[JWEB] Yabana Rei (Itanji Nippou Samuraifu) - 18 May 2022

[dreamweavernyx]

Hi! This is something new - I've translated Yabana (of 7MEN Samurai)'s jweb entry from last month where he talks about the creative process behind their Girls Award performance. ^^

I don't usually translate Yabana's jwebs because they're pretty technical, but I really enjoyed their set at Girls Award and so I equally enjoyed his blog entry showing us the behind the scenes / prep work that went into coming up with the setlist and music. The amount of thought and work that went into it was really impressive!!

~

vol. 057, 18 May 2022 (9pm JST)

“Making of GirlsAward 2022 S/S”

Hello~ It’s Yabana

Usually, I write my blog entries on my smartphone

But this time round, I’m writing it on my computer, which is pretty unusual

So stuff like the placement of the line breaks…

Also, there won’t be any emoji! ^^

The elders on the Internet might

Find this a little nostalgic, but

Please bear with me ()

Well, for now, to update you on what’s been happening recently

We went to check out the Globe Theatre today,

And it feels like we’ve finally finalised our setlist, I think??

From now on we’ll be looking closely

At the connections between (songs on) the setlist

And the things that haven’t been totally firmed up yet

And we’ll be brushing up on them as we go, that’s where we’re at now

Things are also coming to a close on the music production front,

The “real work before the actual show” is also close to reaching its “grand finale”

And it might be that I might burn out for a bit like I did last summer

In order that I won’t burn out entirely

I’m writing my blog entry ahead of time, at university

I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but

That’s how it is

In order to contribute to my blog from university

Since I’m still (barely) a university student, I’m going to university as much as I can

I’m taking jazz lessons

And also classical music lessons

The kind that you’d expect a student at a college of music to be taking

(Or rather, if I don’t take them it’ll be pretty rough)

Coincidentally, I was able to

Put to use the stuff I learned in school almost immediately

And I’m making good use of (the knowledge) at work now

It should still be pretty fresh in your memory, right

The “Rakuten GirlsAward 2022 SPRING/SUMMER” event

That was held that Makuhari Messe last Saturday

At this event,

We, 7MEN Samurai, were invited to appear as a secret guest artist

And I was able to put (what I learned) to use in producing the music for this

Just like I’d written in the title for this edition

This is the thing I’ve been talking about vaguely

In my blog all the way up till recently

“The Spring Matter”

This is one of them

I’d like to scribble quickly, in detail,

About the work behind the scenes for GirlsAward

Please enjoy, through this essay

This look behind the scenes of the “battle” for us 6

↓On to the novel↓

2022, start of the year

During this period

Taikou, Reia-kun and Konpi were

In the midst of rehearsals for their musical.

It was tough for everyone to come together and calmly have a meeting, but amidst that

Daka-san and I had discussions between the two of us

And we put together various plans in skeletal form

Before bringing those to the rest of the members to settle together.

And then, around March or so

It was the period right after when Daka-san and I had headed to Chichibu for a tanka poetry competition

To determine whether we could appear on the show “NHK Tanka”

During this period,

Taikou was also thinking about GirlsAward

And he told us

“I want to make ‘Cinderella Girl’ more grand”

We usually do a band version of “Cinderella Girl”

As a cover for our live performances

We do change up the arrangement a little each time

For our live performances

And our arrangements had been slowly inching towards a “rock” sound,

But in a complete reversal from that,

He wanted to arrange it in a grand / majestic style.

Miraculously,

Since I’d arranged an orchestral arrangement

Of “Cinderella Girl” before

[https://j-island.net/s/jitv/video/9801]

We started to think about it

Using that as the base.

The arrangement we came up with in the end used

The recording of

The strings from the original song

(“Strings” refers to violins, cellos, etc. – the orchestra instruments played with a bow)

And at points we would weave in

The MIDI data from the previously-mentioned orchestral version,

And created a more expansive arrangement that still

Made use of our existing band version.

The bass (guitar) phrase that I’d initially added in

And Daka-san’s synthesiser solo during the instrumental break

That we slightly redid halfway through

We moved those parts directly over to the saxophone

And arranged it so that it would have an orchestral feel to it

While still retaining some band-like sound.

Following that, I completely redid

Konpi’s guitar phrase from scratch

In this fashion, the new arrangement of “Cinderella Girl” was completed, but

When we thought about the setlist

We realised that there was a problem.

“How do we link the dance portion to the band portion??”

At this point in time,

We’d already decided to start with dance

And then end off with “Cinderella Girl” and “Shout”

But how should we smoothly transition

From the dance to the band portion?

I made all the members start to think hard about this

“Cinderella Girl” might have been in the band portion

But its arrangement was now also different from the rock feel we’d had up till now, too…

And what’s more, it would be GirlsAward where we’d be performing it

We would be secret guests, too

It would clearly be an “away” match

There would be many people there who don’t know 7MEN Samurai at all

Which was quite different from our usual live performances

So how should we make sure they enjoy themselves?

If only we could use a famous song that anyone would know

In order to link neatly to the band section

That would be waiting in the back half…

…Ah.

What if we linked it using an arrangement of a famous classical piece?

I raised this

On a late-night discussion by phone call with Daka-san

And that’s when the idea to use an arrangement of “Swan Lake” was born.

Normally, there’d be many rights-related issues

Stemming from the use of copyright in music

When you want to use it for commercial purposes

Then you’d need to go through many different procedures.

However, there’s a particular rule when it comes to copyright

The period for which the author can maintain the copyright

Starts from the time the work is created

And ends 70 years after the author’s death

In other words

Stuff like classical music

Or music that was created hundreds of years ago

There’s a chance that the protection afforded by copyright would have faded

That’s the gist of it.

*Of course, there are exceptions to this, so please be careful

I knew of that

And so I’d been toying with the idea

Of putting that to use in our live performances someday

To link to the arrangement of “Cinderella Girl” that (now) had orchestral elements added to it

With a classical piece,

I thought, “Finally, the day has come for me to put this idea to use!”.

While looking for a classical song (to use)

Daka-san sent me

The PV for BIGMAMA-san’s “Swan Song” for discussion purposes

And was like, “How about something like this?”

And so, it was decided that we would produce music for a dance & band arrangement

Of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”.

>> Part 2