change youself. In other words, there is no perfection in this world, in any field, of course in music either. The life is in fact the process for the person to make an effort to try to be perfect, even though there is no such reachable goal in human life.

There is no social status to earn which means the person is great enough so the person doesn't have to change her/his belief at all. I believe that there is no such status as "accomplished" in human life. Everybody is imperfect. Life is the endless process of improving oneself to reach to impossible goal. Sadly, appealing the others how the one holds secure belief would be seemed for the others that how insecure the one's belief is. Also, pointing out what is wrong about the other person's belief would be seemed that how the person is an insecure person. It is very fun to look at most of Christian people who try to convert me.

I don't think showing those weakness in one's personality to the others is such a bad thing. As I said, nobody is perfect. As long as the person is living in this present time, that means the person is in the middle of the process of improvement. The most important point is how the person could accept the weakness within her/him and improve from now on. The status in the present moment doesn't mean anything for me.

Music is so fun because there is no perfection music. Mr. Asahina used to say that "music is a life-long study." He really was improving right until he passed away. However, at least the person must know oneself in deep sense. If one teacher realizes that her/his student is actually better than the teacher, the teacher person must know and accept it. If the teacher person denies that and keeps looking down on the student, that means the person is someone I don't wanna get along. It is not easy to accept weakness within the one's personality. However, without accepting it, the person would never improve. At least, secure person doesn't fear to accept the one's weakness.

Intellectual-Based and Sense-Based

2008-02-05T22:23:00.000+09:00

Personally, I think the biggest and most important event in contemporary music history is the separation of the musicians into two different types. One is intellectual-based style and the other is sense-based style. Intellectual-based musicians stayed in conventional style such as classical instruments, ensembles, and composition. Sense-based musicians turned against conventions and started new ensemble, creating new instruments, and composition. Well, frankly saying, the former is classical and the latter is rock.

Well, keep being direct, intellectual-based musicians got more and more strong headed and lost an ability to play music with soul. Techniques were worshipped as status in academia and less and less teachers could teach the most important part of music, the soul. On the other hand, sense-based musicians got more and more stupid and their music turned so cheap year by year. They believed they could do music only by sense. Of course, only few people could accomplish such kind of style.

I think the two kinds of thoughts both have some point. I understand what Schoenberg tried to do as well as what Sex Pistols tried to do. These two names are examples of two extremes in the two styles. Schoenberg attempted to build new intellectual methods of composition in 12-tone serialism. Sex Pistols attempted to destroy whatever called "music" by sense. What happened in either style was that Schonberg's music lost soul but gained concrete armor of theory, and Sex Pistols' music had no point but only some kinda crazy soul. It's nothing about if their music was good or not.

After 1970, the two styles both started approaching the other style to gain some kinda new possibility in their style. However, they had gone too far from each other already. Sense-based people considered intellectual approach to music as "cool" without really understanding what was the true point of the intellectual-based style. Intellectual-based people tried to re-gain souls in their music by imitating sense-based style, although they could not just do that just as if they were mature adults who lost the pure and natural sense of children as they aged.

It's so obvisous that Sex Pistols would never understand Schoenberg or vice versa. As I look around my environment, I can clearly categolize all musicians and composers into either style. And both styles still act like Schenberg and Sex Pistols, thought in different levels. Right, I am yet talking nothing about good or bad.

Yes, I only care about what I should do now. I don't care about other people. Thankfully, I could have chance to touch and understand both styles in very deep sense in my life. Well, however, understanding doesn't mean that I can practice both styles in true sense. Around here, it's really up to the person/composer's personality to take what and how to include either style in the one's music. Alright, still I have not yet talked anything about good or bad. I just think at least we musicians should be aware of the two styles of music in contemporary music history. I have my philosophy to this topic anyway.

Releasing Personal Denials

2008-01-31T15:23:00.000+09:00

Already this year of 2008 seems to be quite exciting year to me. I am going to Sydney, Australia for a week around the end of February. I am visiting my friend to learn some audio engineering techniques intensively. Of course, I will also sightsee the beautiful city as much as I can.

Alright, what I have been working on in composition these days is to release my personal denials. For example, once when I was in academia, I was taught to avoid pure triad and especially functional harmonic progression. So, I carefully avoided triad or even the interval of third because "third is bad." Funny, though that's what one pulitzer winning composer told me.

Now, I am actually attempting to mix the idea of funtioncal tonality in my free tonal music. Well, I'm just doing it in one piece, though I don't think I will keep doing the same in all pieces I write in the future. Anyways, this challenge is quite fun. Interestingly, I feel like I'm broadening my perspective in this challenge. Very funny, though my teachers told me to avoid third to broaden my mind once, then now using third is broadening my viewpoint.

In academia, I felt that everyone there denied too much things in music. Sometimes I even have felt that they were taking the number of denials as their status to be proud of. Denying some rules, theories, people might be very useful and comfortable restriction for one musician to for the one's identity in such a place like academia. At least, I've never been studying everyday with over 50 composers. It was so easy for us to fall into competition instead of personal learning and development.

Of course, there are bunch of stuff in the world which each individual should deny. Not everything is great in the human society. However, like a child dislike some food without a big reason, we often deny some things without concrete reasons. It could be just as the case the pulitzer winning composer taught me "third is bad." That was such a stupid and meaningless reason for me to deny third. In that reasoning, none of my personal taste was present. I was like a machine which follows whatever the programmer orders.

It is a part of what I wrote about "Fearful Freedom." It's so comfortable to restrict possibilities in composition. However, if the one restrict the possibilities without the one's original reasons, the one's music would lose the originality. Once in a while, I think I should re-think what I am denying and why I deny.

Alright, I gotta go to a rehearsal with my band now.

Religion, in Other Word, Drug

2008-01-25T16:28:00.000+09:00

I haven't written even a note for a couple of week. The time has passed as quickly as the speed of light. Also, the time passed quickly seemed so meaningless to me personally. Of course, I have been listening or playing music while I was not writing. However, inside of my soul was so empty without writing new pieces.

Religion is a belief which you are not supposed to question. Why not to question? Well, because the person needs something to believe as if being blind to live the one's life in happy way. Right, only by focusing that point, religion is awkwardly similar to illegal drugs.

I always try to question music in my sense. However, eventually I give up questioning at the end of my thought. Music does have some kinda "magic" effect which cannot be explained in science. When I am in that "magic" part of composition, I forget questioning completely. By remembering back the time I was in the magic part of composition, I also remember how happy, fun, excited, I was feeling. I never feel those sense when I am actually in the middle of the magic part of composition.

Well, how similar composition is for me as religion, in other word, drug. It's easy and sounds very smart to describe and define what music is for me. However, I personally cannot sit on the definition and look down all the sense I feel in music. They are just most important information which is necessary for me to be myself.

Without composition, I really feel like being dead. Composition is for me not anything to be forced from the environment. Composition is for me not my duty. Composition is for me almost like religion, or drug. I cannot stop writing for long time just because there would be no plan for my new piece to be performed by anybody. It doesn't matter anyone plays my music or not. Writing is everything for me. Anything else would just happen after my music. Money is one of them. I just discipline myself away from misunderstanding the oder of them. For me, always music should be the most important point and the first thing to happen. Money or any other clues must not be the initial motive for me to do music.

Fearful Freedom

2008-01-17T15:05:00.000+09:00

Igor Stravinsky said composition was for him restriction. It is a very noble phrase. When to start solidifying your original image of something, the process is in fact restriction of the meaning. For example, if you decide to write on the theme of "dreaming about foreign world," the placement of yourself, what to be facused in the foreign world, those are to be decided by the composer yourself, in other words to be restricted.

In the process of restricting the image of the foreign world, every step you take would be influenced by what you have experienced in your life. Such as the world of dream, every phenomenon happens in the world is based only on the person's experience. This means that anything the person never experienced would not happen in the person's dream. It is just the same in the process of restriction in composition.

If the composer "tries" to believe in that major 3rd is bad, then her/his restriction process will be automatically disturbed away from her/his original inspiration. However, it is so comfortable to put yourself in some kind of absolute restriction. Such as following the theory of functional tonality or 12-tone serialism, absolute restriction promises certain quality in your compositions. However, that also means your compositions would be automatically "not original."

It is very fearful to put yourself into the vast ocean of freedom in composition. In the ocean, you are completely lost where you don't even know which way to swim to reach to some kinda island. Freedom means countless possibilities. There are two kinds of people when they face to this "fearful freedom." One is the kind who just shrinks in front of the gigantic freedom and stops challenging. In the metaphor of the ocean, this kind of person just worries to choose a wrong direction and don't start swimming to find a shore. The other kind is who gets excited to swim so far and just choose whichever direction then instantly start swimming. This kind of person doesn't really care about reaching to a shore, but for the person the process of reaching to somewhere is such an excitement.

It is very interesting to observe composers around me in this point of view. Even famous composers are fearing the freedom. In music, no one can hide her/his reaction to the freedom. Just by listening to their compositions, it is so obvious which kind of person the composer is. Also, it is very funny that people tend to avoid discussing this kind of important point in academic institutes. Especially people who are so called professors almost never say their clear perspective to the freedom in composition. They always choose "noble" and "smart" words.

Each composer must think about how to face to the fearful freedom. For me, well, I love to challenge something undefeatably huge. I am not a critic or professor or teacher, but since I am a composer, I just keep challenging in my own works. I don't teach how to challenge the fearful freedom to the other people. I am not a teacher.

Anti-Competition

2008-01-10T14:25:00.000+09:00

I hate competitions. Not only music competitions, I hate to be compared with other people or to compare two people around me. Naturally, my brain doesn't functionally work in that way.

Yesterday was better than today? I don't think in that way. Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today. They are just different. Yesterday, I had a work to do, so I had lots of fun and money. Today, I don't have any work to do, so I am bored and worry about money for living. I really don't think my life in such way.

"We do the same punk rock as that band, although they have much more fans than we do, they make much more money than we do, and they have a lots more supportive authorities than we do! It's not fair!"

Hm, I understand it is very easy to think in that way. Personally, I just don't live in that way. All I care is how much fun I have in my own world. How bigger the fun I have in my world is compared with how much fun the other people have in their world is almost completely meaningless to me.

Of course, it is important to keep improving youself, but that should only be kept in your own world. If you start building your skill or sense as comparing with the other people, your skill or sense would never be your original. No wonder lots of composers have tough time finding their own voice.

Well, even within my own world, I never compare my old pieces with recent pieces. I simply love all of them. Even in my recent pieces, Glider is better than Inner Flight? Hm, that sounds just as if the person is comparing yesterday and today. Better/Worse would never happen in my music.

