Nodame Cantabile : Coda

As mentioned before, this post is continuation from previous blog post about "Nodame Cantabile : Capo"

Beside the insistent comedy by the ridiculous characters, there were also other things that made Nodame Cantabile one of my favorite J-dorama. Earlier i had little knowledge about classical pieces but watching this series had broaden my insight of classical music. I also became more eager in exploring classical music field. A good thing included on the show, it was often when a piece was performed, there would be facts informed regarding the piece played (usually narrated by Chiaki's voice). Sometimes there were also other information regarding classical music or orchestra in some scenes (such as explanation about the difference between Basson and Faggot that had similar characteristics ). It gave more insights for the TV viewers. Furthermore, another positive thing of watching Nodame Cantabile, everytime i watched the episodes, seeing Chiaki conducting the Orchestra or Nodame playing the Piano, i was always got more motivated and pushed to do more. After the show, I usually got encouraged to continue composing or do Piano practicing.

There were many pieces performed on Nodame Cantabile. I could not remember all of the pieces but at least there were some internationally known pieces that i could memorize because following the series. Now i recognized and memorized the melodies of Beethoven's "Symphony no 7", Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Mozart's "Oboe Concerto KV 314", which i did not know at all before watching Nodame series. When watching Addie MS' Twilite Orchestra were performing repertoire from Nodame Cantabile series, i had been familiar with most of the pieces. Some pieces are obligated to be performed such as Beethoven's "Symphony no 7", Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", and Sergei Prokifiev's "Montagues and Capulets". Those pieces are well known by the serial lovers.

 I also found out the melodies i'd had ever heard on some events. Now i know that :

It was Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No 2" that was played as background music on Yoshiki's drum solo performance on X Japan's concert. 

It was Dvorak's "Symphony No 9 : From the New World" that i heard on "One Piece anime series

And i immediately recognized Ravel's "Bolero" was played at the beginning of Girls Generation's "Paparazzi" music video clip.

Regarding my interest in classical music, seeing some pieces were performed on the series, with its complicated and challenging playing, i got encouraged to try some compositions. The compositions such as Liszt's "Mazeppa", Mozart's "Turkish March", and Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" had got my interest to play it on piano. However, without a hard-enough practicing, one would not be able to play the pieces properly. I admit that i had done the practice much less then it should be. Hahaha.....

Every great mangaka (comic creator) i'd known usually study deeply about the theme they raised on their manga. Takeshi Maekawa has great understanding about chinese Kung Fu when creating "Kung Fu Boy" manga. Eichiro Oda has a wide insight about oceanic history so he can created a very famous and successful comic serial about pirates, "One Piece". So did Tomoko Ninomiya where she put many classical pieces that i had not even known yet on the manga. From many sources, i could not get the explanation whether Tomoko Ninomiya understands musical theory or classical music and able to play musical instruments but from a source, there is an information that she got helped by a person who inspired her to create the Noda Megumi character. Interesting fact mentioned is the inspiring person was also named Noda Megumi and she was a piano teacher in Fukuoka. (Both Noda Megumi (the real one and Ninomiya's) had the same name, same characteristics (The real Noda sent a picture of her messy room to Tomoko Ninomiya and drew Tomoko's attention), and also same hometown. The real Noda Megumi was also said as the one who composed "Moja-Moja Suite", Nodame's song creation on the story.

  

About the audience level rate, i could not decide the rate of the series because there were a few of mature contents but the joke was ridiculously hilarious and very comical. So, i made a conclusion that this live-action dorama might be aimed for adults who were still having a part of childish spirit (like me !). However, even the theme was generally about classical music, everyone could enjoy the dorama because the story was light and did not put many difficult musical terms.

fine

Blowin'

A simple composition made for this time. This is not actually a song but this melody came up as one of the original soundtracks of "Taiyou no Uta" TV series that was aired on Japanese Television on 2006. The soundtrack was originally composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, the musician that had done several works on Japanese dorama and anime.

