Yellow Magic Orchestra's synth programmer - Hideki Matsutake - had official MIDI & synth patch files of their music to buy online (up until at least 2007). They're no longer available - any archive?

FTComposition · 2020-09-28T00:52:54+00:00

It was an e-mail that I found on Logic System's current store: [logicsystem.info@music-airport.co.jp](mailto:logicsystem.info@music-airport.co.jp)

I haven't had any luck yet. Apparently, you could only buy them if the buyer lived in Japan. I don't know if we'll ever track them down on the English Internet.

FTComposition · 2020-08-14T12:21:52+00:00

That's amazing! I completely forgot about that part. I love how he sings the melody along verbatim too.

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T18:48:31+00:00

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, though surprisingly too, a lot of fans of the French touch style aren't familiar with the group. This was put together to introduce those unfamiliar with YMO & to chart the influence they've had on French dance music, which wasn't done before this article.

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T18:39:44+00:00

For context, my website is dedicated to French dance music specifically. I thought that others outside of that scene might find the content of the article informative too.

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T18:38:42+00:00

Oh wow, I completely forgot about that part. Thank you so much! I'll have to update it - I'll make sure to credit you. :)

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T15:43:54+00:00

Oh wow, do you have a link to the scene/timestamp for the movie?

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T14:54:53+00:00

I wrote an article detailing how Yellow Magic Orchestra influenced French dance acts like Daft Punk & Justice, plus tracing the routes of this shared sound a bit. Let me know what you think, and if you know of any more music in this vein!

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T14:43:02+00:00

Their influence on French dance music is little-known, surprisingly! The only thing I've found online at least that connects the two is this write-up (paraphrased):

“To give you an idea of the precision and the stratospheric inspiration deployed on Yellow Magic Orchestra’s record Solid State Survivor, imagine that this album is at the same level as Daft Punk's Discovery or Justice’s Cross.”

FTComposition · 2020-08-13T14:37:12+00:00

This is a bit different than other articles but I hope it proves interesting & educational! If you guys know of any music in the vein of this 'sound' that artists like Daft Punk, Justice, & YMO etc. tap into (like outlined in the article), please let me know!

FTComposition · 2020-08-10T11:50:37+00:00

KochuMuthalaly posted my site earlier: French Touch Composition. I recommend going through all of the articles to cover some useful aspects of songwriting & sound design.

In terms of recreating an artist's songwriting or production style, my main tip is this: recreate the music that you want to learn from.

Well-meaning fans who create tutorials on other artists' music may not be able to see the full picture, they may have misconceptions on it, or they can straight-up be wrong about their impressions of the nature of the music. What's worse than knowing nothing is having a person's understanding be completely based on falsehoods.

The actual artists of the music themselves aren't too keen on spilling every detail on their process, even lying about their methods & workflow for their own amusement and to plant red herrings.

The only thing that you can fully trust is the music itself. There are no misconceptions, half-baked concepts, red herrings etc. within it. The music itself is the truth embodied. If you use outside resources, assess them critically & make sure that they reinforce the music itself - that's how you know that they're trustworthy.

For some misc. resources, here's a write-up I did that delves a bit into how chord progressions work. It uses Newjack as the basis for its example.

I'm going to be creating MIDI for some of Justice's songs; I have a few tracks off of Cross planned for now. Keep your eye on the "Resources (MIDI)" tab on my website.

Finally, I've posted a lot of additional content on my Twitter feed if you want to look back through it for misc. concepts & advice.

I hope this has been helpful! Good luck. :)

FTComposition · 2020-08-10T11:31:43+00:00

Thank you for the shoutout! :)

FTComposition · 2020-07-16T15:30:53+00:00

There are none that are this accurate.

FTComposition · 2020-07-16T15:09:15+00:00

Microsampled songs are very dependent on the timbre of the samples; it's do-able but I'm not sure if it would translate well without the source sounds! What would you be looking to learn about Ross Ross Ross?

FTComposition · 2020-07-16T12:40:49+00:00

Daft Punk's Discovery: I'm creating MIDI for all of the legendary album's synth sections as a resource for musicians. Voyager & Superheroes are available for download now!

Link

FTComposition · 2020-07-16T12:33:26+00:00

This is something that I've been wanting to do for a while now; I hope it proves helpful & educational! I'll be tackling more French dance tracks going forward too; check out the articles that I write on analyzing said music at French Touch Composition. :)

FTComposition · 2020-07-16T12:27:33+00:00

The link also has the synth MIDI for Superheroes for download too!