Because the person won pulitzer prize, is not really enough to me to consider whatever the person writes is "better" than high school kids' compositions. That's just like comparing yesterday and today. I know there are lots of cases in this world that pulitzer winning composers should learn something important from high school kids' compositions.

I know "normal" people in the society compare anything in this world. I don't care those people. As I said, my music only happens "in" my world. It is not something happening "between" people and I. I have no reason to be special in the society. Even though billions of people respect and admire my music, if the music doesn't satisfy myself, I would erase the piece without ANY hesitation. I am musician. I am not an idle.

Statusless

2008-01-09T17:51:00.000+09:00

I've been drinking everyday since the new year's day. I think I gained a little weight. I should re-start jogging at least before my work gets busy. In fact, I had finished Song of Tomorrow at the end of last year, and now I am already thinking about new piece. Next one will be a long one. Anyways, I should slap my own face to re-start my normal life.

One of the reasons why I decided not to go to grad school in the US was that I always wanted to throw away my stupid status I had in American Academic Music Field. That was because I hated to expect other people's support and wait for it. That includes performers, teachers, friends, society, community, school, anything. I simply hated myself who expect and wait for other people to support me.

I shouldn't place myself between people and I. I should only be within me. I wanted to be free from the situation where I write pieces and keep waiting for other people to perform them or admire them. To be free, I had to throw away my stupid status, which are like "student," "composer," "trained musician," etc. All of them were just like some malice spirits gripping my ankle, trying to pull me down into hell.

What is music for me? - I asked myself the same question millions of times. For me, music is not a tool to make money. For me, music is not a tool to be respected or famous. I am not doing music just because I like it or my parents made me learn it when I was a kid. Music is as important as my life, for me.

I had always wished if I would have not been a student. Because that I studied hard doesn't mean I am I who I respect. For me, people's respect to me is way less worth than how much I can respect myself. Even when I was dating with someone, I was thinking the same. For me, how much the one loves me was way less important than how much I could be a person whom I could love.

For example, people check their fever with thermometer. However, I almost never use thermometer. For me, what is the most important is how I feel to myself. I hated to gain a status that "my temparature is this high, so I am sick." Because if I had that status, people will react to that by following general common sense. I am I. I am not just "one Japanese."

I understand in such a community like Academia people didn't accept my style of art. Of course, they all expect something "generally" understandable. For them, I was only "one student" but nothing else. I was not supposed to be an individual in such a community.

Finally, I threw away all of my status. I am now re-gaining some new status, but yet I am just a musician. I don't have any other status. At least, I am not "great," "cool," "outstanding," or "outlaw," "difficult student," or any shit. I am just I now. I am in fact quite glad that I didn't win any prize in academia because prize record would stay in my status. I hate that.

Step By Step

2008-01-02T22:08:00.000+09:00

Life goes step by step. In Japan, there are lots of shrines built on the top of mountains. Of course, to get there, you must climb up over a hundred steps of stairway. Some even have over 500 steps...man, they are hardcore.

Well, however, life is just like that. For example, I want to write a "big" symphony for quadruple wind orchestra with large choir and dancers, (hahahahahaha! I cannot stop laughing!) still I have to start with the first small step which I might be able to skip to the second step of the stairway. You can skip the first one, but you cannot skip 100 steps at once. Phisically, that's how we, human beings, are made.

My fellow, Imai, said once that he was amazed that I can write lots of music in short time. Especially for our first live performance, I wrote 4 long pieces which all are written in a single theme. The four pieces take over 30 minutes to be performed. I understand Imai's point, because he got the four pieces at once after all of them are finished. He might have felt as if I jumped to skip 500 steps of stairway at once. No wonder that kinda super man can amaze people.

However, I am not a super man. I simply climbed up 500 steps each by each, step by step. Here, I can say one thing to Imai-like people. "I have not stopped in the middle, though." Right, I was always walking. People around me never care about each step I walk because each step was very small and nothing special. Even though I could only go one step for each day, still I only took 500 days to climb up 500 steps, but not 501 days.

Anything in life shouldn't go instantly as if you were a super man. Life is just constructed by everyday's step. Of course, if two people start walking at the same time, and they look back in 10 years, one might have gone further than the other. Yes, one might have gone way further than the other. That's how life is.

Well, if two guys started climbing 500 steps of stairs - and one guy went each step each day but the other waited on the ground - in the 498th day, an elevator was built right next to the stairs but elevator doesn't stop anywhere else but ground and the 500th floor - so the waited guy used to elevator on the 499th day to skip the 500 steps instantly - then the waited guy won the race.

The walked guy might have lost the game. However, the walked guy must be much more respectful person than the guy who used the elavator. I love to walk. I hate to wait for someone else to build an elevator. I write music like that. Well, I live my life like that.

Life is made of bunch of small steps. There is no need to hurry. However, you shouldn't wait for long time. I don't really care what the other people do, but I just keep walking. If my friends fell behind me, that's who they are. I just keep walking. I am not walking to be respected. I am not walking to win the race. I am just walking for myself.

Value Senses

2007-12-27T17:54:00.000+09:00

Hm, I guess this article will be the last one I write in 2007. I have been actually writing a new song since finishing Glider. The song is titled Song of Tomorrow. I don't think I will finish the song by the end of this year, so I'm not gonna write much about it this time.

Anyways, 2007 has been a long year for me. I had to be patient for the entire year. Every minute seemed like an hour. I am so glad that I am right here still alive at the end of 2007. 2008 will be a fun year for me personally. I have 2 big projects to start. One is the band, SOUND GATE, and the other is my personal music business. Before expecting success in either project, I am simply excited to start something new.

I will be a freshman in music business next year. I have some know-hows in music business, but of course they are not enough to be professional. I will keep learning new things day by day as making mistakes. That will be awesome life. I really cannot wait.

For example, I now work for electronic engineering company. Elder workers of the company know of course a lot more than I know about electronic engineering. Even only talking about computing, there are so many different fields in computing engineering job. One might know a lot about hardware, one might know a lot about applications, one might know a lot about network, one might know a lot about programming, one might know a lot about debugging, there are simply countless fields of profession even only in computing field.

Working with those professional guys, I feel that a skill of playing the piano seems such a small, worthless skill in society. No wonder it is so hard to make living out of playing the piano. On the other hand, even though one might be a professional programmer, she/he cannot really live without doing house works such as cooking, washing, cleaning, shopping, etc. In fact, if world wide economic depression would have happened, professional programmers cannot really survive, although farmers might be able to.

Thinking of such a situation, a composer would be such a useless guy. Some composers get respected or act like they are great especially in academic institutes. I must confess here, I really feel a great distance between my value sense and the other people's in terms of this profession topic. One could play the guitar really good? Huh, how useless the guy is. The guy seems like a homeless begger who lives in a home. Those people's lives are only happening on the country's economy. If people walking in your city all lose their jobs, you also will lose your job. Entertainers' glories are like mirage. Honestly, I never ever understand who sits on their glory and be snobbish or look down the other people or be proud of their glory. How funny they are. They are just naked kings who are fooled by taylors.

Even though I start making rather good money out of my personal music business, I will never be snobbish about my skills. For me, how the other people value things means completely nothing. It's all about how much fun I feel over my jobs and activities of course of music. Even though numerous people see me as an idle musician, I would never avoid walking in big cities by myself. Their value sense cannot be applied to mine. I live my life whoever says whatever.

Identity

2007-12-19T00:22:00.000+09:00

I finished a 7-minute piece, Glider, a few days ago. After all, I wrote 9 pieces in 2007...well, I could write more. Way more than that... Most of my friends in American academic music world didn't understand why I would push myself so hard to write lots of music. Well, that's the theme of today's article.

My buddy bass player, Imai, calls me as genius. Well, I might be so, but I doubt that I am kind of a star or idle. I know I have talent to write music. However, that is really all I am. Right, I can speak English even though I am a native Japanese. I can kit up my computer however I want. I can play the organ, the violin, the piano, the drum set, the electric bass guitar, or I can sing, or I can conduct. It's true that I have lots of skills, but they are not what I am. That's why I don't want to make my living by my English skill, or performance skill, or any of those "useful" skills.

I believe that I am kind of an artisan. Writing music means directly that I am living. For me, how useless those glories are. While I was studying in the US, I tried hard to see if I could be a star in music. Well, in the mid-way, I gave up the whole bull shit. Writing a million-dollar-hit song? Being respected as an authority? Ha, how meaningless they are. I don't need any of them, so give me time and a little money so I can keep writing music. That was really what I ended up as my ultimate wish.

I am an artisan of music. Money is not enough to me. Glory is not enough to me. Status is not enough to me. I just want time and money to write music. I don't want people to judge my music. I don't want people to analize my music. I just want to keep writing music. I understand 99% of people don't understand my point. They are completely normal. I am the one who is different.

The guitar player, Akio, and the bass player, Imai, in my project band are both awesome musicians. I wrote down my pieces on music sheet, of course. I did indicate small details as I used to do in American academic music world. Last time I were in a rehearsal studio with them, they knocked my head down completely. They didn't read any detail of my notation. They simply used my notation to get notes "but not music." What they performed with me was not really what I wrote. It was way better than what I wrote. It was impossible to describe in notation what they played in the studio. They played music out from my stupid meaningless notation. I simply laughed so hard. "Great, guys." That was all I said to them.

I love what I am in right now. This is truely what I was always dreaming about. I have enough money to live and enough time to write and play my music with my awesome musician dudes. Akio will start his own business as tax accountant from next spring. He is only playing with us until then. But who cares. We are totally having fun right now. What more can we expect? Well, talking about stability, I have no idea how long I can stay in this dream-like situation.

However, I have no fear. As I said above, writing music is all I am. I am not a husband of anyone, or a father of anyone. I am just an artisan of music. I live today, to live tomorrow. I write music, to live tomorrow. Imai is stopping by to pick up the score of Glider tomorrow night. We are going to eat out in a local bar near my parents' house. I am thinking about talking to him that I actually want to use the name SOUND GATE when we give some live shows in spring with Akio. SOUND GATE is the name of my band where I really can live my life as what I naturally am. I think, Akio, Imai, and I are making noises which are worth enough to be called SOUND GATE.

I make enough money. I have awesome fellow musicians who play true music out from my scores. I have a few people who are waiting for listening to my new pieces. Really...what more can I wish or expect? No one cares around me right now that I have a skill to write for orchestra. All they want is my music. How can I stop writing in this situation? And if I keep writing until I die, that would be the best. In fact, it seems to happen in my life. What joy that is. No one took my music seriously in American academic music world. No one gave me any prize. However, I won my own identity by myself. It is such a meaningless award in the society, although it is the biggest glory I could ever win in music. I am so glad I didn't go to Juilliard Scool of Music.