"Taiyou no Uta" TV dorama was adapted from an a movie with the same title. The dorama was starred by Takayuki Yamada and Erika Sawajiri. The story was about a girl who suffer a disease that restricted her to be exposed by the sun. Ultraviolet radiation had become lethal for the girl, so she just had midnight time for enjoying outdoor activites. Most of her night time was spent by playing a guitar on her favorite spot near. At one moment, she met the surfer guy whom she often stared from her window. As the relationship developed, Kaoru (Erika Sawajiri) and Koji (Takayuki Yamada) spent their quality time on Koji's scooter, went around the seaside neighborhood, and sitting by the sea. The setting was on seaside housing. So most activites shown on the series are seaside people activites like surfers, playing beach volleyball, fishermen, and beach party. But Kaoru and Koji were focused on musical band where they eventually created a pop music group (the main purpose is for realizing Kaoru's dream for being a stage performer).

As if creating a seaside ambience, i felt that this "Blowin'" song was illustrating a soundtrack when people spent their time on the coastline - walking by the beach, sit around. The magical moments when you were on the coastline are the sunset or the sunrise and i felt this song was also illustrated the moments (maybe because it was the period of time when Kaoru Amane can make herself outdoor). The "Blowin'" title might mean the wind that we feel blowing our faces on the coast.

Somehow this song had a past memory to me, more like a sad memory. One day, my shuffle playlist turned to this song. It was rewinding the memory but instead of awakening the sadness, i suddenly got an idea and got triggered to compose another version of this song.

On the original version, the melody was lead by an acoustic guitar, from beginning to the end. The main melody was accompanied by a small number of instruments like piano, strings,  another acoustic guitar, electric bass, and synthetizer sounds. Even the music tempo is not so ballad, somehow it had melancholy ambience.

Without changing the melody, i add and eliminate some instruments. I add woodwind section on the song with oboe and clarinet for leading the melody. So, instead of hearing guitar plucking, you will hear the woodwinds blowing on the whole song. With my composing tools, i can barely modifiy the synthetizer sounds, so i just add simple percussions to accompany the melody. There were no major changes to piano or strings sounds.

By these modifications, i found that the song was a little bit more classical and had the mood changed. And i also found it more simpler than the original one.

Because the song and the series had seashore theme, i also put the same theme on these post, video, and also the new song arrangement. Some pictures displayed on the video were taken by my friend, Haga Tara S, the soon-to-be great photographer.

Nodame Cantabile : Capo

I like watching Japanese Drama (J-Dorama), especially the comedy ones. But the main reason i 'd prefer J-dorama to other countries' TV series (Korean, Taiwanese, or western) is because they were only consist of few episodes (mostly around 10-12 episodes). It was different with Korean or Chinese TV series that mostly had over 20 episodes, or western TV series that had continuous episodes aired in several seasons (or Indonesian TV series that will not end as long as there are TV audiences). I had watched many J-doramas and i can conclude that mainly J-dorama contains dramatic scenes, comedy, and moral of the story.

One of my favorite J-dorama is "Nodame Cantabile" . For classical music lovers or orchestra players must have been familiar and should had watched this classical music theme TV series. Even the popular Indonesian orchestra group, Twilite Orchestra conducted by Addie MS, had ever held two concert with Nodame Cantabile theme. There are many elements that this serial contains : Classical music, comical comedies, orchestra, drama, lovers, etc.
"Nodame Cantabile" originally was a manga created by Tomoko Ninomiya. This manga was then developed into a "live-action drama" aired on Japanese Television. Later, it was also developed into anime series. The most appreciation come to the manga and the "live-action drama". Maybe one of its success key is the theme as there are not many manga / TV serials come up with classical music theme.

 

The first time i heard about this series title, i did not recognize that this was a classical music TV serial.  But when i started to watch the first episode and knowing that it was mainly about classical music, my interest was about rapidly rising to follow up this dorama. I had to admit that this series is one of the best J-dorama i had ever seen, mostly because the classical theme contains and the stupid, ridiculous, comical jokes that performed in the series. 

