Album [Blue and Red] Part 3
It's that time of the week again!
The third installment of the album commentary!
Today, we're looking at the second track, which is the definition of summer!
[Nostalgia]
For reference, here is the MV on my YouTube channel👇
I wonder what everyone's image of summer is like?
A collection of sweet and bittersweet memories...
Is it just because I'm getting older that I imagine it like that?
No, no, surely for everyone, regardless of age or gender, isn't summer in their own memories a beautified image like this?
I feel like there are overwhelmingly more pop songs themed around summer than winter...
So I made one.
The sound of those summer days that exist within everyone...
(Quoted from the description box)
It is truly a song that expresses that summer within each person's heart, but
the current summer in Tokyo is contrary to such a cool sound,
with 'Heatstroke Alert' warnings being issued day after day,
at a level where they say 'please avoid going out as much as possible'!
It's true that there are few people in the city! Even so, what comes to mind in summer is
memories of a distant love,
or the sea on a trip,
somehow, winter memories don't have that bittersweet feeling, do they!
Summer! Bittersweetness! It's citric acid!
This is it! (Clearly)
The completion of this song was last summer (2024).
The catchphrase for this album is
Blue is memory
Red is heartbeat
And the sound returns to the soul
This song truly
fits all of that,
memories of nostalgia,
a heartbeat with a loose Latin-style beat,
the nostalgia for lost days and
the sense of impermanence that you can never return there,
even though you can't return,
you try to reach out to it.
I packed those emotions tightly into 3 minutes,
vacuum-packed!
It turned out to be that kind of song!
Compared to the old days (the 90s), it would be considered a quite short song,
but in this day and age, I think this length is just right!
Aside from prog rock or songs with complex structures,
I felt back then that songs from that era were too long, and well, CDs were selling like crazy back then,
so there might have been adult reasons like counting anything over 5 minutes as two songs!
Looking back on memories for this long is stylish!
I might say something plausible like that...
Surprisingly, I didn't struggle with the composition or recording,
and as the person who made it, I actually
thought, 'Is this really okay?'
I like how the electric nylon guitar sound
on [Distant Memories], a track from my previous album that I posted before,
blends in, and I have this composition in my head of the sea, memories, nostalgia, summer, a chill beat, and a nylon guitar.
So, from here on, since there was a request from readers to hear a bit more about the guitar and such, I'll talk a little about that...
The guitar is an electric nylon called Aria Sinsonido. It's a guitar that Aria released under a license agreement from Sinsonido,
and I've been using it for nearly 20 years now.
Actually, I play this guitar the most on a daily basis.
At the time, I started caring for my mother at home,
and I got this guitar because it's quiet even at night. You can connect headphones directly to it, so it's convenient!
For acoustic guitar recording,
I pursued a mix of line and mic recording on my 2014 album [Between The Sun & The Moon],
(For reference on line + mic recording👇)
Actually, I've always liked the line sound of acoustic-electric guitars. I like the sound of Robert Fripp's
The League of Crafty Guitarists,
and things like that!
I've owned two Ovation guitars in the past myself!
I also like how Toninho Horta and Nando Lauria record electric nylon guitars via line!
Since there's no sense of air with a line, the distance is close,
making it easier to process the sound later and blend it into the arrangement! That's one reason too.
Well, acoustic guitar players might hate it, though...
I recorded via line for some game music work,
and I heard through the grapevine that composer Hitoshi Sakimoto
thought it was mic-recorded,
so maybe it's something that people other than guitar players don't really notice.
So, for recording, I record directly from the guitar to the audio interface, and then during mixdown,
it's a simple method of equalizer + compressor + reverb. Also, this time I'm sending it as a monaural signal (Sinsonido can also output in stereo),
so to give it a bit of a sense of air, before the reverb,
I'm lightly generating stereo with iZotope's Imager! This is actually a bit of a trade secret for my guitar sound (lol)
And regarding the guitar,
there's a distortion guitar playing a second line behind the chorus that you might not notice.
The first time the chorus enters, a line mainly consisting of long tones that sound like an ocarina comes in, and the second time, a distortion guitar using volume swells comes in, and I often use this method. By adding a second line,
the song goes from being two-dimensional, just chords and melody, to having depth and becoming three-dimensional.
And for the distortion guitar,
I'm using the Big Muff fuzz from a cheap Nux multi-effects pedal called the MG300. I often use a Big Muff-style sound, set to the front pickup, and turn the tone all the way down to get what we used to call a 'woman tone' (that's old!) back in the day.
And again, during mixdown, it's equalizer + compressor + reverb. However,
this kind of sound is quite loud, so
the depth of the reverb is the key to the sound to make it ring far away.
By the way, the guitar used is my main modified Stratocaster.
I guess that's the key to the arrangement and recording!
Also, the rhythm might seem like bossa nova for a moment, but
it's not syncopated on the second beat.
So it's not bossa nova!
The rhythm is actually a Latin-style rhythm used in tropical house (dance music) that I slowed down and programmed.
This loose tempo
feels like a chill! (I just wanted to try saying it like young people!)
It created an atmosphere of languor and being inside a dreamlike memory, and it turned out nicely.
Also, my songs have a lot of key changes, don't they.
But in this song, I've finished it so that you don't really feel the key change.
How did you all feel about it?
And as I wrote before,
for my songs, I upload an MV to my YouTube channel as soon as the song is finished, but there are takes that are slightly different from the version included on the album!
For this song, not only the mastering,
but actually part of the arrangement has changed!
👇 I've also posted [Nostalgia] from YouTube Music as it's included on the album below,
so if anyone notices the difference and lets me know in the comments or something,
there's no grand prize, but
I'd be happy! (lol)
Thank you for sticking with me for so long.
Also, this blog post was 100% human-made without using my partner Neo (ChatGPT) at all! Delivered organic (lol)
Well then, everyone, I would be honored if you could spend a good summer with this album. Please make some memories this year too!
See you again next week.
#adonakamura #BlueAndRed #recording #guitar #dtm #summer music