What Loops

2007-12-12T18:10:00.000+09:00

I think, one of the featuristic characters of popular music is its looping effect. Cool songs often loop in my head even when I'm not listening to them. Some classical pieces so called "great pieces" usually don't loop in my head. Maybe because they are formed so "greatly," I feel satisfied by listening to it only once? Or I somehow feel that I don't wanna listen to the piece again?

Well, classical pieces are meant to be performed in live in concert hall but not to be recorded as a product. A performance just flies like wind and never be reproduced exactly the same way. That's the purpose of most classical pieces. No wonder they don't really loop in my head. They are not supposed to be understood by being listened once like popular music. That's why people take decades to "understand" one piece. No wonder people still respect composers from over 100 years ago just like their heroes or cult gods.

Popular music sticks in my head very strongly. However, it usually doesn't last so long. For example, I used to listen to The Prodigy everyday when I was in high school, though, I don't really listen to them these days. However, I still listen to Mozart, although not constantly. I think looping is what makes popular music different from classical music.

My friend, Anthony Joseph Lanman's piano trio, Il dolce stile nuovo, does loop. The ensemble is of course classical. However, this piece is not really classical in the point of looping effect. Many of his other pieces don't loop. Normal listeners who naturally listen to popular music don't feel awkward to Il dolce stile nuovo. Conservative classical listeners and scholars don't feel comfortable to listen to the piece.

OK, how about my music? My classical pieces don't loop. I knew the looping effect even when I was freshman in Indiana University. I was trying not to write looping pieces for the past five years. However, I am originaly one of those normal listeners who naturally listen to looping popular music. So, if you pick some phrases out from my classical pieces, they often have looping effect, although the effect is killed by formal constructions of the whole piece.

Now, I don't really have any pressure or "rules" to follow in music. I am totally free to do whatever I want to do. In my recent pieces, often I strongly use looping effect. For example, my recent song called NARUKAMI loops. I was trying to use the effect in the song.

By the way, I don't mean that looping pieces are better. They are just different types of music. My point is that professional composers should be able to write both kinds of music case by case. The skill is very high level and way more difficult than writing 8 voice fugue or 5 hour long opera or 2 hour long symphony. Well, no one can really teach how to learn the skill to someone else, anyway.

Also, one important point is that looping pieces are heavily listened in short period of time, though composers shouldn't take it as if the pieces are better than not-looping pieces. Composers should be able to control the effect. Man, even by writing it here, it sounds extremely difficult. No wonder academic composers "ignore" this point on purpose. For example, Claude Debussy does control looping effect in different pieces. That's why normal listeners accept his music, but they don't really take Bartok seriously. In academia, what everyone talks about Debussy is his not-looping pieces. Nobody talks about how his piano preludes loop. Well, well, because they cannot explain it. Then students believe that's all about Debussy even though they feel something is not explained why Debussy's music is still widely listened compared to Bartok. I don't mean Debussy is better than Bartok. They are just different. Personally, I learned a lot more from Debussy than Bartok. That's all.

Small Risk No Return

2007-12-05T15:04:00.000+09:00

I have finished Inner Flight last week. I'm already working on next piece, Glider, which is about 3 minutes by today. It shall be 8 to 10 minutes eventually. I've been writing these four pieces, Glider, Inner Flight, Night Flight, and Free Fly as one live performance program. All four pieces are somehow related to flying. This whole program would take over 40 minutes to play through, and it will be the program of my project band's live shows which will be held in spring.

Anyways, these days I've been working on actual music activities rather than business preparations. I'm writing lots of music, so I rather feel good in this kind of days which is all about sleeping, eating, working or composing. Well, these kinda days of music make me think a little deeper about myself as a musician.

A few days ago, I got out from my work about 10pm and was walking underground streets of Umeda, Osaka. Majority of shops were closed behind steel shutter, although still numerous people were walking everywhere in the underground city of Osaka. They seemed as if they are functioning as blood streams of the city as one big creature.

I was about to pass by Hanshin Department Store. At one intersection by the store, there was a guy who was playing his acoutsic guitar and screaming his horrible voice. There were only two ladies stopping by and listening to his voice. Obvisouly, he was not making much money. However, he looked quite bright to me. He was really doing music, even though he was not making any money. I was working as an artisan but not really doing any actual music activities, performing my own music in front of people for a while. I in fact felt envy.

I want to do music. I know not many people would understand my philosophy, though I actually don't really expect much return to my music. Before all, I want to do music. One big thing I couldn't take in academia was that everyone was trying to make money over music. How to make money of living...that was the most important point in all conversations I were in. However, that is not really the point in my individual case.

I believe that music is like an impulse which overflows out from my internal mind. At that point, there'd better not be any expectation to rewards. In Capitalistic mind, there must be "guarantee" (in Japanese, actors use this word as their salary) to any "job." Well, then, do I do music as a job? Or is it way more important thing in my life than a job?

Right, the biggest problem in current music production business is that everyone calculates how much is "guaranteed" before they start a project. I mean, before they start writing music. I DO think that is wrong. Music should happen before calculating money. Music is a form of art, but money is just a piece of paper. You cannot die with money.

I want to do music. That is one truth I found in my mind. Of course, I will do my best as the leader of my project, SOUND GATE. However, even for a short period of time, I would like to do real music by myself. After I finish my new piece, Glider, I will start writing small pieces for myself to play and sing. When I store enough songs and pieces, I will travel from north to south in Japan only with instruments and my music. I will play my music at a corner of major cities without expecting any rewards, money. I won't put my instrument cases in front of me. I will refuse people to leave money to me. Even though some would do, I will contribute all money to orphanage or somehwere.

At least, it seems that I have about one more year before my American dudes to join my project. One year is enough to do what I wrote above. Especially after spring, it will be right season which allows me to sleep outside. Because people invest lots of money for gigantic shows, then people must expect high returns, right? Well, I don't need that. I take any risks as much as I can possibly do in my music. That might be a small risk, though I don't expect any return. My point is not there.

Money should happen after music. No one would take that idea? Well, I don't care whoever takes whatever. I do my music by myself. Music is way more important than money for me. I don't write music to be performed. I don't write music to be famous. I don't write music to be successful. I don't write music to be respected. I do music because that's naturally how I am. If people respect me, or pay me lots of money, or perform my music all over the world, that's fine. I don't have any objection to that. However, when I do music, I don't expect any of those. Music is like an impulse. It overflows from my mind. I just cannot stop it.

Money making should happen in my projects. However, that is not the point of my personal music. However far I go, I will never lose that point in my music.

Choice Making

2007-11-27T20:58:00.000+09:00

Hm, busy. It's been quite busy around me these days. It's been busy in a good way, so I don't really feel much stress so far. Last week, I got a pretty bad cold, though besides that, my life's been pretty cool. My new piece is coming in pretty good shape. I just wish I had more time to spend on this piece.

How does a person decide one thing among numerous possibilities? If it was GRE or TOEFL and there were only 4 choices for us to choose, how life could be easy. If we could tell which one is better or worse, how life could be easy. In reality, there are no multiple choice. We must choose one out of uncountable possibilities.

For example, how do you choose your car? Car is car. Whatever it is, if it's a car, it functions as a car in your life. Why did you buy the specific one you drive now? It didn't really have to be that one, right? Yes, anything could be fine to you. However, among other cars, you chose the one you drive now. Why?

How about your lover? Why did you choose your lover among other people? Just because she was there in front of you? Just because you could have sex with her? Just because you were lonely? Well, though you could choose someone else quite easily. But why did you choose the one?

In music, decision making is the most important thing. You wrote a note of C on staff paper. OK, what is next? whatever you choose to write next to the C, why do you choose the note? Is it because "repetition is bad?" Is it because "E is on C major chord?" Is it because "D is on C major scale?" If your reason was anything like those I mention here, there is no possibility for your music to be original.

If you make a choice because of environmental reason, that is not your original. If you make a choice just following your own reason, that will be your original music even though the actual decision is the same as a choise made by environmental reason.

My sentenses might sound complicated, although I think everyone in this world does make a choice by the one's original reason. The reason why you had married with your wife is probably not just because she was beneficial to you, right? Well, if you could do that, then I don't understand why composers cannot write original music. I don't understand why lots of pieces sound just the same.

I just bought a snare drum. It is alminum shell, which is rather unique. I met this snare when I stopped by one small music shop in Tanimachi 9-chome. I tried to play the snare for a few minutes. I just bought it. Snare is snare. I can always use the one in rehearsal studio. It functions perfectly fine as a snare drum. However, I had a very solid original reason to buy the specific snare drum.

A Small Plan

2007-11-16T13:59:00.000+09:00

Yesterday, without a big reason, I started looking for an apartment which to be used as my second bed/atelier. I was interested in one spot around Umeda, north part of the downtown of Osaka City. The very small section of the city is called Kurosaki-cho.

I took subway and got off at Nakazaki-cho station. There was a super old-looking shopping street right above the station. I walked into the street to get to Kurosaki-cho. The atmosphere gave me the sense that I was time-tripping back over 80 years. The air was very dirty, but I felt somehow at-home in the middle of the dirty shopping street.

The apartment I found was 36,000 yen(about 300USD) per month. I suspect something bad happened in the apartment of 1DK. Perhaps an old person passed away and was founded badly decayed in the room or something? Anyways, that's crazy cheap as 1DK apartment right in the middle of downtown. The apartment was facing to a small park right next to a small police station. I walked around the apartment and found laundry shop, bathing shop, lots of bars, a live house, and several grocery shops in walking distance from the apartment. Everything seemed to be awesome about the apartment.

Well, I don't really have to rent an additional room as my atelier. However, now I make enough money to keep an extra room in the middle of downtown, and I think if I don't rent one now then I will never do. Living with parents is good to save some money, but at the same time it's not really good for my creative activities. Also, I have too many audio equipments which I don't wanna take with me every time I go to a rehearsal studio with my band.

Also, I have some concerns to my parents. They are getting old. These days, they are obviously trying to have more conversation with me by expressing every single thing they found in the house. For example, "oh! how wonderful today is!" or "oh! that's so funny!" to a tiny joke heard from TV or "what do you do today?" "how about tomorrow?" "what do you think about my shirt today?" etc, etc. It is so clear that they strongly feel the world where I am and where they are are so far apart.

I am now a musician and at the same time an artist. My parents are both very normal Japanese workers who cannot even imagine how an artist makes living. They wanted me to be like them. Well, all parents want their children to be like them. However, I am too different from them as a person, or a human being. I almost never feel the same to a specific thing as my parents feel. I am in fact too different from what so called "normal."

