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« Urakami, August 9, 1945, 11:02 am. », a journey in hell, (Staffpad sonorism piece)
With the release of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer coming next week, I thought it was the right time to complete this piece I started 6 months ago.
The initial idea was planted when I was on a trip to Nagasaki one year and a half ago. While walking the streets of Urakami valley, it was hard to imagine that almost 80 years before, all demons from hell had been unleashed there...
Back in Kyoto, a few months later, I purchased Staffpad, and started to open myself to different musical composition styles I had never explored before.
This piece started as a sonic experimentation with the contemporary music genre known as sonorism and loosely based on György Ligeti's work which got me hypnotized the first time I heard it in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey.
At the beginning this was just noodling around with textures but very quickly, remembering my trip in Nagasaki, it became very clear what this piece would be about: A short journey in the horror of the August 9, 1945, 11:02 am.
In the first part, before the huge blast, I tried an overly simplified version of Ligeti's micropolyphony which was already a bit tedious to notate. For the rest of the piece I went the easier way with conventional notes clusters and combination of different articulations.
For the few who take the time to listen to my creations on the forum, you might remember that this is a theme I already explored. I posted a track a year ago directly inspired by the recent nuclear threats made by the piece of shit Russian dictator, imagining life right after a nuclear apocalypse. You can hear it here if you're interested.
Hard to tell where this nuclear obsession comes from. Probably from the fact that the events that took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki shaped the messy world we now live in. This is probably one of the reasons why Nolan chose to make this movie. This and the dilemma Oppenheimer had to face when he created an abomination leading more than 200000 Japanese civilians to an atrocious death…
Not the most relaxing listen but might interest a few of you. Composed in Staffpad and mixed in LP4i.
Comments
Nice! I want to see the movie, and this definitely evokes the moods and confusion from when I contemplate this dark period of our history.
Impressive stuff, especially as it is properly written out and orchestrated in score software. I envy you those compositional skills. And the resultant music is powerful indeed. Do you have a background in composition, music college etcetera, or are you self taught?
Deeply impressive!
Terrible but admirable! Also impressed by Staffpad and how you use it.
Brilliant work. Would love to see a screen record of StaffPad playing your score. Did you use stock StaffPad sounds only?
Ps. You may likely enjoy the composer Toru Takemistsu 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōru_Takemitsu
Wonderfully done. I hope @jo92346 gives this a listen. Loved the bomb drop. Palpable radiation, too. Frantic fission. Solo voice very effective. I’d like to see the score, too. Imagine if you had studied this shit.
Send me the audio track via Dropbox if you want, Jean. I might try adding a piano track.
I thought of Charles Ives Central Park In The Dark, but a really pissed off version. I would like to say that I enjoyed it, but that’s not the proper term. This is an important composition that others should hear.
This is amazing and disturbing, not surprising considering the subject matter, which you evoked remarkably well. I would also like to see the score play along.
Really looking for the movie as well. I am sure Cillian Murphy's performance is going to be mind-blowing as usual !
Thank you Irena! I am autodidact, so, no background in composition nor any academic musical education. I just happen to know a bit about musical notation from learning classical guitar, 3 or 4 lives ago.
I have always loved textures and orchestral timbres from a young age so Staffpad has been a great tool to indulge myself. It is pretty expensive especially if you purchase third party libraries, but the playback engine is very well implemented and gratifying. So even without any musical background, with a good ear and imagination, a bit of will and patience, great things can be achieved.
Thinking about what we discussed in another thread, would you be interested to have the audio stems of this piece (close to 50 tracks... But no one is playing the whole time) ? I initially thought about sending you some vocals experimentations but I would be curious to hear what you could create with orchestral material. What say you ?
Reminiscent of Richard Strauss. Powerful.
@JanKun : Wow. 50 stems. That’s a lot! As long as you don’t mind me doing a fairly severe edit from that, I ‘d be up for it. I usually work, fast, (lazy, sloppy…) from a max of 8 simultaneously running full loops, possibly a Koala front pages worth of incidental fragments for flavour.
It’s not my habit to spend long hours micromanaging something track by track in a full on DAW. Your piece is a very distinct and excellent piece on its own, and any conventional remix or alternate take would clearly demand the full on DAW treatment.
