Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakamoto came to worldwide fame as a member of influential Japanese synth-pop outfit Yellow Magic Orchestra. Making abundant use of new synthesizers, samplers and recording technology, they pioneered a new electro-pop sound, with tracks like “Firecracker / Computer Game” becoming electro classics in the east and west. Sakamoto also pursued his own solo work, achieving a commercial breakthrough as YMO split up with his score to the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (which he also acted in). This also marked one of his finest musical unions with Japan frontman David Sylvian. Sakamoto has collaborated with many others since then, including David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Iggy Pop, and Berlin-based electronic music artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai). The pair met when Carsten was performing in Tokyo, and the introduction led to them working together and forming their own unique electronic sound, with Sakamoto’s minimal piano complementing Nicolai’s glowing digital tapestry. Consistently pushing boundaries in electronic music, these are two musicians who will always be ahead of the game.
In their 2013 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, the unlikely duo discusses their respective musical backgrounds, their approach to collaboration, their absorbing live performances, and more.
Hosted by Torsten Schmidt Our week is coming to an end and we figured it’s probably time to slow the BPM’s a little bit down, and in order to do so it is our honor to welcome two experts in this, Mr. Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Please give them a warm welcome. [applause] Both of you have been in the city quite a lot. You have lived here, if I
understand correctly. Do you feel the city sounds different when it rains? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Alva Noto Yes. Torsten Schmidt When do you like the sound of the city the best? Ryuichi Sakamoto The city of New York? Torsten Schmidt For starters, yeah, seeing that we’re here now. Ryuichi Sakamoto I used to like the radio communication in the taxi between the taxi driver and the station, but nowadays they’ve been using cell phones so it’s not very
interesting any more. But there used to be a lot of that, I loved that. Torsten Schmidt All the different languages that they used? Ryuichi Sakamoto Languages, but also, most of the time it’s been feeding back between the
drivers and the station, so it sounds very, very kind of topical to me because
of a lot of delays between the conversations. Torsten Schmidt And those create other new spaces for other sounds to get into, right? I have
the feeling that Carsten – who, by the way, had a lecture here before that is very recommendable, you should
go and look that up on the video - you kind of like those spaces in between and when there’s certain structures emerging that you don’t really expect. Alva Noto Yeah, of course. I mean, New York is a machine. The city is really a machine,
because of the density and so on. And, of course, you can always find moments
when you think, “Wow, what a great sound, what a great mix of different things.” The subway or ventilation or machinery going all night. There’s always something, of course. Ryuichi Sakamoto That reminds me that a very unique sound of New York is the sound of air
conditioning, AC. Actually, a long time ago, I recorded it in the very late
night, like two or three in the morning. Just accidentally one of my friends
was staying very close to Times Square, so I went there and opened the window
and recorded the sound of the city. And, of course, because it’s early morning, it’s less car traffic and I found that a very unique, characteristic sound is AC. We had a blackout for almost two days some years ago and, of course, the AC was all gone and it was totally silent. I loved that. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt Now, your hometown of Tokyo actually has a lot of ACs as well. Do they sound different? Ryuichi Sakamoto American AC’s are much louder. Probably, you know, Japan’s people are very keen
to minimize things like TVs or cars or anything. Also, they’ll make things quieter, so even one of the Japanese AC’s is called ‘Quietness’ or something. They love it, I don’t know why. Torsten Schmidt It’s one of the things that visitors always strike about, especially Tokyo or
other metropolitan Japanese areas, how there’s this vast density and this vast
technology and still you find anywhere you look a little place, which is maybe
five inches wide, and there’s a little tree growing there and a little oasis
of silence. Ryuichi Sakamoto Do you think so? Alva Noto I think each city’s a little bit different. I mean, especially when you talk about the difference between Japan and New York, Tokyo and New York. For instance, I was very surprised that in Tokyo it was so quiet when I was the first time in Tokyo, in the mornings. Sunday morning, it was really quiet and I think I never remember any quiet day in New York. Ryuichi Sakamoto Berlin is very quiet, too. Alva Noto Yeah, very quiet too. Torsten Schmidt But you were not born in Berlin, right? Alva Noto No. Torsten Schmidt Was Chemnitz even [called Chemnitz back then]? Alva Noto Karl-Marx-Stadt. Torsten Schmidt When you were born it was still Karl-Marx-Stadt? Ryuichi Sakamoto There’s still Marx there, the centre of the city. Alva Noto Yes, from the former East Germany. Ryuichi Sakamoto Is it eight meters high? It’s so huge. Alva Noto I think with the base it’s a little bit higher than eight, but something like