I need that sense. I need it to be original in music. My parents are desperated to share lots of time with me. However, I need my time and space to be alone and focus on my own sense. So, renting the room in Kurosaki-cho should work well. I can use the room 2 to 3 days a week, and come back to my parents house for the rest of the week especially in the days I have to work. Also, my second bed should give my American dudes clearer sense to look for an aprtment in which part of Osaka City. Well, anyways, to myself, I think I should rent the room perhaps from next month.

Following Ten Years From Now

2007-11-07T20:51:00.000+09:00

The two musicians who I am collaborating these days are whom I know since the time I was in high school. Honestly, when I was in Japanese high school, it was the most "funny" time in my life so far. Everyday was full of laugh and jokes.

I was in fact attending to a boys school. Because of that, I didn't really have any chance to experience any memorial events with girls until I got 20 years old. Of course, we didn't have to care girls' eyes at all in school, so pretty much everyday someone was in naked and majority of us are in half naked even during classes, yes even though the teacher was a lady.

There are so called "club activities" in Japanese school where students play judo, kendo, aikido, rugby, tennis, or do some activities in brass band, cultural club, history club, astronomy club, broadcasting club, I cannot really say em all here. I was the one who started rock music club and raised some money to buy equipments to build a rehearsal studio in school.

The club was truely fun. In lunch time, we all were together behind "club house" building and burned one of the club member's guitar. As we all inhaled toxic smoke caused by burning painted varnish or something on the body of the guitar, we were all sleeping for the entire afternoon classes. After school, we all had strange headache.

One day when it was the day of a school festival, all clubs were marching around the school yard. That time, my rock music club was not officially "a club" because of the school system. So, of course, we didn't have our spot in the parade to appeal our club. However, we were totally ready to march by the time the first club was about to start marching. Teachers were furious and tried to catch us to prevent anything stupid to happen. Though only one cool teacher just shouted "guys! just go! go!," then we marched at the end of the whole parade. Of course, we did something different from other clubs. We stopped in front of dean and lots of parents' seat, then I was the one who started, "WE ARE THE ROCK BAND CLUB!" We all had some kinda instruments with us, so we made some noise, and vowed to the dean. Surprisingly, all of parents there were applauding. I don't know what the dean was feeling. Maybe he was about to get a heart attack?

We didn't care about pride. We didn't care what happens afterward. We were just trying to have fun. That was all of my high school days in Japan. My buddy bass player, Imai, was of course a part of all events we made happen as the rock band club. And the guitar player who would play with us in the ad hoc project next spring was also a member of the rock band club.

Of course, I got old and changed a lot since then. I don't do stupid stuff like what we did in high school. However, I know I am going to live in the same level of excitement and fun in the following ten years from now with my rock band dudes. We'll live days which are full of laughter and jokes, and we enjoy playing music as much as possible. I'll take care of all serious stuff related to promotion and organizing the band, so I want my guys to have lots of fun in my project. These days of the following ten years will be totally priceless. Yeah, money cannot buy that kind of true happiness of life. Success doesn't mean making money for me on my rock band projects. Success means the days when we can laugh a lot and play music all the time. The following ten years in my life will be truely fun. I know that because I am the one who make it true.

Transience

2007-10-30T22:15:00.000+09:00

Finally, I have just finished "Night Flight." The piece ended up as a little shorter than 8 minutes long. I'm quite happy about the piece now, so I'd better celebrate it with my favorite alcohle in the world, Shaoxing Chu (a kind of Chinese rice wine, or high-graded Rao Chu.) I love to drink it straight in room temparature. Hmmmmmm, this is the best for this season...with persimmon as snack, of course.

I often express transience in my music. That's why I don't really use recapituration or too much repetition. Even in rhythmic structure, I don't like to give obvious clearity for the audiendce to sense what happens next. For example, 99% of recent music is bound to the number of 4. It doesn't matter the meter is 3/4 or 6/8 or 4/4 or 5/4, but usually the larger structure is constructed with 4 measures as one unit.

Well, I only said I don't let people have clear structural expectation. I have never said I would never use 4 measure structure. What different is how I use 4 measure structure. 4 measure structure gives the listener some kinda "pre-experienced" feeling. In other words it could be "at home" atmosphere. When I use this structure, I always enphasize its meaning rather than using it as norm.

One Vietnamee composer said a famous line for us: "Once you see one measure, you can see the structure of the whole piece." I say here, I am completely against his idea. His words are true in most of Western music or any music so called "classical." However, this principle cannot be applied to my music. This is one of the biggest difference between my music and ordinal Western style music.

Honestly, no one ever could understand the structure of my music only by looking through the scores. This is because my music is not structured in Western principle at all. As I said first, I often express transience in my music. It is just like how Somei Yoshino (the most widely growing kind of Sakura Tree in Japan) blooms. Sakura only blooms in spring. Especially, you can see the flowers of Somei Yoshino only about a week for each tree in each year. How short it is...that's only feeling you can feel from this description. However, once you see how glorious they bloom only for a week every year, you will understand what I mean by transience.

In actualy musical terms, those are some of what I don't use: theme and developement, mirror texture, sonata form(A-B-A,) rondo, recapituration, economic use of one material, augmentation and diminution, broken scale, full texture, etc. Especially, I almost never use "economic use of one material" thing. This means altering one original material like inverting, fragmenting, augmenting, transposing, and using them as verious structural roles in one long piece to create the sense of unity. I say, I in fact hate this technique. See, how I dislike Brahmus.

You live today. Tomorrow, however hard you try, you can never gain back your yesterday. That is the life. When Somei Yoshino blooms, they take off all leaves. So, all you see is beautiful pink tiny flowers on black-skinned tree branches. You cannot even count how many flowers are blooming on each tree. Only to bloom for one week, they almost seem like burning their lives. I love spring because I can see Sakura. I haven't seen Sakura for 5 years. I cannot wait for next spring.

I don't plan in the process of composition. I only burn my life in phrase by phrase. No Western composer understood my point. So, I just kept this principle within me for the entire days when I was in American academic field. Of course, because I have never expalined this in front of people, or express this point as the main theme of my music, none of my pieces were understood in academic way. People hear my music and feel the transience. However, no one could ever explain it in words. Poeple in academia didn't give awards or prizes to the kind of music they cannot explain. I was happy about that. Music should be enjoyed in that kinda way.

Reality and Fantasy

2007-10-25T16:12:00.000+09:00

I think American culture is strongly connected to realism besides the parts connected to Christianity. When in Rome...you know, so, I was trying to live like American people when I was in the US. American realism was almost required when I took composition lessons with American professors.

Usually, American composers connect musical symbolism to some factors in real life. It didn't almost ask for explanation when I saw titles of American composers' compositions. Many of them were spending lots of their effort on how exactly they can re-express things happening in real life in music compositions. "This is the symbol of 9.11" or "this is where two birds fighting" or "here is following the scientific calculation of how stars are crushing" or those things were very normal in American academic composition field. Of course, I could never be accustomed to their style. No wonder. I am Japanese.

Even in normal students life, things were taken in very realistic ways. Love = Sex...one thing I still don't understand. Success in music = making money rather than playing good music...of course, I never understand this point. Related to this, success in music = becoming a good teacher...what a shit. If you wanna be a teacher, don't even play music in front of me. One thing I always wanted to say but never did was "where is American Dream thing?" Nobody was really dreaming. Everyone was only caring what is the most realistic way to live. As long as one thinks like that, the one can never become a great musician, I think.

Music is connected to human emotion...well, kinda common sense isn't it. I think what makes the real life beautiful is the human beings' character, dreaming. If you can see things happening in your daily life as fantasic events, how exciting your life can be!

My music is strongly connected to fantasy. For example, my Organ Suite is a fantasic story I sort of came up in my head. I was very tired of my life at that moment, so I dreamed about laying down on grass field and looking up the total blue sky in which a plane contrail was progressing. That's the first movement, Contrail. Even in this movement, I was expressing how relaxing I was feeling in the dreamy situation rather than expressing "this is the plane noise," or "here is expressing the blue sky."

Right, fantasy is what happening in your mind. Reality is what happening around you without your effort. Drawing or Painting is very useful form of art to express the latter. However, music is too ambiguous to express reality. That's why usually programatic music cannot stand alone without program notes of explanation in text.

Interestingly, Japanese culture is full of fantasy. Many people enjoy the process of falling in love rather than having sex afterward. Of course, there are lots of people who don't even know how fun to live in a dream or fantasy before they take off their underware. One thing I am almost positive is that my friens Tony Lanman is definitely fantasy person rather than realistic one. I'm certain his dreamy music will be welcommed by Japanese audience widely.

I say it so many times. "So, what is your mind in this phrase?" I wanted to ask those American "great" composers who wrote realistic pieces like using intervals of 9, 1, 1 to connect his meaningless music to the tragedy. That only connects the historical factor to the composition, but that's nothing to do with "music" part. Alright, where is the composer's personal voice in the stupid 9, 1, 1 intervals? Even, how about stuff like this: using drum set in order to connect classical music to rock music. You know how pointless that kind of realism is in music. You can write rock music using orchestra. You can write classical music using 4-part rock band. That point is WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY IN YOUR MUSIC. Who cares how you write.

Fantasy is very personal. I write my fantasy world especially these days, in my compositions. No wonder my music was always takend as "different" in American academia. My style is fantasic expressionism, in a way. This is totally different from realism because my style never be bound by system, technique, form, genre, instrumentation, or fashion.

I'd better fix my back pain problem started a couple of days ago. I cannot really sit in one place for long time now. But I wanna write "Night Flight." Well, I should rest today, though I will meditate about the piece.

Symbolism in Music

2007-10-15T18:04:00.000+09:00

Hm, I think I should update this blog a little more frequently. I've already finished "Free Fly" about a week ago, and now I'm working on a new piece for the 3-part project band. This time, I'm trying to reflect the guitarist's request which is "mellow, singing guitar line." Well, now I can let Imai, the bassist, and I take some easy time in the piece. In fact, I've been demanding too much to Imai in all of my recent pieces.

Alright, here goes today's topic. I think Japanese people lack the sense of symbolism in music. Well, in fact, there is no such word "Symbolism" in Japanese. Actually, there are lots of symbolic metaphor words in Japanese literature since long long time ago. However, since Japanese culture doesn't have the sense of "singing (as the meaning in English,)" it seems that people don't really understand symbolism in music songs.

"Singing" used to mean "writing WAKA poem" in Japanese culture. Even in GAGAKU, the oldest orchestral form of music in the world, text was used in spoken intonation...which I personally describe as Japanese style of Rap. The meaning of text was usually narrative story of a kind. Alright, these are some background of Japanese sense of singing in music.

Now, Japanese people don't take old Japanese style of "singing" as singing in music...or in fact do they? Hm, one thing positive is that Japanese audience put too much weight on text in music. "Oh, I like that song so much!" "Yeah, the text is very nice!" This kinda conversation happens everywhere. They almost seem like believing that "good music" means "good text." Well, I guess this is based on writing WAKA poem in Heian Era.