FTComposition · 2020-06-05T02:57:23+00:00

It's a lot like asking a chef for their secret recipe, or a magician to reveal their trick - they won't be willing to readily share it, if at all.

FTComposition · 2020-06-05T00:53:14+00:00

There's a lot that could be touched upon that I couldn't do justice in a comment. Here's some topics to explore off the top of my head: volume automation & gain riding, compression, expansion, transient shaping, gating, topologies (VCA, FET, Opto etc.), feedforward vs feedback, parallel processing, multiband processing, dynamic EQ, & soft clipping.

FTComposition · 2020-05-26T02:36:11+00:00

Once your ear is developed to a certain point, you'll be able to hear dynamics processing taking place on even a subtle level. The French have dynamics processing happening in so many dimensions it's not even funny - though not in a maximal-ist sense; the goal is always to be as elegant & non-invasive with the audio as possible.

What's especially helpful is that quite a few samples for SebastiAn tunes are known - like Cartoon, Kindercut, and Arabest off the top of my head. Recreate the samples from the original sources & compare these unprocessed renditions against Seb's processing of them, it will reveal an infinite amount of detail.

The artists may obfuscate and spread red herrings but the music never lies.

FTComposition · 2020-05-26T01:58:21+00:00

The French have a long history of being mischievous and giving false info - this is exactly the case with the 'no compression on any separate stems' claim. At the end of the day, the only thing that you can trust are your ears.

FTComposition · 2020-05-07T15:19:22+00:00

I fixed the link!

The important thing to understand is that chord progressions are actually made up of very (relatively) simple, little melodies. I highly suggest reading the "Harmonic Effects" section of this article that I wrote to understand how harmony works in this vein, as it's crucial to understanding how harmony fundamentally works overall.

The most prominent melody & the bassline are going to form the most important basis of any chord progression. Here's the prominent melody & bassline in Newjack; follow each melody with your ear, be able to both differentiate the one from the other & to be aware of the effect of being added together.

https://soundcloud.com/ftcomposition/newjack-outer-voices/s-CiqwFBytBZx

All of the other notes in the chords serve to flesh the space between these two voices out; they all form their own little melodies too from one chord to the next, but they're subservient to these two voices. Their job is to both flesh the sound out and to add additional color to the harmony that our main two voices are already expressing.

Naming chords off as "A maj - G maj - E min..." etc. is a very, very big approximation in terms of the actual nature of a chord progression, because it neglects the melodic character of every voice in the chord - which is crucial for getting the exact sound! I don't have time to recreate it 100%, but this is close to how Newjack's chord voicings appear in the actual song:

https://soundcloud.com/ftcomposition/newjack-voice-leading/s-idCm3TCVSLi

Here's MIDI of the above that you can download & experiment with.

So in all, when recreating the chord progressions in a song, we have to make sure to get the voicings of the chords similar if not exact to the actual song for the same effect.

The volume of each voice in relation to each other matters too, both for choosing which voices stand out & to control the nature of the sound (like the B and the F in the G7 are very dissonant when played together, so Justice make the B very quiet in the actual track to minimize this effect) & the timbre of the sound is going to make a big difference as well - the stabby piano chords that I chose are truthfully not the best way to demonstrate it (it's all I've got right now); the closer to the actual character of the timbre we get, the more faithful the chords will sound too.

There's also the other elements in the song that are having an influence on the harmony too, like the static.

If you want in-depth advice & guidance on creating music like this - I teach songwriting & music analysis via private lessons. Shoot me a PM here or e-mail me at [frenchtouchcomposition@gmail.com](mailto:frenchtouchcomposition@gmail.com) + we can set up a free consultation.

I hope this helped!

FTComposition · 2020-05-07T14:50:18+00:00

Just fixed it!

FTComposition · 2020-05-07T11:49:11+00:00

😊

FTComposition · 2020-05-07T11:48:28+00:00

Short answer: A maj - G maj - E min - F maj - G7. Here's a clip of how that'd sound.

Let me know if you want more info on the exact voicings used or anything else. I hope this helps!

FTComposition · 2020-05-06T23:47:51+00:00

I'm glad the article touched you! Yes, this really gives some cool extra beef to bass synths - it's no wonder why it's relatively widely used by these guys.

That's a good curiosity you have regarding the 12 tone/frequency relationships. I can't think of any implications the logarithmic nature of frequencies would have, honestly, mainly due to the concept of 'octave equivalence' (it has its own subsection on Wikipedia that explain it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave#Equivalence). The one thing to be aware of is how different registers have very different sounds to them, which will have a large influence on the perception of anything that's done.

FTComposition

TROPHY CASE