that, yeah. Yeah, the city was called after Karl Marx, and they just named it and now
it’s basically got the old name back. But I really laugh that I basically have
in my passport a birthplace that doesn’t exist any more. It’s quite interesting, I think. Torsten Schmidt So you’re a post-place person? Alva Noto I don’t know if I’m a post-place person, but I like the idea that if somebody would ask me what is this city, I can say it doesn’t exist any more. Torsten Schmidt So what is the sound of this city that doesn’t exist any more? What do you
think about when you think back? Alva Noto It’s not really exciting for me, or was not so exciting, the sound, because probably I never gave it so much attention. I think the first time I gave it attention was when I started travelling, then I realized every place is really different. Then you get aware of the differences of the places and so on. But it’s a quieter place, it’s a smaller city, but it’s an industrial city. I remember one very specific thing, and the other day we talked about it with my friend Olaf that we are running the label with, that we grew up in a pretty much still post-World War II situation because every Wednesday at one o’clock the sirens started
going, like in wartime. Actually, it was a test in the middle of the day, and
everybody was, “Sure, this is the test on Wednesday at one.” If it was not
Wednesday, one o’clock you know something was really [happening]. But this to
grow up with, I mean, it’s probably something like when you grow up next to a
church where the bell is going, but this was part of our routine and somehow I
remember this very clearly, for instance, this is a very clear sonic memory. Ryuichi Sakamoto Was it very loud? Alva Noto Very loud. Ryuichi Sakamoto The whole city? Alva Noto The whole city and it was not only one, it was maybe three, four hundred all over the city going at the same time. Of course, they had all a different pitch, so sonically it was very interesting, but it was a bit scary too at the same time, because you never know, is it one or maybe is something happening? Torsten Schmidt I’m really curious because in western Germany that same drill happened but on
a Saturday at one o’clock. But it was the same thing, and obviously, a lot of
the sirens were older. I wonder if they had different pitches on purpose. Alva Noto I think we grew up basically in the Cold War situation on different sides, so the strategies to scare the people have been very similar. Torsten Schmidt That’s the sound that you remember, what kind of music do you actually
remember? Alva Noto I think as you mentioned, the taxi radio, for instance. This is a story I really like to tell because when we grew up in East Germany, in order to find the right radio station to listen to the right music, we always tuned in to a radio station, let’s say, from the UK or from the western part of Germany. And depending on how strong the signal was, we could sometimes receive it or not depending on the weather, but sometimes it was depending as well on this frequency being blocked sometimes by military frequencies. And I remember that, you know, “OK, I just have to wait until they stop and then the radio show will come up.” And I remember sitting in front of the radio and listening to numbers stations, like somebody counting Russian numbers for two hours. I
have to say, after a while I was thinking, “What is behind these numbers?” So
it’s a kind of code, obviously. They’re transmitting whatever, you don’t know,
you’re making up your mind, and I liked that, and I think it left a little bit
of a trace in the way, for instance, you use voice in tracks or certain language as code. Ryuichi Sakamoto How old were you? Alva Noto This was basically from when you start listening to radio, 12, 13, to the end,
until the ’90s it was still there. Torsten Schmidt I guess, there’s something about the musical quality of a foreign language that a lot of us experience. For example, when they start learning martial arts and they go and train for a kata in the karate lessons and then, all of a sudden, you really get into the rhythm of your teacher counting you in and it almost becomes a musical bit. When was the first foreign language counting
that you remember? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, after the War, in Japan probably as a kid, we listened to music from the
West more than Japanese music. Maybe 80% of music we listened to was western,
American or European, so we used to listen to this music without understanding
those languages, what was sung. Probably even now, Japanese people are really
used to listening to music from the West without understanding, so that means
