My new album "Deep Blue and Orange Hours" is now available for Mp3 download in my internet store and streaming from various major sites. Although the music is created in a different way from the previous album "Manipulated Dreams", the soundtrack album for the movie "Dream Manipulator MUGEN", I think I have created a sentimental, nostalgic, and poetic music that brings to mind a poetic view. I am happy and proud of it. I hope that many people would enjoy it. Background The goal of this album is always "music that can invite the listener to an inner voyage",  but I had a few other ideas behind the album. Idea 1 "Layering Sound" First of all, I had a series called "Imaginary Journey" that was on youtube in 2020. ↓↓. This was a series I was working on confinement period in France, creating improvised ensembles by layering my own sounds on the PC. I was having a lot of fun discovering and improving, but I wanted to revisit and dev...

Background I made this soundtrack back in 2006, right around the time I was making arrangements to move to Paris.... I was also a member of the music team for the creation of "Mnemosne" (I forget the exact title...), a collaboration with Theatre Galassi, just before Ku Na'uka joined SPAC. As part of the promotion of the omnibus film "Ten Nights of Dreams" which was distributed by a major film company at the time, I was asked to create soundtracks for the "First Night" in the omnibus film "Ten Nights of Dreams: Pirate Edition"  which was by independent film directors as a counterpart to the major one. I had been a fan of Soseki Natsume's works since before this request, and had been thinking "I'd like to create music for this someday...", so it was a nice situation for me. To be honest, I don't know if the film itself was a success or not, and information about the independent version is almost nonexistent nowadays.  Rega...

Since the end of last year, I have been practicing with a Brazilian percussionist, Brenda Ohana, and we have started to think of having a concert... and shooting this video was a part of it. She is Brazilian and I am Japanese. The common thing between us is " we were not born and raised in the country where jazz originated " and " we did not start playing music because of being fascinated by jazz ". By the way, we both are rock fans.  That is to say, we are complete strangers about  "tradition" of Jazz because of our musical roots and back born .  But I don't think this is a negative thing in the culture of jazz. Because the reason we are still  fascinated by jazz and it is an art  that has the dynamism to take what these "outsiders" do and turn them into a creative power generator, I think.  What should we do as "outsiders"?  This is one of the themes that both Brenda and I have had since before we started playing together. My thou...

 After I wrote this title, I reminded it was Bill EVANS wrote this tune....  The thing motivated me for practicing contrabass... I played Japanese songs and my own compositions as solo work for Youtube videos, but there are many other melodies that I  like ... One of my motivations for practicing the double bass was to play my favorite melodies  from around the world on this instrument .... As a first step, I played this tune. I like the overall sound and atmosphere of this tune, but at the same time, the harmony or mode or "progression" of this tune is very well done...one of the model tune for me. It is not like "So What" or Coltrane's "Impressions" where there is a simple and clear changement between A and B in the AABA form. When we think of this tune in units of 4 bars, we can see that there are small changement in each 2 bars. (It's a 10-measure tune, so there are two bars extras...) There is only one note changement (a tonal point of view). ...

This month has been full of joyful. It started with Japanese "Troubadour Rocker" Tsuji, followed by abstract music concerts in Hamburg and Berlin. A French alternative folk-rock recording soon after my return. And finally Brazilian music. Brazilian music now. I met Toninho, the leader of this Brazilian music project, last summer when we played together in a private session. He said the form of my home-made electro-acoustic upright bass that I was using at that time make him remind their traditional instrument "RABECA" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabeca In this picture, It is played like a violin, but in reality, some people position it like a cello or a double bass). Using my instrument as a bigger and lower range version of the RABECA....I heard this is the Idea for calling me for this project. Toninho is a musician who has been working in Paris for a long time. He was the accompanist for a singer "Moustaki" who was the first music director(?) of a ...

 A few months ago, Andrew, an theremin player of impro-music from Hamburg, sent me a message: "I was asking my friend Kriton for musicians that might enjoy experimenting with me on my upcoming trip to Paris................ would be happy to meet you, possibly even play together if you are interested "  I wondered if I had ever played with someone from Berlin...? But then I remembered that the musician who played Daxophone. We played together a few years ago. It remind also that we had a great time.... Andrew told me that my name is on the Daxophonist Kriton's "list of people to see in Paris".  It is my pleasure :) . I watched a video of Andrew's performance, and I was very interested in his calm style with lot of space, which is the opposite of the high-tension, high-density style which is very popular in this kind of genre. Even if we can't play too loud, I prefer to play at a private home rather than in a studio rented by the hour, because we can have ...