Note : I had to explain that the "Nodame Cantabile" i mostly talked about is the "live-action" drama one. I did not read the manga, nor watching the anime series. The real-human performers made the story depiction and the characters' motion were more real and did not make sense simultaneously (ignore it if you couldn't understand the meaning, haha...)

The main characters are Shinichi Chiaki (Cast : Hiroshi Tamaki) and Noda Megumi / Nodame (Cast : Ueno Juri). I appreciate both actor and actress because they were successfully described the real characters of Chiaki and Nodame, the hard-headed Chiaki and the clumsy Nodame where at the end both of them established an interesting relationship. Another fact about the actor / actress is they had to learn about classical music and playing the piano so they would portray the characters properly. However, the instrument playing on the series / movies were performed by professional musicians, so did the orchestra performances.

Another interesting part about their relationships is that they complemented each other. Chiaki always yells, sometimes becomes rude, when Nodame's spirit is low (also when Nodame did disgusting matters). Unwittingly, he was the one who was the most willing to teach / assist Nodame for  becoming a better piano player (even at the end, he realized that Nodame had her own  distinct view about piano playing). The other way around, Nodame was also becoming influential in Chiaki's life. She tried to drive out Chiaki's aerophobia (afraid of traveling by plane) to make Chiaki's dream of going to Europe come true. She was also the first (and the most enthusiastic) one  who pushed Chiaki in realizing his dream to become an orchestra conductor. Chiaki, who formerly got annoyed by Nodame's existence, gradually admitted her as one of important pieces of his life and then the love relationship started to grow.

One of my favorite part of this dorama is the comical and ridiculous comedy (as it was adapted from a manga). Characters who are the most often doing stupid things are Nodame and Masumi (the timpani player), where they often fight because both were having special feelings for Chiaki (an exception from my interest to J-dorama is I always hate when there were 'yaoi' parts on the story ( you could browse the 'yaoi' meaning by yourself )). Those ridiculous moments such as Masumi's disgust expression every time Nodame flirts or seduces Chiaki and Masumi's embarrassment when Chiaki is nearby. He could suddenly become faint. It was also funny when Chiaki found out disgusting facts about Nodame and her room. Meanwhile, Nodame's most comical moments are the "Gyaboo..." expressions. Other characters who also sometimes become entertaining are Stresseman the conductor and Mine the violinist. All those characters become funny and did stupid things while they were on a drunk party. I often laugh when watching the "live-action" series.

Hufff... I feel that this post about Nodame had been long enough, whereas I still had some things to write about Nodame Cantabile on my draft.
So i had decided to split the post into two sections. This writing will be continued on "Nodame Cantabile : Coda".

Longing -Togireta Melody-

I should have posted this composition at the beginning of September 2012, but due to my health problem, i’ve just had the chance to complete the song and put it on my blog at this time.

Another composition originated by Yoshiki Hayashi for X-Japan. The song “Longing” was launched on 1995. “Longing” was originally having two forms : one is “Longing – Setsubou no Yoru”, where there was only Toshi’s vocal with strings background and the other one is “Longing –Togireta Melody-“, the one with more complete instruments such as drums and electric guitar. You can listen to the songs in singles CD with the same title.

This time, i tried to make some improvements, rather than just studying and imitating the song to examine my listening skill. This was also in order to make it more compatible with classical instrumental orchestra, such as disabling the drum part and replacing the electric guitar sections.

I made the song begun with cello domination to make a it more deeply emotional. I want to make an instrumental composition, so i filled the singer vocals part with flute and clarinet, and for the chorus part, the vocal part was filled by strings instruments. Piano also played an important part in this song, just like the original composition, to accompany the flow. My favorite part is the violin duet part in the middle of the song. This part was originally played by electric guitars. Because the theme is orchestral, i tried to replace it with violin duet and somehow i really love the result, even this part was only for several seconds. Furthermore, the original “Longing -Togireta Melody-“ duration was longer than the one on my composition but i cut some parts (another chorus repetition) and it seemed more ideal with this shorter duration. 