they listen to music just as a sound without understanding the meaning. Torsten Schmidt Can you remember your first active memories of listening to music? Ryuichi Sakamoto Probably, I was three-years old and the first music I loved – it’s a bit
embarrassing, but it’s Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Torsten Schmidt Why would you be embarrassed about that? Ryuichi Sakamoto Because it’s very sentimental and romantic. [laughter] Torsten Schmidt But I guess we’re all grown-up’s, it’s very all right... Ryuichi Sakamoto Probably, yes. That was my very first memory. Torsten Schmidt And how did you get in touch with that? Ryuichi Sakamoto One of my uncles was a record collector, so I often visited his room and picked
up some vinyls and I liked it. Torsten Schmidt So that’s probably parental advice for everyone at home, make sure you pick a
good uncle or godfather to have the right record collection. Ryuichi Sakamoto Probably, yeah. Torsten Schmidt Carsten, did you have a record collection in your family as well? Alva Noto I think from my parents’ side there was not much happening from music, but my
brother and myself started a record collection, and I think we’ve really been
proud of every record we listened to and we’ve been very careful about the 15
records we had. Ryuichi Sakamoto How did you listen? Alva Noto I mean, the situation was you could listen to classical music quite easily,
you could listen to jazz music quite easily in the time when we grew up,
specifically free jazz was a big movement. And everything, of course, that was coming from the West, like more avantgarde stuff and so on, mostly to tape. Ryuichi Sakamoto But did the authorities say free jazz was forbidden music? Alva Noto No, they had been absolutely open about it. Actually, they really gave it a
big [support]. There was a big scene actually, an East German scene, and there
was a big exchange between the East and the West already in the early ’80s and
some of the artists from the East could even travel to the West. It was not so
hermetic as you would imagine it. Torsten Schmidt Yeah, this is the strange thing, that a lot of the great jazz musicians toured
East Germany easier than the West because there was government funding for it. Alva Noto Yeah, and there was, for instance, the situation that Laurie Anderson was considered as jazz and so she
came to a jazz festival. Ryuichi Sakamoto Really? Alva Noto Yes, and of course, this was totally for us the highlight and we all went to
this jazz festival to see her. Ryuichi Sakamoto I know she was your hero, heroine. And I heard the composer Ligeti at that time, you know? He was forbidden to write chromatically, so when he went abroad to
Berlin he passionately wrote the music chromatically that became Atmosphères, his early work. So he was forbidden. Alva Noto Yeah, I mean Ligeti is a little bit of a strange case because the fame of
Ligeti came with [2001] more or less, through that, but we knew Ligeti by this time. Ryuichi Sakamoto The country Hungary, probably. Alva Noto Yeah, because we travelled to Hungary and we bought records from Hungary a
lot, from Poland, Yugoslavia a
little bit, and each of the countries had a little bit of a different release
policy, being a little bit more open in this way, like Yugoslavia was very
open to pop records, for instance. On the other hand, there was a big Polish
and Czech movement in electronic music, but we didn’t know it yet and it was
really big. Everything electronically was very, very open, for instance, in
East Germany. Ryuichi Sakamoto Each country has a different situation. Alva Noto I remember I saw Tangerine Dream live two times in East
Germany, they came to my city, they toured. Ryuichi Sakamoto But they’re not that chromatical. Alva Noto No. Sorry, this is a little bit of a different topic, but, for instance, Hungary was famous for releasing one of the only Steve Reich records, and
then they had really weird avantgarde composers from the, let’s say, chromatic
scale and so on and there was a small record label from the East, Tanner. They
had been specifically interested in, let’s say, modern classical music. Torsten Schmidt Now, Japan was sitting in a very particular position in all this political
climate. Were you able to buy YMO records? Alva Noto Of course not, no, but we knew about them and we taped it. I mean, we were
sitting in front of the radio and taped everything, or somebody had the record
and you borrowed your record, one of your 15 records you borrowed to him and
then you borrowed one. So there was a little distribution system existing. Torsten Schmidt Can you remember which YMO records you liked? Alva Noto I think because I taped it I don’t have this visual memory of the covers any more, because you have everything on tape and sometimes only one track. But I