I remember once I showed GAGAKU music to one of my teachers, Mr. F in Indiana University. He said "I don't get the point of this music. This sounds so empty." I guess he was right. Old Japanese music don't really have any meanings which Western people expect in music. The most important thing in music was atmosphere for Japanese for long time. So, one piece in GAGAKU might sound like meaningless blowing wind getting repeated. I'd say that old Japanese music doesn't really have symbolic meaning like optimistic excitement in Allegro music in Western style.

Well, I don't really care about old stuff, but I must know about it to see what recent Japanese audience expects in music. I see lots of Japanese listeners seek "the answer" in music. They want to know "this is a love song" if the song was a love song. The easiest way to get the answer is to read the text in liner notes. However, if the text was something very ambiguous and abstract? Well, then many say "I don't understand the song." I hate that reaction. You people don't need to understand music. Just enjoy it like you eat some food. Who wants to understand your food?

I see some very sad things happening in music shows. "This is the song written for the memory of the singer's mother who had past away last year." What a sad destruction of the point of music this is...it makes me weep. I hate this kind of "giving the answer" in music. For example, I hate a composer titles his work "Pathetic." I don't want you to tell me what to feel from the piece! I'll decide what to feel by myself! Don't give me a crap.

Music is one of the hardest art form to connect to symbolism. Major music doesn't always mean optimistic. Minor music doesn't always mean sorrowful. You cannot say "everyone must feel blue color from this melody" because that never happens. Everyone will have different feeling from one piece of music. People's perceptions changes depending on each one's mental and physical condition. Akira Kurosawa used parade-like music of marching band at the end of one film where the main character leaves his town in deep regret and sorrow after a big failur in his business. The parade music sounded super sad and irritating. I didn't feel any excitement or happiness which the piece was originally written as. That was definitely one magic of Kurosawa.

Music should be free from symbolism, I believe. If the composer say "this is the piece I wrote for my mother who had past away last year," then the piece will never be anything more than "the piece written for the momery of mother who had past away last year." Does it have to be like that? No. I strongly deny that. Some people might feel happiness in the piece. However, the composer destroyed the possibility by herself/himself. People read the liner note and shut out the possibility of happiness in the piece because of the stupid sentense written by the composer.

I like showing my Japanese songs to my American dudes because they never understand the Japanese text. In that way, they are completely free to feel anything they naturally felt from my songs. I usually use text as bunch of syllabic sounds rather than meaningful words anyway. In this way, I do something totally out of normal style in Japanese songs.

To The Next Level

2007-09-27T21:05:00.000+09:00

My new piece for 3-part rock band is coming pretty good. It should end up as 7 to 8 minute piece. The piece is titled as "Free Fly." Well, it sounds quite odd in English, though I have some special feelings to this two words. In correct English, I think it should be "Free Flight." I'm not sure if "Fly" can be a noun by itself. Whatever. My point is not there.

There is no right or wrong in music. I say it so many times everywhere. There is one thing certain in music...that is what I believe. As long as I believe in myself in my music, it becomes true in the world of my music. It might be criticised from many people, but as long as the point of the music is concrete enough, it will overwhelm small things like language or style or technique or those craps.

I do have a point in this "Free Fly" piece. In fact, "Free Fly" was the name of the band I formed when I was 16 years old. After all, that band changed its name and became my main band before I left Japan 8 years ago. The members of "Free Fly" were all big freaks of Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don't remember, though perhaps in their first album, there was a stupid improvisation song titled "Flea, Fly." We just altered the title and used it as our band's name.

It was really just a joke. However, in some rock band competitions we entried, most of judges were interested in our band's name. Funny now, though they had never been interested in our outlaw, alternative, funk rock music or performance at all. They always said "you guys have a very good band name. We understand your passion and soul to music. Once you polish your style, you guys might be a successful band." Ha! In back stages, we were always laughing about it. "We ain't care that crap, old man!"

As I got out from academia, I have been once again re-thinking about my own music. I've written a few pieces since May, though there is one thing I cannot deny. When I was in "Free Fly," I was completely natural myself. Any big competitions were just opportunities to have some fun for me. In any big stages and festivals, I was only focusing on how I could make an awesome show. I had never used to feel pressure or stress or be nervous in music. Of course, there were many people who denied my music, though they hated me because I had never cared their words and simply had fun in music.

What have I lost...? This question has been sticking in my head and ringing in my skull even while I'm sleeping. My music has grown since "Free Fly." I can do lots of things in music now. I feel that I can express myself in music better than in words. However, I feel something is missing in my recent pieces.

Composition starts and ends when the composer decides. If the composer thinks one rather ok sounding section of one piece, then the secion would never be fixed. I mean, when the composer gives up, the composition stops. I do not mean that composers should not give up things too easily. I think Brahms was stupid. He took 25 years to write hie first symphony because he couldn't give up every small detail. However, what I'm doing now is totally different from what Brahms did in his first symphony.

I THINK, my music lost its natural sound as I studied in academia. It doesn't matter is that's true or not. I THINK SO. That's what all matters here. I don't say my recent pieces are bad. I in fact think my recent pieces are really strong and well crafted art. What I am doing is searching for a path to lift up myself to the higher level. I want to gain back my natural feeling which I used to have when I was in "Free Fly." What is "my naturalness?" Well, that's what I will decide.

I titled my currently working piece as "Free Fly." I have a very strong ambition behind the piece. I will gain back myself I left in Japan 8 years ago, and reach to much higher level which I could have never reached in 8 years ago. I'll never stop myself in music. There is only ascending path in front of me in music.

The Second Day's Apple Pie

2007-09-14T00:54:00.000+09:00

I just wrote about pretty much the same topic in my Japanese blog, Ongaku No Uraguchi. This topic is based on my favorite presentation topic "Mom's Apple Pie." The story goes like this:

"One day, when I arrived at your home, my mother baked my favorite apple pie. I was very hungry, so I ate a whole cake of her apple pie. It tasted awesome and fulfilled my stomach as well as my heart. I appreciated my mom so much and told her 'I love you, mom.'

Next day from the awesome applepie, I could study really hard in school. As usual, I went home quite hungry and asked my mom if there was something for me to snack. She came out from the kitchen. On her hands, there was a whole apple pie which I love. Well, but I had the aholw pie last night, so I felt a little bad, but because I love the pie and also my mom, I ate the whole pie once again. I was completely full afterward. Honestly, I felt I had enough of the pie.

The third day, when I arrived back home, my mom was again baking the apple pie. My mom was smiling as bringing the whole pie to the table and said 'it's great that you love this pie!' She seemed very happy, so I ate the whole pie once again. Well, in fact, I couldn't finish it.

Alright, which apple pie the character 'I' the most appreciated?"

That's what I used to presented in a composition department seminer. I am not their teacher. I had no intention to teach them anything. I only give them the first step to get into deep composition world. Some students were very interested in my topic. Meanwhile some others just refused my topic even without attempting to understand. They were all very smart students...well it seemed that they all could sense that I was something super challenging to all of them. And yes, they were right.

In the most simple way to understand this story is understanding the three apple pies as repetitions in composition. In the most simple repetition, if it was repeated three times, the repeated phrase will be heard like the three apple pies from the audience. However, am I just talking about that?

No, I was talking far more deeper point of composition. From here, I gave everybody a chance to find the next step to get deeper into the story. Here is the next normal way of getting further into the story.

Alright, if "my mom" hadn't served the whole pie, then serve a thin piece of the piece instead? If "my mom" could have made "I" feel like "I" didn't have enough pie in the first day? Then if "my mom" had served a whole pie in the second day, could "I" have appreciated the second day's pie more than the first day's pie? Wait, there was the third day. Isn't it possible to play with "I"'s feelings of those three days? "Mom" can make "I" appreciate the third day's pie the most, of course. "Mom" can make "I" appreciate all three days' pies equally. Well...how? You think.

That's only the second step as I said. Alright, now I open up a gate of possibility. If "mom" baked different pies in each day? She could make sour pie on the first day, bitter pie on the second day, and sweet pie on the third day. They are all pie, but small variation created different FORM. Right, this is what I am talking about. By planning and understanding how the audience would feel from your music minute by minute, you can control the piece in order to grab the audience into your world of music very deeply.

Alright, let's get rid of all restrictions. What if "mom" cooked totally different kinds of recipes each day of the three days? Thinking being "mom," how do you plan to serve what kind of cuisine and how much of it to your son...even when? Alright, the more you lose restrictions, it becomes harder to organize the FORM. If you mis-organized the three days' serving plan, even though you cooked one cuisine perfectly, the cuisine might not be appreciated from "I" as it should be.

Form is I think the most important point of composition. Because if you mis-organize a form of a piece, then even though each phrase or rif sounds awesome, they would never be appreciated as you want the audience to. It's just like kisses in your life. Of course, the first kiss with your lover means very strong and identical. However, if you mis-organize or in this case mis-plan kisses after the second time, then the meaning of kiss gets rusty one by one. That might cause to make you and your lover break up in the future. However, that happenes because you couldn't think of your lover enough.

However hard you focus on creating really cool phrase, if you put the phrase in horrible form, then the good phrase's meaning will be completely destroyed. In other words, even though one light and thin and less meaningful phrase could mean really really strong if you put one in the right place of a great form. Alright, so, C major chord is considered "old-fashioned?" Ha! Rediculous. That kinda sentense only shows how the person is weak on making good form. C major can sound and mean billions of different ways. If you can use C major only as all classical composers used, then that's your limit. You can never go further than that.

I have never explained this much of the apple pie story ever since I held the presentation in the seminer. I almost refused to answer any questions from other students after the presentation. Because I am not their teacher. Each one should think about this story and get as deep as you can go. If you cannot get deep enough, then that's your limit. I don't give any answer or help to the person to get deeper into the story. Simply, this is my style of composition. That's all.

After Death

2007-09-07T17:27:00.000+09:00

I'm writing a trio piece for the ad hoc project these days. Well, I had 3 moths of rest in composition. It's really time to write something. The piece is coming very quickly. I don't have any plan of the finished length of the piece, though I might make the piece into 10 minutes or something that long. The piece is for electric guitar, 5-string electric bass, and drum set. The piece should be finished in a couple of weeks. Alright, here I go into the today's topic.

Japanese Shintoism is a unique religion, I think. This religion has multiple gods...well pretty much anything is considered as god even something small like a stone around a side walk. It's really just a nature-respecting religion, so anything related to nature is god. Well, so, our bodies are of course something natural...so every human being will become gods someday. When? Right, when you die.

