#also a lot of italian-ish pieces and italian compositors

[myplaylists-angeli]

yes, I will be doing two playlists for Stage in Playful Land like I did for Glorious Masquerade (a pop and a classical). yes, I'll include some Pinocchio songs from the movie and this suite by a actually modern compositor that I didn't knew existed. yes, there will be a "In the Hall of the Mountain King" for the "shit is about to go down" felling

[nikifoorov]

“Yuri!!! on ICE” Comments on Music by Music Production Team!

TV anime “Yuri!!! on ICE” is enhancing its wonderfulness with many pieces of music. We have interviewed music producer Keisuke Tominaga (PIANO), compositor Taro Umebayashi and Taku Matsushiba to hear about their music’s attractiveness and secret stories of producing them. We are now introducing some comments which could not be on PASH! for January on PASH! PLUS! Let’s start the first half! 

Keisuke Tominaga Born in 1978, place of birth is Yokohama. Music producer. Graduated from photography course, Nihon University College of art. After retiring music production GRANDFUNK, established PIANO inc. in 2012. Representative director. Interested in sea fishing. Principal products are TV anime series “Terror in Resonance”, “Space☆Dandy” and “Kids on the Slope”.

Taro Umebayashi Born in 1980, place of birth is Tokyo. Songwriter and music compositor. Graduated from Faculty of Music, Tokyo University of the Arts and studied songwriting and orchestral music. Released 1st album “greeting for the sleeping seeds” from Rallye Lable as an artist [milk].

Taku Matsushiba Born in 1991, place of birth is Osaka. Songwriter and musician. After graduating from The Music High School Attached to the Faculty of Music, Tokyo University of the Arts, studied at Faculty of Music, Tokyo University of the Arts and completed master’s course of songwriting. Mainly analyzing and performing contemporary music, but widely committing to such as orchestration and commercial music by using his conduction skill.

･Victor Nikiforov FS “Aria <Hanarezu ni Soba ni Ite>” (3:41) Conducted by Taku Matsushiba, Ensemble FOVE (Tenor: Kazuma Kudo)

Q.What is ‘Ensemble FOVE’, which is precipitating in many pieces of music?

Ensemble FOVE is an up-and-coming ensemble by one of the most outstanding musicians of classics and contemporary music. We have asked them to perform some pieces of music which even are not credited in “Yuri!!! on Ice” (for example, orchestra part of “History Maker” is one of them). I think the most impressive parts of “Aria <Hanarezu ni Soba ni Ite>” are solo part of cor anglais by Kanami Araki and performance of harp by Rino Kageyama. Adding to that, upsurge of tutti in the middle part of the music might be one of the most attractive parts in this ensemble. (Matsushiba)

The wonderfulness of group composition in Ensemble FOVE can be seen in credits of soundtrack “Oh! Suketora!!!”. This classical song we made was recorded in big studio with conduction of Mr. Matsushiba with full orchestra to make it sound like real concert. We had to take a risk of not being able to retake the individual parts, but we could record the resonance and ambience of instruments, so I think the music became rich in sound. This music became such a good product by the work of Mr. Hiroaki Sato, who was the recording engineer for all the pieces of music. We have talked to make this piece of music ‘as if you are listening at special seats in concert hall’, so we used wide dynamic ranges of sounds.

Yuri Katsuki SP “Ai ni Tsuite ~Eros~” (2:16) Taku Matsushiba featuring Jin Oki

Q.Tell us the episode about making 2 different arranged pieces of music, “Ai ni Tsuite ~Eros~” and “Ai ni Tsuite ~Agape~”.

I first finished demo tape for “Ai ni Tsuite ~Agape~”, which was the part Mr. Umebayashi in charge of, and I listened to its melody part to make the arrangement version of “Ai ni Tsuite ~Eros~” with Mr. Matsushiba.