remember we had, of course, the classics and then more the later stuff, what was a more recent release when I was younger. I mean, YMO was for me already when I started listening there had been quite a lot of YMO records released. Ryuichi Sakamoto How about Kraftwerk, did you like Kraftwerk? Alva Noto I didn’t like Kraftwerk at the time. Ryuichi Sakamoto You didn’t like it? Alva Noto No, because it was too poppy for me. Torsten Schmidt But you quite liked them? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Torsten Schmidt What did you like about them? They were not too poppy for you? Ryuichi Sakamoto When I found Kraftwerk was very early. They were one of the German rock
[bands] in the ‘70s... Torsten Schmidt When they were still a rock band, before
Autobahn? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes, long hair, hand made oscillators, etc. They were next to Neu! and [Can]. I didn’t
like Tangerine Dream so much but Kraftwerk was much better. Neu! was very strong, I think. So yeah, I liked Kraftwerk. Alva Noto For me, Kraftwerk, for instance, I understood the first time when I was
invited in Sonar and they played there. Then I was really seeing them for the first time live and then that changed everything. Ryuichi Sakamoto You became a fan? Alva Noto Absolutely. Even people told me, “It’s not like in the old days what you’re
going to see, forget about it. We’re not going tonight to see the concert.” I
was standing there and it was like, “This a piece of art,” I’ve never seen
people being so... visually, it was so well done, conceptually with the robots, and I was thinking, “Wow, this is so strong.” So I never experienced that impact and since then I started going to live shows again, actually, to see live things. Ryuichi Sakamoto Kraftwerk came to Japan to perform first time in 1981 and three of us, YMO,
went to see it and we met four of them, still original members of Kraftwerk,
and three from YMO and we all went to a disco after the show. Florian and Ralf
started dancing on the floor, yes, this kind of dancing. [demonstrates /
laughs] Alva Noto German style. Ryuichi Sakamoto German style. So that was ‘81. Then they had an eight-day or 12-day series of
concerts at the MOMA, right, two years ago. I went to see two of them, and I
saw Ralf again, first time in 29 years. Torsten Schmidt Did his dancing improve in the meantime? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, we didn’t go to a disco this time, so I didn’t see his dancing. Torsten Schmidt Probably to give a context, because most of us were not born then even, but you were not just anyone meeting them right there. I mean, if that was ‘81 that was after the big tour where you played the Budokan and all, right? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Torsten Schmidt Would it be all right if we played one or two minutes of the Budokan video? (video: Yellow Magic Orchestra Live at
Budokan) Torsten Schmidt I guess that deserves a little bit of a clap. [applause] Now, people have been to various events in the past few days, including an
event called The United States Of
Bass, and when you just hear the opening bars of that song, especially in
this city, this has resonated a great deal, and genres like hip-hop or a lot
of the dance music that came later, probably would not really exist without that sort of stuff. When did you first realize people are taking what you have done there and doing something else with it? Ryuichi Sakamoto I don’t know. I guess, the first one who covered our music was actually
Michael Jackson, around that time. Torsten Schmidt On which song? Ryuichi Sakamoto “Behind The Mask.” That track
was going to be on the Thriller album, so we got a letter from Michael’s office and it said, “We covered your song ‘Behind The Mask’ and we’re going to
put it on the new album and we need 100% of the writer’s share.” So we wanted
to listen to what the music was like and, of course, they said, “We cannot bring it to you that you hear.” So, without hearing the music I cannot judge if 100% of writer’s share is fair or not, so we refused it. Shit. [laughter] If we said ‘yes,’ probably I would have ten different houses all over the world. Torsten Schmidt But somehow I have the feeling you’re doing all right anyway. Ryuichi Sakamoto Then the next one who covered actually the same song, “Behind The Mask,” was
Eric Clapton. But it’s a different way than the hip-hop guys have used some elements from our music. Also, actually I met Afrika Bambaataa in the ’80s and he said YMO and Kraftwerk were the two biggest inspirations for hip-hop. He was a big guy but very, very shy and he asked me to write my autograph. So probably he made some big connection between hip hop culture and techno music maybe, what do you think? Torsten Schmidt He might have had a hand or two in that, yes. There’s some stuff that maybe we
play at the very end when everyone’s getting out. But what I found most fascinating when you look at the entire video, which you will obviously find online, is that knowing how much technology we buy these days from Japan, and especially the vintage stuff, hardly anything you see on there is actually
Japanese. You see Buchla systems,
you see ARP’s, what else is there? An
Oberheim. Ryuichi Sakamoto A Prophet. Torsten Schmidt Sequential Circuits. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah, Oberheim, Polymoog maybe. Torsten Schmidt So, did the Japanese music instrument industry not exist to that degree yet?