This is the 2nd video of " Electro-Acoustic Upright Bass Jam" . I always like to create drum patterns even if it is without any purpose. And in this video series, I would like to explore something musically while jamming.... Recently, I'm wondering if I could to create rhythms with different sounds instead of using  drum kit sounds..., so I took a pattern that was originally created with normal drum kit sounds and changed it to some kind of ethnic instrument kit sound. And it sounded like a " World Beat " I like it and I took it. I feel this kind of mood was by rock musicians in the 80's as there experiment work but I think it could be interesting if we retake them as one of  contexts of jazz.... I'd love to push this feeling a bit further. On the technical side...  I tried to create the "main riff" also works as the "theme" of this tune. So the bass riff can also work  as the main motif. ( I'll define the word " Riff " ...

Outline In this January, I suddenly had an idea to listen to this prototype music that is kept on my hard disk and found it quite interesting. So I thought I might release it some where... but first of all, it was just a sketch of an idea, so the editing was not good enough. So I decided to re-edit it and make a new version. As the DAW I was using at the time was different, so I started by salvaging the Wav and Midi files of each track from old DAW. The sounds of rhythm tracks in Midi and audio effects were made in the current DAW, and the mix, panning and overall composition of the song were also reviewed.I didn't add any new recordings or anything like that, rather just reorganized the music. Idea I remember that I was trying to make for this piece is combining the overtone swells appear by over dubbed double bass sound and rhythms or pulses that do not fill up the space too much. For " Les Blancs 1 " with a rhythm that has space, and for " Les Blancs2 " with ...

I finally uploaded the 5th work of RockOut!! series.  I was raised in the end of vinyl generation. This is the reason why I still think like for vinyl album for the order of the tunes. There are two sides as Side A and Side B, 4-5 tunes on each side....   Even if I finished to write this tune in January 2021, I thought this tune is for 5th, last one on Side A, So I've left this peace and I made another tune for 4th place.  The first goal for this project is making 10 tunes, now this is in the middle with last tune for Side A. Now I've started to thinking which type of tune will be the 1st of Side B?  The first version of this tune, this one didn't have introduction like this. It entered directly to main riff. I modified this introduction in imaging Duo style of vocal and guitar that is popular way in the Rock music. But the problem was "HOW ...?"  So I changed direction little bit and I tried to write something like a counterpoint of Baroque music. I th...

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  I wrote this tune for a picture in a exhibition in 2010. For the picture reminiscent of a port town. First of all, this tune was for duo with sax so the theme was played by sax. In this time I played solo version. I tried to making not only a groove with a percussive sound but also melodic solo. I think if I can make both of these things at the same time, this will open some new expression for contrabass. I got inspiration from not only "slap" of electric bass and Rockabilly thing. But also "ghost notes" of percussions. One of the points is the "unification of the difference in timbre" by the difference in the direction of vibration of the strings. I mixed some pizzicato technique like "standard" way and "slap" way, also I used thumb. For using thumb i did not slap like electric bass's because of timbre. I feel thumb "slap" makes "attack" but not "full body" sound. So this time I moved my thumb horizo...

This is the very first experiment of my new sampler with PureData.  This patch has 3 tracks and reverbs for each track and direct signal from instrument. I am making this PureData patch for my new project but it is for standard laptop that is fast enough even if it is old... ( In fact, Laptop made in 2010 with Core i5 2.53Ghz and 4GB memory works always without problem by using linux os and puredata ) I didn't know if this touchpad PC ( Fujitsu arrows tab q506/me, Os : Linux Mint) in this video is enough fast for this patch. So I tried to know how it works. If it works I that will be nice for the concert for my new project because of its portability. I see when I used only 1 track, it works very nice. But with 3 all tracks, it makes digital click noise when i hit some button on the patch. I know from my experience, this is because of lack of PC resource ... So this set up is for single track sampler with reverbs. It is already good enough for simple set. This is simple diagram for ...