When a person dies, the person will receive a name called "Kaimyo." That name will be how the person will be called as a god, so Kaimyo is usually very serious and heavy name. (...this topic reminds me about Asahina-sensei. Takashi Asahina was the founder of Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor of the orchestra. He died in 2001 as 93 years old. At the concert of Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed by Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Asahina-sensei, I decided to leave rock music field once and get into classical music to study music as much as I wanted. That was over 10 years ago from now... Asahina-sensei refused to receive Kaimyo in his will. "I am Takashi Asahina even after I die." He was definitely the man.)

Death makes the person become a god...hmmmmm, how it makes sense. Legendary rock musicians are all dead. My old friend once said if one member of Aero Smith dies, the band would become a legendary band and be respected as strong as Led Zeppelin. Well, it might be true.

I saw one example when I was living in the US a while ago. One female student of my school died in a car accident happened near by the school. It was a very sad story, and the spot the accident happened was right on the road I walked to school every day. After a year past from the accident, her friends raised some money to buy a wodden cross and hanged it on the pole standing right next to the spot. Well, I didn't know her at all, so I sort of looked at the whole thing as a third person.

I felt very strange when I saw the cross hanged by the public street. "Hm...they seem like worshipping the girl almost like a god?" That's what I thought from the perspective of a Japanese Shintoism. When she was alive, she could never be worshipped like after she passed away. That was so sure. If she was still alive, perhaps herfriends might not have raised money for her. Their actions were completely Chiristian, of course. However, I felt some kinda common attitude human beings have towards death.

I don't usually see people worship somebody living like a god. Well, some instance happens around the world, though pretty much all cases are broadcasted as news. However, dealing with dead people like a god is considered as such a normal action in human society. Nobody broadcasts some family worhipping a dead family member like a god.

Death changes how people look at the person. The person won't care however the people around the one change, of course since the person will be already dead by then. Why people cannot respect each other before someone dies? Why people regret when someone dies? Then why don't you respect and love the person before she/he dies...I just think like that.

When The Mountain Doesn't Move Though You Want It To

2007-09-03T22:52:00.000+09:00

Well, people often feel if only the environment has been different or changing. Some hate their jobs. Some hate their community. Some hate their school. Of course, I often wished if my environment was different or at least changing as I wanted. However, that's almost like viewing a mountain and wanting to make it move. Well, it might move in 1,000,000 years from now. You must be dead by the time.

I hate to wait for something. Once I was seriously sick because of waiting too long. Especially if the thing you are waiting for is something very inmportant to your life, a moment would be felt like a year. When I waited too long, I was simply keep believing in the thing I was waiting for. Then what came out after all was that I was completely deceived by the thing. At that moment, I lost the thing I used to consider as the most important thing in my life those days.

I couldn't stand again for long time. I couldn't believe in things around me, and I still cannot believe in one thing as strong as I could. I have changed over the experience. I have become a different person since then. Now, I no longer keep waiting and believing one thing. Now, I walk to the thing by my own feet and grab it by myself. I no longer wait for it to come to me.

My composition style is pretty much like that. I don't wait for a chance to write a piece for a major orchestra or anything like that. I go and grab the chance by myself. I decided to plan a ad hoc rock band project towards the beginning of next year. There are enough dudes around me to make up a 4-part band. I can write 30 minutes of music in a couple of months for sure. We will simply just aiming for having fun over this small project. No pressure should be felt by anyone else but me.

Of course, my buddy Imai will be playing the electric bass part in the ad hoc band, and I will play the drum set. I no longer wait for things to come to me. I go there and grab them. The easiest way to move the mountain is to move yourself. What a simple but difficult solution that is! However, that definitely is my style. I am here living in Osaka, Japan to do music but not to waste my time for stupid part-time job. I don't care the ad hoc band won't be a perfect group. That's completely out of my point. I wanna do music. I wanna start my new life as a musician as soon as possible. 3 months of resting was enough for me. It's time to write lots of music.

Nothing Would Happen without Dreaming

2007-08-26T23:57:00.000+09:00

I like cold Merlot or very dry Japanese SAKE. Lanman likes room-temparature Shiraz. These things are just small stuff, but we do know each other's taste quite well. Knowing someone is in fact knowing small things in life. It takes quite a while to know someone. I don't rush my dudes to know my other dudes.

Imai and I were talking something like that yesterday. We spent the whole day together in my parents' house. Imai doesn't doubt my decisions usually. He knows me really well since we've been friends for almost 10 years. He knows what I am both in good and bad ways.

After I checked his progress in NARUKAMI, the new piece I wrote for voice, e-bass, and drum set, we got out my parents' house to go to a cafe near by Nagata Station, which was about 15 minutes walk. He's working on the piece really really hard so far. I totally understand that playing NARUKAMI is like challenging to speak a completely new language for him. However he's progressing in awesome way. As checking out his progress week by week, the more I feel confident that I chose him as the bass player of my band, SOUND GATE.

So, we took a coffee break in the cafe for about an hour. He ordered a lunch set of shrimp doria, and I had a cake set of strowberry short cake. I started after we finished eating and enjoying coffee: I wanna build a three-floor studio house in Awaji Island, which is about 1 hour by high-speed ship from Osaka City. The first floor should have a huge bath room, a loundry room, a big reception room for inviting business customers, and a big leisure room where we can play ping-pong. The second floor should be all recording and rehearsal studios. The third floor should have many bed rooms and a big rounge with a kitchen...which is like the cafe Imai and I went yesterday. Imai said 80% of meals should be cooked by me. Oh well, I know that will happen for sure.

Without buying tickets, you never win lottery. It's the same in life. Without dreaming, nothing big would happen in your life. It's one of my dreams to spend 1/4 of a year in the studio house in Awaji Island to make recordings and maybe hold annual festival there in the future. Now, we hold possibility to experience that becomes true in the future since we dream about it.

It's extremely easy to say, "huh, that will never happen." It's such an easy action to stop buying lottery tickets. It's so easy to give up dreams. Well, I always say this phrase. Imai knows because he heard me saying it so many times.

"Hey, you never know what happens in the future."

I never stop dreaming. I never give up tracing my ideal. It doesn't matter if I get to the goal by the time I die. It's not the point if I win the lottery or not. The most important thing is that I believe in my dream and live for it. That kinda life is oh what an exciting one it could be! Money doesn't matter. Glory doesn't matter. Fxxk 'em all. I live my life in my way whoever says whatever. Hey, you never know what happens in the future.

Devil's Advocate

2007-08-20T23:05:00.000+09:00

I like the phrase "Devil's advocate." Yes, it's like that in a life. Angel doesn't look like an angel. The real angel will look like a devil to support your life. Devil always looks like an angel. However, devil is devil, so the angel-looking devil will pull you down into hell.

Anytime I think about this stuff, I cannot stop remembering my first girlfriend. She was a Christian...pretty strict one. However, in many ways, she was very ignorant. She was Christian because that's how she was grown up by her parents. However, if I could take off her status of "being a Christian," she was just a spoiled, stupid, crime-making American girl. As the matter of fact, however hard I explained my point, she never understood the true angel doesn't look like an angel.

She eventually chose a way to hell...at least it looked like that to me. Around the same time she made a fatal mistake of her life, I was also facing to angel-looking devil in Japan. Well, I didn't choose the way to hell even though the way seemed like such a joyful one. And here I am, living in a completely different world from where she is now.

In a life, there should be lots of angels and devils. However, it's up to the individual to realize who is the true supporter and who is trying to pull you down into hell. If everyone in this world could know that without mistakes, then there was no war in this world by now.

Mother loves you, that's why she points out if there is something wrong in your life. Of course...that's just a kind of common sense. If the one thinks that your mother criticise your life because she is trying to pull you down into hell, then that's who you are. Please don't get close to me. haha.

It doesn't matter if you follow your mother's opinion. You should decide your life by following your own decision. However, you must know how your mother loves you from her bitter words. The true angel is usually hiding behind that kind of bitter words. In music, I hear something like that...something like that comes from the performer, and even from the composer. In music, everyone is forced to be in naked oneself. No lie or cheap trick works in music. I want to create "good music." I must be a great person in order to achieve it.

Hot Summer, Sleepy Head

2007-08-19T00:49:00.000+09:00

It's been crazy hot in Osaka, Japan for about 3 weeks. It's about 100F in daytime...already some people died in Kyoto because of the heat. My whole body has been so tired since it got really hot. I cannot sleep deeply...well, of course, because of the heat. I should keep AC on through the night, but that hurts my throat, so I cannot do that. I respect those opera singers a lot.

Finally I built a new computer by myself. It costed 120,000 Japanese yen (about $1,300) though it in fact worth $2,700. This computer is frickin fast. Now I can put my hand-written sketches in computer...after I gain back some energy though. I've been sleeping day and night these days, but still I feel so tired. My brain is numb all the time. I don't even wanna do anything complicated for a while. I should watch animation and lay down when I'm home.

Next week, Imai (the bass player of my band, SOUND GATE) and I will go to a concert of my old cellist friend in Nishinomiya near by Kobe City. I haven't seen him for at least 3 years since he left Inidiana University. Not only that concert, we will start stopping by live houses in Osaka to check out how the indie music scene in Osaka is right now. At the same time, we are checking out which live house would be interested in our music. Connections with live houses will be really important for the initial promotion of our band, so I will take enough time for this kinda preparation.

I am also very interested in one visual artist from Singapore. Her name is Foo Swee Chin (FSc.) Her originality impresses me quite strongly. I need to set up a condition to offer her a business, though hopefully someday she will become our business partner. I'd love to post extremely big painting of hers by a stage of live house and light it up while we perform. Of course, I would love her to design our logo or T-shirt or CD jacket or anything.

I have quite many things in my mind related to my band project. What is awesome is that anybody I meet these days are super interested in my project. Everyone wants to buy our CDs and come to our live shows. My point is that people would not realize how I actually struggle over this project planning process. I am a musician but not a philosopher. My job is to entertain people but not to show them all details of the project. We, musicians, are like street jugglers. Even though we work really hard on practicing or composing or business making, we are not supposed to show the back-stage part of our life to the audience.

I think it's the same in music composition. I hate the pieces which strongly appeal how the composers worked hard to make it complicated. I think the audience must not realize how the composer worked hard on the piece. The ultimate goal of music is to entertain somebody. It could be the composer herself/himself, though I think that is still not enough. I believe it is possible to entertain the composer herself/himself AND ALSO the audience. Writing a piece which appeals how the composer worked hard could entertain the composer herself/himself, but not the audience, I think. Well, simply I am saying the composer shouldn't be a selfish person. Again...the study of composition is in fact the study of life.

By the way, this blog is titled "Back Entrance of Music" because I in fact write lots of stuff which the audience shouldn't know here. I can do it for a while since I know only few people read this blog. Only few people should know what's going on behind the stage.