In “Ai ni Tsuite ~Eros~”, we featured interplay and descarga (*plays in ad lib). To make this happen, I thought putting musicians together and recording at same time will make a hot and powerful music. Since I decided this at primary stage, the recording was in form. However, we couldn’t get agreement from producer Yamamoto. I think the reason was ‘the music was too powerful’ or something. First, I was worried to rearrange the music, but by listening to it again made me to feel that the tempo was too thrilling and it was ‘passive’ rather than ‘erotic’. So I slowed down the tempo and showed the music to Mr. Yamamoto, this time he has agreed to the arrangement. By re-recording the music with slower tempo, I could feel the plays between the sounds and palma of flamenco. This made the music really erotic. But even slowing it down will make the eroticism to be old age (laugh), so we stopped slowing down just before that to be able to feel the youngness and passion of Yuri.

Yuri Katsuki FS “Yuri on ICE” (3:42) Taro Umebayashi

From the characteristic of Yuri made by producer Yamamoto and Ms. Kubo Mitsurō, and examining the meaning of a line ‘I will call this feeling love’, I talked with Mr. Umebayashi to adjust the image of Yuri that “so many memories of ‘love’ came and went through in his life”. The sounds of piano circles around to develop the emotion of going through in his memory, the rhythm carries the atmosphere, and suddenly it breaks (*the music stops) in the middle part. The climax gains the groove and the hot emotion melts and flows towards finale.

The melody and phrases which Mr. Umebayashi came up with were great. When I was working on pre-pro (*some work to be done before recording) with an image of Yuri sliding on the ice with its rhythm, there were some moments that I strangely, but naturally, felt like I made this song. By the way, in episode4, there is a scene when Yuri was listening to demo music which his friend made, but actually the music played at that scene is the 1stdemo we made. You can see that the code progression and rhythm were fairly completed at that time.

Yuri Plisetsky SP “Ai ni Tsuite ~Agape~” (2:20) Taro Umebayashi

After I finished making the melody part, I wrote the lyric in Japanese and sent it to Mr. Tokuya Miyagi (professor in Waseda University) to translate it into Latin. However, this work was extremely difficult. I was ignorant about Latin so I asked help to Mr. Matsushiba and visited Waseda University for several times, but it turned out that Latin was a language which we had to stick to its accent, which meant to us that we had to change the melody part of the music to make it sense. Then, the music team asked us that they have to consult the score division and the way of putting the word correctly to someone who has great knowledge of Latin. So, we visited Mr. Hidehiko Hinohara, who is a former teacher of Mr. Matsushiba and a songwriter with great knowledge of Italian. We asked him to correct the lines in both accent and musical ways, and went back to Waseda University to get re-checked with its lyric. We had to do this for several times to finish the work. Mr. Matsushiba helped me a lot during the progress, but when we were eating lunch at Waseda University after the meeting, he started to regret himself that ‘I can’t call myself a songwriter without knowing Latin!’ so I calmed him down by saying ‘I-I think you were doing great’ (laugh).

Yuri Plisetsky FS “”Piano concerto in B minor: Allegro Appassionato” (3:47) Conducted by Taku Matsushiba, Ensemble FOVE (Piano: Kaoru Jitsukawa)

The performances of Mr. Matsushiba’s conduction, Mr. Kaoru’s elegant piano, Ensemble FOVE’s strings, brass, wooden pipe and percussion were soulful and wonderful. I could tell that the members of Ensemble FOVE are really in high level, which they were playing Mr. Matsushiba’s difficult scores very easily. I personally recorded this type of classical music with live performance for the first time. And its newly written score… this isn’t a normal thing to happen. I was really excited when I was editing this music to the scene of Yurio’s skating (episode 9 & 12).

Kenjirō Minami FS “Minami’s Boogie” (3:32) Taro Umebayashi

The songwrite and electric guitar is by Mr. Umebayashi himself. Brass-arrange was done by Yoichi Murata, who is well known with ‘SOLID BRASS’ and a representative trombonist in Japan. The music became really entertaining but powerful and explicit with perfect brass-arrange.

I was glad to see the high-spirited choreography with a performance of air guitar by choreographer Kenji Miyamoto.

I went to watch the “Christmas on Ice” to study figure skating, but it was my first time of watching an ice show, so I tried hard to get tickets. I logged in to the ticket page really fast, but tickets were sold out immediately. I was surprised by the popularity of figure skate, and when I was about to giving up, producer Yamamoto told me ‘I got a ticket from my friend’ and he gave me the ticket. I thought Mr. Yamamoto was a great person at that moment.