Why were you more using these kinds of machines? Ryuichi Sakamoto It existed, of course. We used the Roland MC-8, that was the very center of creating music for us. Torsten Schmidt I think you also used a Korg sequencer, which is a Japanese company as well. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes, Korg. Then maybe a few years later the DX-7 came out, and we really loved it. And our vocoder was also maybe a Korg or Roland. Torsten Schmidt The striking thing I found when you look at the set-up as such is, with the Korg and the MC-8, that you have two different sequencers in the whole thing. So how did that work? How did you make all these different sequencers gel as a band, in talking to each other? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, up until the second generation MC-4 came out. Actually, the MC-8 didn’t
have a memory, so during the show our programmer had to program the next song
and the one after that, the second one. If someone hit the cable or something,
that turned off the MC-8, that’s it. Torsten Schmidt Concert over. Ryuichi Sakamoto Over. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt So how many units did you then bring on the show. Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, we used two MC-8 and probably we had two as a back-up. Torsten Schmidt Carsten, there’s been companies like the VEB Vermona at the time, but can you remember when you recall your first electronic instrument? Alva Noto I was not actually actively making music in the East German times. I only know
from my friends Olaf and Frank, who had an electronic band, and they had been
very much interested to see a Commodore
64, or this kind of thing, or
Atari. But it was simply not affordable for us, it was simply much too expensive. I mean, you needed to put all your money away for at least three or four years in order to buy one of these instruments. By the time you maybe had the money collected, other instruments had been available. I think there was a drum machine from Vermona existing, there was some synths, but not super-exciting for us. Torsten Schmidt What did excite you? Alva Noto I mean, what we made music with was very, very basic equipment. Let’s say, for
instance, I got much more excited to play with cassette loops, building little
tape loops. That was very easy and affordable. And taking radio shortwave
signals as a signal producer, what I still do today, it’s a great inspiration.