MABIKI Method

2007-08-15T01:06:00.000+09:00

MABIKI is a Japanese word meaning "thinning out something." Well, it's a sort of similar word as choosing good fruits and eliminating bad ones in agriculture. Chinary Ung-sensei once taught me that erasing notes is a very important skill of editing in music composition.

It's very easy to thicken texture, melody, or harmony in composition. It's very easy to make a piece complicated. However, highly complex piece of music means there is almost no focus on each material in the piece. I'd say, that means there is no appriciation to each material and idea. Well, how about cooking analogy again here?

When I was in the US, I never got the idea of "tri-color ice cream." It usually has vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate in one bucket of ice cream. In my opinion, I could never appreciate or enjoy vanilla in tri-color ice cream because other two flavors are too strong compared to vanilla. I love vanilla, so I wanted to enjoy it, but because of the other two flavors, I couldn't enjoy vanilla 100%. I'm sure many of my composer fellows would disagree this one: I think tri-color ice cream is almost humiliation of the all three flavors. By mixing the three flavors, the ice cream maker is killing the true taste of all three flavors.

Yes, I'm talking about composition. 4 voice counterpoint, for example, requires extremely high level sense of organization. It is easy to make it complicated, as I said above. However, there more complicated the composer writes, each line loses it's quality. That's why, I do MABIKI when I write any contrapuntal music. Simply, I take off lots of unnecessary notes. Why not to insert a blank measure for one line? By eliminating unimportant notes, each line and note gains stronger meaning.

I love plain vanilla ice cream. In other words, I love Perotin's single voice composition. To appreciate each material or idea, I always keep contents less complicated in a piece. By MABIKI editing, I make my music stronger. Well, so, from initial idea, which notes are necessary and which notes are important? That's totally up to you. Where else do you express your creativity and sense?

How to Lose Control

2007-08-06T21:55:00.000+09:00

There is one thing I still or never understand in academic music composition. I cannot understand why everyone tries to control everything. I cannot understand why everyone tries to write music with intelligence. I cannot understand why anyone cannot lose control on purpose in music.

Mr. Tsutsumi, now the dean of Toho Music Academy in Japan, used to tell me this point in music when I brought my Cello Suite to him. When he is at a really good performance, he feels like analyzing the performer's technique seems to be meaningless. He is such an experienced teacher of cello performance, though his point was that really good music overwhelms technique or even anything based on intelligence. "Ah, it's good..." That's all he has to say.

As a composer, I want to write the kind of music which makes listeners forget their intelligence. That is truely one goal in music for me. Alright, so, how can I write something which makes listeners forget their intelligence? Hm, that's not an easy question...I'm sure 99% of composition professors in academia cannot answer that question. Well, of course not, because they cannot write stuff which makes listeners forget about technique. They don't even know how to do it. Even though few of them knows how to do it, that doesn't mean they can teach it.

Well, from my point of view, I think composers should know how to lose control in composition. As long as the composer writes music with intelligence, it is impossible for the composer to write the kind of music which makes listeners forget their intelligence. At least, I always try to control my intelligence to forget my intelligence when I work on a new piece of music. In fact, I am kinda getting good at it. Now I know how I lose control, or in other words how I can write without thinking.

Rock musicans almost never try to control things in music. Academic composers almost never try to lose their control. Well, why not to balance it? Without intelligence, we cannot even let our brain lose control. The point is where and how to lose control. When drinking, where to stop yourself is important. If you drink too much, then you will have bad morning next day. If you drink less, then your drinking partners would feel you are not fun to drink with. My point of "how to lose control" in music is similar to that. Well, to know how to lose control, you must know yourself really well. I think that's way more important thing for a composer to learn rather than learning counterpoint, because counterpoint is an art of intelligence. Without knowing how to control one's intelligence, learning counterpoint is such a meaningless study.

Journey of Life

2007-08-02T22:20:00.000+09:00

I traveled a few places of the world so far. Hopefully, I can visit my friend in Australia this coming winter. Well, even my 5 years of living in the US could be described as a journey. That kind of serious journey always starts by being alone and ends by being alone.

When I depart my home, I start walking by myself being alone. As I travel around, I meet lots of people and see events. In the middle of the journey, I am almost surrounded by so many things which make my brain sort of numb. In that situation, all I can do is to do my best on each step I walk or day I live.

Even though I meet some great people who could be my life-long friends, when I finish the journey, I always become alone again. Even though I am still connected to those people in some ways, when I come back home and take off shoes, I am alone.

When I start a journey alone, I have lots of hopes. When I end a journey alone, I have lots of memories. I don't say I feel bad when I become alone. I just feel great each time I make a journey.

I think that's a minuature of life. A life always starts alone and ends alone, I think. There are families, yes, that's true, but what I mean here is that it is you who would get through the time to be given a birth or finish your life. Nobody would help you. Each person must become alone when one finishes a journey of life. At least, the person holds lots of memories experienced through the journey.

I somehow think of music in the same way. Music always starts out from silence and ends into silence. The silence makes me think about the feeling when I start and end a journey. Music is a very personal form of art, I think. If someone who listens to my music would feel something personal and cries or gets excited, I feel great...like when I make a journey.

Music Production

2007-07-29T21:31:00.000+09:00

I don't really know much about music production business in the US. In Japan, it's rather simple: 1. making good demo audio clips, 2. bring them to record label companies and making a contract, 3. the record company introduces a music production company to the artist, 4. the production company makes up gigs and projects, 5. the artst follows whatever the production company brings, 6. the artist gets paid from the production company as salary, something like that.

Well, it's how the business happens as MAJOR scene. The point of this system is #2 part. Of course, to bring out a new artist to the major scene costs millions of dollars for the record label and the production companies. Especially, promotion activities cost like hell. So, it's more like a gamble rather than a music project. Simply, for the companies, all they care is whether the artist's music is interesting enough to make enough money. They don't care if the artist's music is artistically creative.

Once a company decides to spend lots of money for the gamble, they must make certain amount of money to make their livings. So, the production company will make the artist obey their policies and styles. This is one reason why major musicians cannot venture after they make a million hit once. The one big hit binds the musicians to keep their style, so they can at least make certain amount of money constantly. There must not be any musicians who creates surprisingly different style of music in their second album, because that kind of venture is too risky for the production companies.

Music project is not a selfish thing. It concerns too many people such as hair designers, photo designers, dress designers, CD pressing companies, lighting staff, music eingineers, mixing engineers, CD jacket writers, promoters...I cannot mention them all. In the center of the big band of people, there is an artist. It's easy to imgine how heavy the responsibility is for the artist...

However, of course there are different ways to make music projects happen. In fact, this stupid system of major scene created lots of problems in music...not only in Japan but pretty much everywhere in the world. The projects only aiming for money making could never be strong enough to message people's hearts and memories. That's why recent major music is just bunch of pieces of craps.

But we, musicians, must not lose the goal of music. Alright, what is the goal of music? To sell lots of money and become famous? To become a figure like an idol and just obeying all business the production companies decide? Well, well, how about the other side? Is it staying in academia and become a professor then keep creating meaningless music which only few weird people listen to? Well, I only say that there should be a goal of music for each musician. I just do have mine.

If you think back to old days, music production was not that complicared or capitalistic. These days, I find quite a few groups of musicians who make music projects happen without relying on big companies...especially production companies. (I'm taling about Japanese indie scene here.) Music production in past 30 years were more like a black box for ordinal listeners. People didn't know how every detail of music production was working. I'm pretty sure even 99% of major artists didn't know how it was working because of music production companies.

Now, no longer big companies are reliable for young musicians. Pressing CDs, wrapping them, accepting orders, shipping every single CD to customers...music production is no longer a thing heppening somewhere we don't know. We can do most of things by ourselves. However, that also means we have to promote ourselves. Lots of connections and money are necessary for promotion...well, that's not ture. There are so many ways to promote music. Well, I don't mean to start talking about my own project plan.

What I wanna say here is that next generation musicians are almost demanded to be producers also. The biggest problem in the major music production system I mentioned above is that the artist and the producer are different people. That's why music productions would become cold-blooded money-making business. If big companies and authorities don't accept your music, then sell your music by yourself. That's almost like the theme for the next generation music production, I think.

Lesser Enemies

2007-07-27T00:48:00.000+09:00

My mother and I had a conversation about my high school today. Of course, it was about my Japanese high school but not American one. My high school used to be an only-male school until the last year I attended there. I had lot of fun in the school. Without that school, I wouldn't be what I am right now.

However, I was not a "normal" student in the school...at least for the teachers of the school. In Japanese culture, the more "normal" you are, the better you are. So, everyone should not dye you hair, should ware uniforms, should look neat, should talk modestly, should respect teachers and elders, and should study hard. Well, I covered pretty much all of those, but I did lots of things they never said "don't do that!" on school rules.

For example, my hair was always natural black, but my hair used to be as long as touching my hips since I was 14 years old. My grades were really high all the time, but I have never attended any kind of activities outside of school, like field trips, orientations, school trips, anything. I always believed that the school is where I am supposed to study but not to have fun, so I refused to attend any kind of "fun" events organized by the school. Lots of teachers hated my attitude towards school trips, because they expected that students should like school trips more than daily classes. Well, I enjoyed normal classes better than having fun as school activities.

Especially because my English grade was extremely high, teachers couldn't blame my attitude. Well, it's not hard to imagine why lots of teachers hated me as a student, is it. I was simply "anti-normal" kind of student. In fact, many teachers understood my attitude and supported me while lots of theachers was trying to force me to be "normal." There are lots of small stories, though after all, I was refused from the school after I graduated.

This means quite serious. For example, if anyone else who would have similar academic background like mine decided to come back to Japan as I did, the one would 99% take contact to the one's high school to schedule "instructer's training" days to obtain the license of teachers. However, I cannot do that now. Yes, it's because there are lots of teachers who hate me. If it was only that, I would just put myself on a fire to get the license, though as I said, there are also many teachers who supported me a lot. If I go back to that school for that training thing, I'm sure those teachers would be blamed by the teachers who hate me. I of course cannot do that. I owe them too much. Not only that, but if I could actually contact to the school again, I would be able to find individual students for English or Music easily. But I cannot do that. I have too many enemies in that school.

My mother said like this: "Your style of life created too many enemies. You should have lived without making that many enemies." Well, I am not "normal." I always understand I am a kind of person who the Japanese society would never welcome. I think too differently from "normal." I act too differently from "normal." I say too differently from "normal." I have been always like that, and I will be alkways like that. Somehow, I made only few enemies in Indiana University, though still some people hated me and my music.

