Transformation, inspiration and THEFT

I was looking through my songs, while putting together a new songlist for upcoming streams, and you know, this is a project in of its own really!

anyway, lets go deep into prepping songlists and streaming another day, what really caught my ears today was my track The Raven Way, and it sort of pertains to when I was working on the Imamura album back in 2015, while I lived in Osaka.

At that time I was invited to join a group of Osaka musicians to create a group called VIVO to perform at the 2015 Screaming Spirit Fest in Shinsaibashi. Screaming Spirit Fest was a sort of "Korea/Japan friendship metal festival", where Japanese and Korean metal bands would get invited, and originally, VIVO was going to be just that (with the addition of a swede, in the form of yours truly, for unknown reasons!). The group was put together by Satomi Fukuoka (from Moonstruck) with the help of Kei Takahata of Aqua Cube Studios, and it consisted of Fukuoka on keyboard, Mikkiya (from Lipstick Scandal and Marzie Dekker) on drums, me on guitar, Yui on vocals (who was a recurring singer for Aqua Cube Studios in Kyoto, who were also producing the Imamura album), and then a korean bass player - who just vanished! Seriously. He just disappeared, he had apparently went back to Korea to visit family or something like that, but he just disappeared, and Fukuoka never heard back from him, and I never had the chance to meet him. So, Kenta, who also played bass on the Imamura album managed to jump in on short notice.

For this gig, when we put together the list of songs, to sort of reflect the event we thought it would be fun to cover a couple of songs from both japanese and korean artists, so I was asked to re-arrange the songs "Mr Mr" by SNSD and "Invader" by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu to an arrangement that would fit a metal band.

Now, we're sort of inching closer to what I really wanted to discuss, which is inspiration - and transformation! You see, "Invader" has a breakdown in the later part of the song - and breakdowns aren't uncommon in metal either. But it did need some adjustment to make it a bit more riffy, and chuggy, so I took some creative liberty there, and made it so. I finished up the arrangement, tabbed it out for the band and we got to rehearsing and playing the show.

A couple of months pass, I'm back in Sweden, and pretty soon after I release "a silent shore" I started working on new tracks, which would eventually become "Scandinavian Lullabyes". And for "The Raven Way" I think the song grew together like a sort of Frankensteins monster - I had many parts that I felt were cool, but maybe missing a whole, but then there it was - the monster it was meant to become. One of these parts was the breakdown, and here I went with that old proven method of creativity - stealing! ...that is, the breakdown, is basically the breakdown I rearranged for Invader! Now, if you listen to it, it's not exactly the same of course, it's had it share of creative transformation, but maybe, now that you know, you might not be able to unhear it.

But reflecting on it further - I'm not sure a younger version of myself would be comfortable with sharing this fact. I recall almost being a bit disappointed when I learned that the iconic dual lead guitar "chorus" (I guess you'd call it a chorus?) from the song "Scarified" by Racer X was actually lifted straight out of Johann Cristoph Friedrich Bach's 1784 Harpsichord Concerto in A maj! Or the fact that Yngwie Malmsteens heartwrenching Icarus Dream Suite was based on Albioni's Adagio. I felt like it cheapened it, you know?

That it wasn't theirs, not really.

And I still feel like that about the breakdown in "The Raven Way" as well, like it wasn't mine. But, was it Kyary's? (or rather Yasutaka Nakata)? I don't think so either really.

I guess what it really comes down to is inspiration. Maybe, what's even worse in that sense, is - imagine how much you play or write that you don't even realize is a copy of something else. And I don't mean: "Oh, there's only so many notes, and so many conventional chord progressions, there's bound to be similarities!" but rather when you write something, and you realize way later: "Oh, wait, that melody.. it's actually the motif from so and so!".

Now, of course, I'm not saying stealing someone elses music and ideas is a good thing, I hope you realize that. Rather, what I'm saying is that I think it's important to really get used to the fact that you're really the sum of your inspiration, and that it might be a good idea to own that fact, you know? To pay respect to those who came before, and in a cool martial arts kind of way, you can be the deshi, the apprentice in a line of masters of a particular school that came before you..

food for thought! keep on rockin'!