So you had already the radio and the tape, the same equipment what we recorded
with, we used as well to start making music. This was a very simple, basic way
of sketching things out. Torsten Schmidt And what of those techniques do you still apply when you do stuff today? Alva Noto Oh yeah, sure. The idea of the loops, for instance, was a very driving force
for me for a long time. Torsten Schmidt Did you do that with two tape decks or physically cutting the tape? Alva Noto In the beginning, I was really making my own cassettes, and only cassette. I used not even big loops or something running, and then later in the moment the computer came, of course, you did it with the computer, but there was a sampler in between, when we could afford a sampler. Torsten Schmidt Your job at the time was being a gardener, before you studied, right? Alva Noto I worked as a gardener for one year, yeah. Torsten Schmidt And then you studied what? Alva Noto Architecture. [I] specialized in landscape design. Torsten Schmidt Now, obviously, if you look at the way someone can construct music, there can
be some sort of parallel, right? Alva Noto Yeah, I think so. I think the way how I started making music was very architectural, I would say. I was not so much interested in melodies. Let’s say I was not interested in the facade of the building, I was rather
interested in the construction. I was much more interested in the rhythmic
parts of a track rather than writing a song or something. Torsten Schmidt You nod like you agree a lot. Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, that was the interesting part of this collaboration because we had such different backgrounds. I’m fully classically-trained since I was a kid and he’s not. His thinking on creating music is, to me, much more mathematical, based on numbers. It doesn’t have to be Russian numbers, but... Torsten Schmidt But one could argue that classical music is very numerical and logical as well. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah, in a way. Alva Noto But in the beginning I was everything calculating, because I worked with loops
in milliseconds, and I didn’t know what kind of bar system I’m using. And then Ryuichi came, “Ah yes, this is 5/4.” I say, OK, I didn’t know. Basically, then what you learn is that there’s a notation system, there’s the classical notation system, a language that I was not aware of. Basically, when Ryuichi talked about, “OK, this is an A,” and I was saying, “This is 220 Hertz, actually.” We talked about the same thing but there was a problem of translation. Lost in translation. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah, lost in translation. I am much more traditional in that sense because
I’m very classically-trained, but my curiosity is so huge and I always want to
forget what I have learned. That’s why I got to like his music, a new kind of music, so to me it’s very inspiring to look at how he creates music and how he designs sound and music. Torsten Schmidt But that’s a very tricky situation, because with that curiosity you learned a
lot about very different cultures, very different types of music, so there’s a
lot to forget for you as well all the time. How do you manage that process? Ryuichi Sakamoto I have to forget a lot, but I’m good at that. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt Now, like with every couple, there’s the question how did the two of you meet? Ryuichi Sakamoto It was probably late ’90s, ‘98 or ‘99, probably when you had a performance first time. First performance in Tokyo. Alva Noto My performance in Tokyo. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Actually, Ryoji Ikeda introduced us. Torsten Schmidt He was a really brilliant both visual and sound artist as well. Alva Noto He was in this day performing with me and then Ryoji came to me after the concert. He met us when we became really good friends because I was pushing the sound guys to put a bigger PA inside and he really loved that, that I was so hard fighting for the bigger PA. And we became kind of good friends and I said after the show, “You have time, come with me. I want to introduce you to some of my friends.” And then that’s how we met. Torsten Schmidt That was three or four years before your first actual release at least. Alva Noto Yeah, at least. Torsten Schmidt So what happened in the four years of dating? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, around that time, I was in totally different projects. It’s covering music of Antônio Carlos Jobim with Brazilian musicians. We actually went into Jobim’s house in Rio de Janeiro and we even used his own piano to record. And we covered some his music, and then we wanted to make a remix, and I asked him [points to Alva Noto] to remix one of our tracks, so he mixed Japanese music with bossa nova music. It was strange. The Brazilians didn’t like it, and I loved it. So... Torsten Schmidt Let me just see, because, then again it might not be too instrumental for what we’re talking about now but we could have played some. Okay, what was the first bit that you actually worked together on? Alva Noto I think around the same time I did a remix, Ryuichi was sending me a lot of material. I think you sent me one hour of material. Ryuichi Sakamoto Piano improvisations. Alva Noto Not only was a piano piece inside too but a lot of electronic, and then I really picked only the piano. And I made I think it was one of the first tracks that we released later on the first album. And I sent back, and Ryuichi was saying, “Nice, here’s another sketch.” [laughs] And