Name: Under the Firmament by SYMPHORGY
Duration: 6 min 56 s
Description: music/arrangement/guitars/vocal/production : Tony Symphorgy

music/arrangement/guitars/vocal/production : Tony Symphorgy

demo

Under the Firmament

music/arrangement/guitars/vocal/production: Tony Symphorgy

God's Shit

Inhumanity (demo)

Sacred Rape

Cover of "Behind The Mask", one of the earliest techno(synth)-pop music written by Yellow Magic Orchestra [info >> below]

I’d like to thank my good friend Øystein (@islandstonegarden)for his great contribution and patience!!   
It’s the second collab with him (first one was "Perforated Hills"), and is for my second attempt to transform early techno-music into rock version (first one was "Rydeen" - pls check it out on my page if you have spare time).
To see the original lyrics, visit the copy>> bit.ly/2d0WJLK
Hope you enjoy!!!  Any feedback will be appreciated!!!

The original song was first produced in 1978(by Ryuichi Sakamoto) for a TV commercial for Seiko quartz, and for the album 'Solid State Survivor' in 1980 with lyrics penned by Chris Mosdell, while previously performed several times during 1978-79. 

The song was later revised by Michael Jackson, who added new lyrics and had intended to include it into his album ‘Thriller’(despite the approval of Sakamoto and Mosdell, it was eventually removed from his album due to the legal issues with their label), and many cover versions were also made by others since then - such as Greg Phillinganes (a kind of Reprise of M.Jackson's), Eric Clapton (Rock arrangement), Self-cover by Sakamoto featuring Bernard Fowler, Ronnie Drayton et al (Alternative Hard Rock version against Clapton's, in a live album  ‘Media Bahn Live’ in 1986), etc.

Our project began about 7 months ago.
For the arrangement, firstly we made a kind of literal cover of the YMO's original, for which we followed its instrumentation as much as possible (all done with programming though)so that we could use it as a foundation for own development.

Since I found that the original had a kind of typical rock progression - i.e, the main theme/riff has F-Db-Eb-Cm/C, which is often heard in other rock music(unlike the rest of works YMO produced usually have more complex progression & phrasings), I thought that it wouldn't be so difficult to arrange it with rock instrumentation.

But it has not been easier than estimated to arrange and to remaster all instruments to fit to new additions I'd first thought of, and taken so long since then, for I realized that the original was already strongly structuralized and left few space for adding some without being too crowded... besides, I’m not really good at manipulating MIDI stuffs to be fitted to/with the live instruments, and certainly, because of very small amount of time I have had recently to do music.

Anyway, finally I could somehow manage to do it..
Ours is a kind of mixture of the YMO's original and other covers that have those additional verses with “new lyrics”- for which I arranged and played the guitar phrases instead of vocals.  Original’s vocoder part is kept as Øystein made it possible!
Sorry for long explanation but thanks again for listening and reading!

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[Music info]

Øystein Hagen; Vocoder & Initial Programming of the Instruments marked [*] below.
Hiroshi Kohno; All Other Synths & Revision of [*] / Arrangement, Addition of Guitars, Drums & Others / Mixing / Artwork

>>for Original Instrumentation (except Vocoder, all made w/DAW)
-Vocoder  (for Roland VP)
-Drums 1* (Kick, Snare & Hi-hat)
-Synth 1*(Sequencer of Arpeggiater from intro- for Moog III-C/Roland MC-8)
-Synth 2*(Brass Sections of Main Theme- for Prophet-5  )
-Synth 3 (Bass Synth- for Multimoog/ARP Odyssey )
-Synth 4 (Lead Synths : Female Choirs on left-right & Male on right- for Polymoog)
-Synth 5 (String Sections of Backing in Vocoder parts & Ending- for Jupiter 4)
-Synth 6 (Several fills of Clavi & Computer Sounds- for Prophet-5/III-C)

>>Additions (except Synth, all done w/ live-recording)
-Drums 2 (Cymbals, Synth Tom, etc)
-Bass Guitar (Overlayed onto Synth 3)
-Lead Guitars (×2 : Solo,  "Guitar Vocal" & all Fills)
-Rhythm Guitars (×2 : Clean one on left & Distortion riff on right=onto Synth 2)
-Synth 7 (Add. onto Synth 4 & 6- for Oberheim)

Under the Firmament

SYMPHORGY

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