You may wonder the the picture slides on the video was mostly fulfilled with loneliness theme. As the song title spoke, and so did the melody, the mellow song was generally about loneliness and sadness. That’s why i also tried to adjust the orchestral melody with this theme so the song would not lose its original picture. 

The Senses

One day i was watching MasterChef US reality show on TV. It was the first season of MasterChef US.  Among the elimination rounds, there is one round where the MasterChef candidates were served a dish (at that moment, the dish was some kind of soup). They had to taste the dish and then guess the ingredients mix. In front of them are plates of various kind of ingredients and they have to guess correctly about 10 from 24 ingredients that were used in the mix. The 3 judges (Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot, and Joe Bastianich) then determined whether the participant's guesses were right or wrong.

At that time, in my mind i was thinking ""How the hell it can be done ?""How possible it was to identify the ingredients used, one by one, from the dish that had been mixed ?". I was considering that a normal person (including me) would not be able to identify the ingredients that many. Mostly we may identify ingredients that dominated the taste or had prominent taste among others. I thought it was impossible to  disjoint the taste and identify the sources.

But there is something i realized when i was exploring the music. When i am exploring the music, i try to listen carefully to the melody sources and eventually i will recognize approximately what musical instruments were played. It was a similar job to the people who taste the dish and recognize the ingredients. We might be unable to guess all instruments and ingredients correctly and but at least we could describe how the big picture was drawn.

So, what differs these things ? I think it's the role of senses. Everyone who were dedicated to their work, were actually optimizing their senses. Not to mention that they are also sharpening their other skills, but it is how particular senses played an important role for particular jobs. People who work on music were optimizing their sense of hearing while the chefs were utilizing their sense of taste. If we look further, these (and other) senses were also working on other fields, such as hunters optimize their sense of sight to recognize their prey between trees.

Regarding this role of senses, those people who do the job usually require and utilize multiple sense, rather than one sense only. Beside optimizing their sense of hearing to analyze the sound harmony, an orchestra conductor may also use their sense of sight to detect any faults. Chefs may also use the sense of smell to explore the dish, but there is always one sense that play an important role for particular jobs. For special case when this dominating sense did not work well (e.g disability), other sense would be required to cover its role. It was like a piano player regularly uses his hands to play the piano, but when facing disability, if the person had strong passion, it was not impossible that he/she were still continuing his/her piano playing using his/her feet. 

This is how i view how particular sense were contributing in particular activities. They played an important role to people in making creations.

So, can you name any more jobs that identical with particular senses ?

Amethyst

The song 'Amethyst' was originally composed by Japanese Musician Yoshiki Hayashi for his legendary band, X-Japan. The song was regularly played as opening scene of every X-Japan concert. As the song flows, the X-Japan members will enter the stage one by one or in group. The classical nuance, combined with elegance, played important part in describing the magnificent concert.

The song was developed by multiple classical instruments. I arranged the 6-minutes composition with basic orchestral sections : Strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion. The base of this arrangement was taken from Amethyst piano scores by Yoshiki, combined with all that i caught from my hearing.

Begun calmly by several instruments, mainly by strings. The flow of the song filled with fluctuating mood. Some parts were filled only by a few instruments, while some others were build by many and various instruments.The final part was the climax where all sections had their roles. Overall, the flow was escalating and rose-up when reaching the ending.

The classical elegant nuance was describing something precious and elegant. It illustrated how Yoshiki associated X-Japan with the Amethyst gem. It is something i also want to present in this arrangement of mine.

Prologue

The story behind Orchestra-J. How and why it was created. First of all, i had interest in classical music. I have a dream of conducting an orchestra but still haven't met the resources yet. I am also have no guidance nor clue about how to get there. Somehow, i had an idea of creating what i was called "Virtual Orchestra", because the instruments wasn't played by physically real performers but came from my computer. By having this blog, i finally have a room to make a spill. Initially, In this orchestra there were only two things that i rely on : My Laptop and My Hearing Sense. So, you may think my work is good or bad. But, remember that there were only three elements in starting this orchestra : Me myself, My Laptop, and My Hearing Sense.

So, here we are.. Please welcome.. Orchestra-J...