On “Ten to Chi to (天と地と)” (1) –Music choice and editing

I started this blog just to archive Yuzu fans’ blog posts because they were sometimes deleted by the platformer without the author’s consent, and evidence of slander since perpetrators exploit anonymity to smear Yuzu. So my blog didn’t grow so much (thank god, it’s a good thing), but my inner Daemon compelled me to write something after watching Yuzu’s superb performance at Japanese Nationals 2020. This post is on his free program, “Ten to Chi to (天と地と) “, especially on his music choices.

*I will talk about later the reason why I did not use “Heaven and Earth”, which is now commonly used as an English translation of the music of the FP.

*The names of the Japanese people are put in the order of “Surname, First name”  to avoid any confusion, since historic figures are, in many cases, called in this order.

First of all, please refer to this person’s thread starting with this post. @adnoh6 identified the music source of the free program.


For your convenience, I compiled this thread into one page.

https://sumatome.com/su/1343245515429871618

According to @adnoh6, his free program uses two pieces of music from “Music of TOMITA Isao (冨田勲の音楽), a CD to compile masterpieces of the composer who unleashed the great potential of the synthesizer (please see the photos in his/her post).


One of them is, of course, the opening theme from NHK’s Taiga Drama, a year-long history drama series “Ten to Chi to (天と地と)” aired back in 1969, and the other is the opening theme from another Taiga Drama “Shin Heike Monogatari (or New Tale of Heike, 新平家物語)” in 1972, which is based on a popular historical writer YOSHIKAWA  Eiji (吉川英治)’s novel depicting the struggle between the Taira clan and Minamoto clan for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century. As the term “new” suggests, Mr. Yoshikawa’s novel is based on a famous Japanese epic poem “Tale of Heike”.

Wikipedia (English) link to The Tale of Heike: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Heike

According to @adnoh6, Yuzu’s music starts with the beginning of “Ten to Chi to”, and then switches to the beginning of “Shin Heike Monogatari” with So (箏)sounds after 4S.

Music from “Shin Heike Monogatari” stays on until the end of the flute sound after 4T1Eu3S.

When he enters into the last 3A, the music goes back to around 1:09 of “Ten to Chi to”, and into the last part of “Ten to Chi to” in the middle of the sit spin.

@adnoh6 says,

“Here Biwa (琵琶)sounds are added, as Hanyu-kun said in his interview and added in a very intricate way. Maybe they are taken  from around 1:01 or 0:25 of “Ten to Chi to”?  In total, 1 min and 52 sec is taken  from “Ten to Chi to” and 2 min and 18 sec from “Shin Heike Monogatari”. In terms of length, the time allocated for “Ten to Chi to” is shorter, but the program’s main theme seems to be from this, and Biwa sound is so much impressive.

According to the liner notes to the CD, Mr. Tomita, the composer, imagined the scene where Biwa sounds, played by UESUGI Kenshin (上杉謙信), coming from a small hall dedicated to Bishamonten (毘沙門天 or Vessavaṇa, a god of warriors) in the snow when he composed.

This is a reproduction of “Ten to Chi to” music by a Youtube account called U JF.

*Note: When I accessed around 2021/01/02 10:00 a.m. JST, this video had been deleted.  I will leave this URL link as it is as evidence to show the following claim is not a fake made up by me, although it makes this page look clumsy. Deletion of the video often happens when it comes to the videos related to Yuzu, so I should have downloaded it. Anyway, I will be careful in the future. (2020/01/02 15:18 JST)

In the explanation section, U JF talked about how elaborately Yuzu edited this music.

While I was mixing the music pieces myself, I was astonished by his surprising detailed attention to sounds. Since I did the same thing myself, I clearly tell Hanyu-Senshu divided the music pieces into many small parts to construct his program music in order to realize the perfect flow to best fit his program, examining the sound and tempo of every note.

To be honest, it’s an “Oni (鬼)” mixing (do you follow me?).

To be more concrete, music pieces are divided into small parts on the order of 1 bar or 2 bars, followed by very intricate adjustments of fade-in/ fade-out, reverberation, voice bandwidth, etc. And then those parts are fed into the mixing software one by one with timing adjustment.

Near the end of the program, there is a part where the sounds of flute and those of Biwa are overlapped. I guess that harmony was created by Hanyu-Senshu himself by listening and extracting the melodies of the two musical instruments from the original pieces.

I knew Hanyu-Senshu has astoundingly good ears and a good sense of pitch, but I was truly amazed by his music arrangement based even on the calculation of tonality and harmony.

<Original Text>

今回楽曲のミキシングをしていて本当に驚いたのは
羽生選手の驚くべき“音へのこだわり”です。
オーケストラ曲の一音一音の響き、溜めに徹底してこだわり
自らのプログラムに一番しっくりくる絶妙の流れを作るために
楽曲を細かいパーツに分けたうえで組み立てて構成していたことが作業をしていてはっきりわかりました。
はっきり言って鬼ミキシングです(←伝わるかな…?)
ちょっと具体的に言うと、1小節、2小節単位に楽曲のパーツを分解してフェードイン/アウト、リバーブ、音声の帯域を絞り込むなどの作業を細かく実行したうえでミキシングソフトに一つひとつ流し込んでタイミング調整をしていくという…

ラスト近く、笛の音と琵琶の音が重なり合っている部分があるのですがあのハーモニーは羽生選手自らが原曲から二つの楽器のメロディを聴きとって抜き出し重ね合わせて生み出したものだと思います。
羽生選手の耳、音感が抜群にいいということは知っていましたが
調性や和声までしっかり計算しつくしたアレンジにはただただ驚かされました。

*Translator’s note: In modern Japanese slang, Oni (鬼) is sometimes used as an adjective to describe something beyond one’s imagination, great, godly, etc.

It’s truly an awesome program in many ways–theme, philosophy, music, choreography, performance, and how it stirs the emotions of many people.

First published: 2020-12-31

Edited: 2021-01-01

(minor corrections)

Edited:2020-01-02

(minor corrections and additional translator’s note)

 

 

 

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