The Joy of Researching
A game I've had lots of fun making music for1 came out today, and it got me thinking about the pre-production process.
The game is set in a traditional Japanese inn and has a focus on its onsen2, and one of the very first things I've been asked was to go hard on that traditional Japanese sound while retaining some familiar tunes in the series. I don't want to dwell too much on the actual work because this is not the right place to do so, but I'd like to share the titular joy of researching. I've done a few Japanese-inspired tracks before (which is why I was picked for this one), and my research had consisted of reading Wikipedia articles and watching YouTube videos. It was always pretty superficial, though, and this time I wanted to have a firmer grasp on it all, even though of course I would've never been able to make something 100% accurate, nor I wanted to.
When you look for info on traditional Japanese music there's a lot of talk about scales. It took me a couple of days of research, if I recall correctly, to discover that there's a lot of confusion about it! The Wikipedia pages are a mess as well, but I'm not confident enough to correct them. What I can say safely is that various western sources use "scales" and "tuning" interchangeably, and while this might work when making music from scratch it's very incorrect. And you know how I came to know this? Someone's comment on reddit! A kind soul who replied to this guy's thread, who was as confused as me about all these scale names that didn't match in different sources! Said kind soul recommended some textbooks I've only partially read (they're massive and I also had to make the actual music), but they've been a real help, and so very interesting as well: they're David W. Hughes's "The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music", William P. Malm's "Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments", and Luciana Galliano's "Yogaku: Japanese Music in the 20th Century". It's been almost a year since I've taken notes so I don't remember exactly which one was the most helpful, but having a confirmation from various source was exactly what I needed.
I'm very serious about sources, to a point I've been called annoying or nitpicky way more times than I'd like3. We're living in a time in which there's an overabundance of information and very little care for sources, selection, and preservation. It vexes me! I cherish those places online where I can still find information, carefully ordered and classified. It's something I really enjoy doing as well, so it's always very sad to me when people around me prefer having a fast, wrong answer than looking more into it and discovering a whole world beyond it.
Because maybe I didn't need to know what Gagaku is, but now that I know it can bring me to so many places I wouldn't go to without, show me new questions and horizons I was blind to before. I'm well aware of my limits in absorbing all of it (because I really wish I could know everything!), but even just getting a bit of it here and there is fine. It's still so fascinating.
This is a definition that actually fits almost every single soundtrack I work on, which reminds me how much I love what I do!↩
Environmentally speaking; the plot focuses on the struggles of high school kids coming to terms with the aftermath of having witnessed the death of someone in their class and being involved in a murder. And they go to the onsen.↩
Zero. I'd like zero.↩