By contrast, any noise I manage to lash together will clearly be a lesser work, which will be its own, minor, thing. If you don’t mind me doing violence to your creation, and settling for that pale, distorted photocopy, I’m game for a laugh. If you could PM me with a location on Apple Cloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox where I could access the stems, by all means, I’ll give it a go. I’d most likely work solely with the stems, but if you had the midis I’d take those too. In fact, I’d be honoured too.
Thank you for listening. After listening to this, a meditative track like Bill Evan's "Peace Piece" might be the perfect choice !
definitely the best thing I listened lately.
This is a great piece of music, the construction, development , the build up, all contribute to make a very strong evocative piece of musical art.
needless to say I love it.
I will send you the stems either in one file through WeTransfer or smaller zip archives for each orchestra section. I don't think this piece needs a remix. But if it can be recycled to become something else, that's great! Please feel free to manipulate the audio anyway you like. Cut, distort, filter in the most extreme and unrecognisable way. hope you'll find something inspiring in those stems and come up with one of your great creation. I am having a hard time uploading big files with my new iPad but will find a way to send you a link within this weekend.
Thank you for listening ! Definitely recommend Staffpad for orchestral sound lovers !
Wow! @JanKun - that was amazing and terrifying in equal proportion! Would love to see a movie with this (and @McD 's Dark Passage) as part of the soundtrack!
Thank you for listening! I don't think a screen record can let you see all 50 staffs but I can make a pdf of the score if you're interested...
I don't use any of Staffpad stock sound. As soon as I realised the potential of the app, I went nuts and bought many third parties libraries. In this score, I use mostly orchestral tools: Berlin strings, first chairs, woodwinds and brass. For the percussion I am using mostly Cineperc but some of Orchestral Tools percussion too.
Funny you mentioned about Toru Takemitsu, as I recently heard Garden Rain and really liked it. Any of his work you would recommend?
@JanKun this was too incredible for words. Totally hear the Ligeti…that Kyrie he wrote is very powerful.
I was weeping near the end. Just amazing. I’ve gotta pick up StaffPad seriously now…
Looks like I will eventually have to get some of these 3rd party libraries 😬.
I discovered Takemitsu long ago via my long appreciation of Oliver Messiaen. Garden Rain is a great piece.
What made me think of Takemitsu in the context of your piece was the Japanese film Black Rain scored by Takemitsu.
I have links to more works here.
Thank you for listening, Mike! I made the track downloadable on SoundCloud so you can get it from there. I tried adding a piano to the score but was not convinced with the result as any of my trials sounded too melodic and killed the whole vibe. Piano reversed sustained single notes or clusters could have been great to bring some surrealism. But since I wanted to keep the composition inside Staffpad and that there is no option to reverse audio to my knowledge, I discarded the idea.
I chose to reduce any melodic intervention to a strict minimum: the sparseness make the few melodic elements outstanding, like the bomb drop you noticed, which in fact is a (failed) attempt to recreate a Shepard Tone with chromatism, or this little boy's lamenting voice in the chaos which eventually disappears at the end as the poor boy tragically dies of his wounds. Feel free to experiment as much as you want, I'd curious to hear !
Wow, this is really tense! Amazing work!
Very powerful and quite moving.
Particularly poignant when the voice emerges near the end.
Fine work @JanKun.
I admit with some shame that I'm not familiar with Charles Ives' work. But a quick look at his biography reveals a composer who seems to have been a pioneer of modernism long before his time. Definitely have to dive in his catalog. Central Park in the the dark is great. Any other pieces you would recommend ?
The most recommended upgrade would be Berlin Strings. It improves drastically the quality of the string section.
I heard about Black Rain but haven't seen it yet. I also didn't know Takemitsu was behind the score.
Rain Spell is an amazing piece. I really like his instrument choice. Beautiful. Thanks for pointing me there.
I first heard of Ives by accident. When I was a teenager, there was a local band called the Buckinghams that had a hit record called “Susan”, amongst many others. For some reason, their producer decided to mix in a few seconds of Central Park. Most people hated it, including the band! I really liked it and it got me interested.
I am not an expert in the genre by any means. There are so many composers to choose from. I think most of it is a matter of personal preference. If you are interested in minimalism, I can recommend John Cages’s 4’33”. I think it will make you smile. Let me know what you think!
My favorite Ives piece.
Thank you for listening Paul. It might be difficult to get the full score visible while playing along (there are close to 50 staffs in it). But I could send you a PDF of the score of you're interested.
This is one the most beautiful and intriguing thing I heard in a long time. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you for listening. That's a great comment I didn't expect. I don't think Strauss would have appreciated but I sure do !