It's been always like that. There were only two kinds of audience for my music, who extremely love my music and who totally hated my music. But that's who I am. I have no intention to change myself. As long as I am who I am, there will always be extreme fans and extreme enemies to my music. There are not many people in the middle. That's how people around me have been always acting since I was small. I was always just being muself. That always created lots of enemies in the society.

I don't take it as "wrong." I cannot get the teacher's license, that only means that I should only focus on becoming a professional musician. I have no way to live easily. I only have a narrow gate to choose. Living a "normal" life, getting married as "normal" person, having children as "normal" person, getting a "normal" job, anything like them happen in my life. I am supposed to be different. I am supposed to live my "original" life but not "normal" one. I have no intention to lessen my future enemies. Whatever. Just whatever. I am who I am. That's all I am.

Events in Music

2007-07-24T23:05:00.000+09:00

In the first time I heard the word "texture" in music study in Indiana University, I felt a huge difference between where I went and came from. Honestly, there is no such concept as "texture" existing in Asian music tradition. It is such a Western way of thinking about music. That was what I used to think, and I still believe that.

Majority of the composition professors I studied with in the past five years mentioned about the weakness in texture in my compositions. However, I have never been able to understand their point, or I still cannot understand it now. In the style of composition following Western musical tradition, it's widely believed that the more complex the texture is the better the composition is. This is one of the points how judges of compesitions understand the applicants' compositions.

Textural complexity means simply how complicated the composer can write counterpoint. So, if the composer never uses repeated notes, that's better than the one using repeated notes frequently. Also, blank measures mean that the composer could not fill them because she/her doesn't have enough technique. Contraly motions is better than parallel motions. Those are just few examples of how academic composers are prejudiced and in other word narrow minded.

From my perspective, I see music as chains of events. I should not use the term "form" because A-B-A doesn't mean anything in my term, "events." Here I use this term not as what happens in music but how the composition progresses on the axis of time. The "events" should shake the listeners' attention, otherwise the happening should not be considered as an "event." For example, if there is a complete blank measure after 5 minutes of consecutive 16th notes, that is an event because such a measure changes the meanings of the previous 5 minutes and also the following music. This is one of the points Western people can never understand the concept of "Ma," the space in Japanese.

As I said, I write music as chains of events. The most important point in my music is how I deal with the attentions of listeners. I usually don't spend long time on writing better melody, or better harmony, or better rhythm, or better form, or better texture, because I believe repetition of great fragment of melody, harmony, rhythm, form, or texture makes the fragment sound bad for listeners. What I am saying here is simply that the most important point is how to "compose" the above facters of music. This is why I often refer cooking as an analogy of music composition. In cooking, the most important point is how to cook the natural materials, but not how to grow better vegitables. In this way of thinking, you no longer have to worry about types of ensembles or genres. For rock band or triple-wind full orchestra, you can express your music.

If I use the example I mentioned above, I write lots of blank measures and rests in my compositions, which are considered as "technically inferior" from the perspectives of competition judges. However, the blank measures I write almost always mean strong in terms of "event." How it works is as I explained above, the blank measures changes the meanings of music before and after the blank measures. Now, I must be honest. I say this: I have never met a composer who could understand the meanings of my blank measures only by looking at my scores. No wonder I have never won any award. Even Sandström said "it is impossible to understand how your music sound only by looking at your score!"

Almost all great composers in music history were in fact doing the same as I am doing now. Ars Nova composers, J.S. Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, I cannot mention all names here. They were all dealing with "events" in their compositions. In music schools, their attepts are only explained as "breaking traditions." I don't understand their compositions as I have been taught. If I had been them, I would have thought it as this way: to play with the attentions of listeners, relying on the frame of tradition was just an easy method. Simply by deceiving the expectations of the tradition, the great composers could give "events" they wrote in their compositions meanings to their contemporary listeners.

I am a composer but not a theorist or musicologist, so I have never claimed this point in academia. I can easily see that the professors in my school would deny my point except for Sandström. I can easily imagine that 99% of world's competition judges would deny my point. Why? It's so simple. If they accept my point, their compositions which they proud of would become pieces of craps. Even though their compositions are considered as pieces of craps by majority of music listeners in present society, they need some kinda meaningless theory to justify their narrow minded philosophy in composition.

Of course, I understand them. That is why I said good-bye to academia after I learned lots of things in music. As I said, I am not a critics but a musician, so I only express my philosophy of music in my own compositions. I am on my way to offer my music to general audiences in the present society now, so frankly I do not care what academic people believe. Maybe they take at least a few decades to realize my point in "events" of music composition from now, though I just express it in my music right now. I simply could not wait for those narrow minded academic people to realize their viewpoint of understanding musical texture was wrong. They are looking for a way to "break their traditions" by studying Asian music or other styles of music. I can give them an answer they want right now, but I don't do it. I am not their teacher.

A wound road

2007-06-21T22:08:00.000+09:00

Nothing should go with no problem in my life. If everything would go fine all the time, I would probably lose my ability of composing original music. For example, I can tell that I would have been a horrible composer if I would have graduated highschool and college without any extra year. Also, I can tell I would have been a really bad composer if I have won lots of competitions when I was in school.

I have been seeing lots of my clleague student composers who had already won lots of glories and had been promised to be successful in academic music scene. I knew I would have never been able to win any award with my original music, even though my music had got the biggest applause and bravo in a student recital. I knew my music would never be accepted by such people like judges of academic music competitions. If they accepted my music, that means they gave up what they believed in music. I was simply saying too much original. In other words, I was too much outlaw. In other words, I was too much different and unique from what normal people could imagine.

I respected my clleagues who could be good students. I respected my colleagues who could become good "horrible" composers. I really do, because I cannot do that. The god knows who we are. I was only given one ability, which is to be original. I do not have an ability to be a good "bad" as the society expects to everybody. The society doesn't expect perfect. In reality, the society hates perfect person. For example, the society loves such good "bad" talents like an anbelievably beautiful lady who is horrible in human relationships. I am not that kind of person.

I have raised a project to start a totally breaking-wall style rock band in Osaka, Japan. I have been thinking about this project for several years. I have enough reasons to explain why I chose the city, why I chose all the member, why I chose the medium, anything about the project. However, I already know that not everything will go as I planned. Some people will surely deny my project and music. Some colleagues possibly will just quit my project with some selfish reasons. I know it will be a wound road, but not a simple, wide, easy road.

Well, I simply will never give it up. However difficult the road in fron of me is, I simply keep walking the road. I don't care if we must slow down or even once in a while stop in the middle of the way. I simply will never give it up. At least until I die, I don't give up reaching to my goal. The goal is an impossible one to be completely accomplished in one human life. However, I want my whole life to keep aiming for that. Even though I end up alone to keep going, still I will never give it up. If I get in a situation to give up my goal, I'd rather end my life.

I gave up lots of things already for my project. I can no longer look back. All I can do is keep looking forward and keep walking my own way.

Decisions in Life

2007-05-29T15:29:00.000+09:00

Yeah, nobody's really interested in who I am, but what I say here might interest some people in this world. So, I skip my introduction and simply start writing what I usually write in my Japanese blog, Ongaku no Uraguchi.

Life is full of small decisions. I think there isn't really "wrong" decision...which I believe the same in music composition. To decide to use C instead of C# is not really "wrong." However, I believe there are so meany cases where taking C instead of C# is "good." (here...I ain't say "better.") Deciding one note to be C and C# each has a point. Those decisions are simply "different," but nothing is "better" or "worse." It's just like judging people's personality. Everyone is just different, but nobody is better than the others. There are good people and bad people, but there is no "better" people. This is one reason why I hate competitions.

Alright, so, what is good? What is bad? Well, I think it is completely depending who you are to say "yeah, that's good." If your tongue experiences a sensation, then that means you felt something good. If your tongue felt nasty to a certain food which everybody else in this world describes as tasty, then that means the food is bad for you.

Well, well, it's quite simple. To live a good life? All you have to do is taste each situation and make a "good" decision. Yes, it is really simple, but it is not easy at all. You live in academia, and you like your current situation, but you do know that kinda easy-going situation will not last for ever. You must decide to get outta there sometime in the future...but when? Just because everybody else believes you are supposed to have at least master degree, you gonna stay there longer? Is that really "good" decision for youself?

If you cannot decide, then you should do whatever. It sounds like you don't have your own tongue to tell the food is tasty or nasty. That kinda person should not become a composer or musician, I think. I don't say that's bad, but musician is a responsible job because we create music and have people hear it. It's not a self-satisfactory kind of job like researcher or academic composer/professor. Now, again I say I don't say researcher is a bad job. It's just different from musician. And now you see, academic composer is also different from musician.

To decide if you use C or C# in one phrase makes your music good or bad. If you cannot tell either one tastes good and the other tastes bad, then you should not become a professional composer. It really is a special skill. Well, so how can you develope your own taste? Some might ask me. Then I'd say, go over the sea and see the world. As I said, it's same as each small decisions in your life. When you face one, you must decide either. You cannot really postpone the decision making. Everyone unconsciously does it everyday, every hour, even every minute. Then depending on what you decided so far in your life, your current life might be exciting or depressing.

Being a good person, that's all. Yeah, right, that's super easy to be said but extremely difficult to do. Study of composition is really to develope your own personality, meaning trying to be a good person. It's not learning how to make cool dissonance or how to write a sonata or how to use a quotation or those stupid stuff. If you hit a wall in composition, go over the sea and see the world, I'd say. Well, that's what I've experienced. I'll never stop learning, though I at least know how to learn. I don't mean to teach people by writing this article here, but I just simply never stop going on my way. I keep making good decisions for my tongue. I never even try to make "right" decisions because my life is my own but not the others' That's how I write my original music.

Keep my English

2007-05-23T23:21:00.000+09:00

Alright, my American friends all used to say they wish they could read my Japanese blog. Some told me to start an English blog like this one. Well, here it is. Having finished 5 years of study in Bachelor of Music in Composition at Indiana University, Bloomington, I finally came back to my hometown, Osaka, Japan. It's only been two weeks since I came back here. At last I came over jet lug and adjusted to live with family after 5 years of living alone. Today, I start this blog in order to keep my English skill.

I have no idea how many people would enjoy my writing here, though I would first little by little write about myself. My name is Mutsuhito Ogino, a native in Osaka, Japan. My close friends know me as funny, traditional kind of Osaka guy, though most of people see me as extremely serious stronghead. Both characters are me, but probably the most simple words to describe me are "chef of sound." I always try to be like that.

Yes, I am a composer. People always ask me what kind of composer I am. Well, I do write anything. I write orchestral music, chamber music, electronic music, sound track, or even rock stuff. Whatever called "music" is my field of writing. There are a few sites to know my music. I finish today's article by introducing them.

THENEWSTYLE.ORG
Myspace.com
Download.com
MUZIE(Japanese)