Phichit Chulanont SP “’Shall We Skate?’ from a movie Osama to Skater (The King and the Skater)” (2:15) Taku Matsushiba featuring The Soulmatics

The main vocal and chorus were done by a gospel group The Soulmatics. They well knew the sound images of Broadway, Disney, “glee” and more, so they grasp the point of what we were wanting. Also, some of the members were trained at New York, which made the recording to be done without hesitation. When we were recoding the background chatter, they casted themselves as the King, vassals, gatekeeper, town girl, drunker and more to make the atmosphere of the session, which was really fun.

The sounds hear like a live performance, but most of the sounds were made by sampling and step recording. This is done by Plus-tech Squeeze Box, alias Tomonori Hayashibe, who has nicknamed ‘the magician of sampling’. He is a genius of making any sounds with computer programs, and Disney-ish, musical-ish, cartoon-ish music are his fields of expertise. He exhibited his full power to this piece of music. Some other music, even non-programed music are arranged by Mr. Hayashibe in “Yuri!!! on ICE”. This is about an another anime, but the 17thepisode in “Space☆Dandy”(Produced by Shinichiro Watanabe) is all about musical and all the music are made by Mr. Umebayashi and Mr. Hayashibe. This episode is well-made and really laughable, so if you are interested, please watch it.

Phichit Chulanont FS “’Terra Incognita’ from a movie Osama to Skater 2 (The King and the Skater 2)” (3:41) Taku Matsushiba featuring U-zhaan

This is a hybrid world music which is a mixture of BBflute, bansuri, tabla and sitar in live performance, bagpipes, electric guitar, synthesizer, step recording and Bulgarian-ish chorus. I personally love this music because the balance of groove went perfect, without being chaotic atmosphere. ‘Bansuri’ is an Indian instrument which has a similar sound to Shakuhachi (Japanese banboo flute) and it was performed by Junichiro Taku who performed flute sound in the music of “Yuri!!! on ICE”. He has the power to express the scene with his performance, so recording with him was really fun. I cooperated with Mr. Taku in some other animations such as “Terror in Resonance” which I made the background music with Yoko Kanno (further comments about this are below). ‘Tabla’ was performed by U-Zhaan and ‘sitar’ was performed by Daikichi Yoshida. They are both top players in Japan. Some other pieces of music, such as music used in trailers are made with cooperation of U-zhaan with his great performance.

Q.What are the meaning and language used in this music as lyrics?

I imaged an archaism of which used in an imperial ruled country in ancient Asia, but to be honest, it means nothing. I first finished with melody and chose some words which enhance the melody. This way of choosing words were like vocalizing (* way of singing with vowels but without lyrics). I chose these words with Mr. Matsushiba while vocalist Tomoko Koda was recording. These techniques are influenced by Yoko Kanno when we were working together. Way of breathing, directing, producing, strength and weakness and all the other things needed for making music are taught by her.

Guang-Hong Ji SP “La Parfum de Fleurs” (2:05) Conducted by Taku Matsushiba, Ensemble FOVE

Ami Ito (Ensemble FOVE) is performing the solo part with violin, but the way of performing is like a Chinese fiddle, to be concentrated on vibrato. The first impression of this music might be an easy-listening and beautiful, but in reality, this is a curious music but has romantic atmosphere. I really love this. (Matsushiba)

Guang-Hong Ji FS “’The Inferno’ from a movie Shanghai Blade” (3:43) Taku Matsushiba

The orchestra part of this music was done by Ensemble FOVE and other beat arrangement and SE/ME works were done by beat arranger Nozomu Yoneda. First half of the part is in six-eight time and it changes to quadruple time after the car chasing. It was especially hard to make the atmosphere of speeding with six-eight time, but it succeeded with a help of Mr. Yoneda. The wonderful performance of sax was done by Kohei Ueno with a scene of “abduction and confinement”. Actually, it’s hard to discover, but the sound effect of running car is used in the music (laugh).

The order was to make the music sound like ‘Chinese mafia’, so I was peering the poster of a movie “Infernal Affairs” and fantasized its sound tracks while making the music (but actually, I haven’t watched it yet). The sound of sax by Mr. Ueno is rude and erotic. I think I was keep saying ‘more erotic!’ for all the time while I was making music.

+ FIRST HALF +