then I sent this back too after a while and then I sent you another sketch. And then I think at some point I realized, OK this is like 40 or 50 minutes of music done already. But I simply was too shy to ask, “What can we do with this?” I not wanted to... Torsten Schmidt Impose. Alva Noto I was just waiting and I was thinking yeah, and then at some point because we had the label Raster-Noton I said, “I have to ask now.” And I wrote Ryuichi an email saying, “Do you mind we putting this out?” And he said, “Yeah, of course.” And that’s basically done. That was maybe a process of two years sending material back and forth. There was a lot of time in between to listen to what we did, and so it was not for me very new material, but I really enjoyed with this kind of combination of this very pure electronic music and this very beautiful, Satie-esque simple piano. Torsten Schmidt Shall we listen to some of that so people get a better idea? (music: Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto – “Iano” / applause) Alva Noto I need your [unintelligible]. Torsten Schmidt I’m not really sure whether they qualify as hand luggage. Yeah, and they can be fun and they sound even better when you sit over there. But the air-con fan is not part of the track right? Alva Noto Nice resonance. Torsten Schmidt So, if I understood correctly, you sent sketches over, then you worked on it. But then you went to perform those as well. How do you communicate that process of how to perform this thing in a live environment? Alva Noto I think for the piano was really clear. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Alva Noto Ryuichi is very specific about the piano and he has his own piano, there’s one in London. So we used this one. But other part was when I produced this kind of stuff I was, had a lot of time basically, right? And one of the main elements of this music was that I used always – all the little parts you hear, this is always the case of the piano fading out into the room. I love to use the parts where the piano was still there but almost disappearing into space. This being the samples I worked with. And there was another thing, from that the case, I always extended the sound with sine wave frequencies. They become kind of longer even. I didn’t know how to do that in life. It would be impossible because in the studio was a very long process to find a frequency, to calculate the frequencies. I worked with my studio and I have a brilliant programmer in the studio. We wrote a program doing this in real time. This was ideal to even sequence that in real time, there was a sequence as well. For my part, I needed to recreate the instruments who could do it in a live context. Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, my part is very easy. I just need to learn what I improvised. But because this music is all based on my improvisations, without any [written] music. So, I have to remember what I played, that’s it. Torsten Schmidt How much of that is actually pre-recorded and how much does happen there? When you see the show, you actually communicate quite a lot with looking at each other, and it seems like you have your own little in jokes going on at times. Alva Noto I use live Ableton, so it’s pretty easy to have little scenes, and we have cues. We know the cues. I know this is the cue for this and sometimes I have to smile because Ryuichi tries something totally out and I think, “Oh, interesting.” Ryuichi Sakamoto It’s flexible. Each section can be flexible, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. It depends on how we’re feeling. Alva Noto I mean there’s a few songs we never perform the same, for instance. And there’s some songs made the most fun for us where we don’t have any, we just know approximately what it will be like, but it’s always different. Torsten Schmidt And you don’t control the visuals as well right? Alva Noto Not anymore. In the beginning I did in the first tour, but I realized that it’s too difficult to control the visuals and at the same time do the music. So now we have somebody in the back controlling the visuals coming in going out and so on. Torsten Schmidt Because that’s something that’s really striking for everyone that mostly working in Ableton, how to take that show and make it something more entertaining than some person checking their emails and standing there with a laptop. Alva Noto Live Ableton is fantastic in the moment because of this extension of Max/MSP. So you can add a lot of little missing details that you sometimes miss or whatever. This is one thing, but the other thing is I still have a little bit analog gear with me. The visual connection, actually, we have two driving forces. One is actually Ryuichi’s piano, [which] can give basically all the MIDI information he’s playing. It’s a Synclavier, it’s a special piano I think. We use that information, so whatever Ryuichi is playing and the piano gives information to the visual computer, and as well to me, sometimes. I get in the sound from Ryuichi but at the same time the visual computer gets the sound in so I can use it to process it, for instance. And the visual computer can analyze it and create graphical patterns depending on each song. Torsten Schmidt You said that you are really particular about your piano. What piano are you actually using? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yamaha. Torsten Schmidt And how does it work? There is one show where you have more than one piano on the stage. How does that work? Ryuichi Sakamoto It’s not... Sometimes use two pianos but not for our [show]. Torsten Schmidt I know for a different show, but it’s something where I guess everyone in this room who has seen it is like, “How does it work?” Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, I have had some concerts with two MIDI pianos, and one is programmed. Well I played it, fixed it, programmed, and then the other piano I just play live. So, it’s basically both are played by myself. So it’s kind of a self duo. Torsten Schmidt Do you program the sequences on the other piano beforehand? Ryuichi Sakamoto Beforehand, of course. Torsten Schmidt Ah okay. Then you just... Alva Noto The piano can actually record what you do. So I think you played the piece. Ryuichi Sakamoto So it’s like duet. Because I know I know music... Piano A, Piano B. Same as a live duo concert. I pre-played the second piano, and then I play the other piano live. That’s it. Torsten Schmidt Can you control it from your main piano? Do you trigger certain sequences? Ryuichi Sakamoto No. Torsten Schmidt So it just runs and you follow. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. It could, it’s possible but... Torsten Schmidt There’s something about the power of a big acoustic instrument. Like, anyone who’s ever seen a Mahler symphony, and when you have eight upright basses, it’s one of the most powerful things you probably have heard. Have you ever thought of extending that two piano show to a bigger thing? Ryuichi Sakamoto Actually, I once arranged one of my music for eight pianos, and I really wanted to realize that music. But just lining eight pianos – eight MIDI pianos – but Yamaha Japan didn’t have that much MIDI pianos. So, we only could get two or three MIDI pianos at the same time. Unfortunately. Torsten Schmidt I see a light-bulb. Ryuichi Sakamoto It could be gorgeous. Torsten Schmidt I think we need to talk about that. Need to find the other five. Probably, for those of you who have not seen the show, let’s play probably a little bit of what it looks like, including the visuals. (video: Alva Noto & Ryuchi Sakamoto Live) (music: Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto – “Ax Mr. L” / applause) Torsten Schmidt Now, I guess this piece works kind of differently, ‘cause unlike, in a lot of the others, there’s some historical context to it as well, and the way the human brain works, it tries to make sense of things. And you just hint at it very, very briefly, and then it’s over again. I mean, our ADD generation is kind of use to that, but the people that really pay the big dollars for the concert tickets, how do they deal with it? Are they going like, “Come on, play the damn song”? Alva Noto Most of the people don’t recognize in the beginning. Yeah. It takes a lot of time. Ryuichi Sakamoto After their recognize what this is, of course, they get frustrated. Sometimes, like, most like it Latin countries, like Italy or Spain... I was sort of forced to play the whole song. I didn’t, but I felt a lot of pressure. “Play it, play it, play it” from the audience. So, I was almost going to play the whole song. Then, I stopped it, and that created more frustration. [laughs] So, maybe, just play only fragments, that would be better. Torsten Schmidt You seem to quite enjoy frustrating the audience in that sense. Ryuichi Sakamoto That’s not my intention. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt But, nevertheless, for those who are wondering, “What are they on about,” it’s your first soundtrack scoring job that was hinted in there, right? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Very first soundtrack, yes. Torsten Schmidt And, the movie was called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Torsten Schmidt And there’s rumors you got that job because by that time you were more of a pop star, but you got the job of actually doing the music by being pretty brave and courageous. Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, unfortunately, the director of this film, Mr. Nagisa Oshima, passed away early this year, but when I got this offer from him, he asked me to act in the film first. So, of course, in my mind, I said, “Yes, of course I would.” But then before I said yes, I got an idea and said, “Let me do music.” And he said, “Of course, you can.” Then I said, “Yes, I would do acting in your film.”
I don’t know why I said that, but it worked. Torsten Schmidt It did kind of work judging from the amount of soundtrack work you got later. Ryuichi Sakamoto Mm. Torsten Schmidt Seeing that that was your first experience of writing a soundtrack of which you did so many more, what took longer, the actual acting or writing the music? Ryuichi Sakamoto Writing music took longer. The whole shooting took only maybe two months, and I was lucky I got three months to make music. It’s very unusual for soundtrack composers to have that long period of time to make music. Torsten Schmidt Yeah, rumor has it that for another movie for which you actually won the Oscar for, you did not have that much time, right? Ryuichi Sakamoto I had only two weeks. Torsten Schmidt And that was after haggling with an Italian – Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Torsten Schmidt – who only wanted to give you how much time? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, I had two weeks. One week in Tokyo to write music and record, and then I brought all the materials to London, which they had that production. Then the next day of my arrival, I had to go to Abbey Road to record the actual music. But at that time, in the ’80s, we did not have good communication between London and Tokyo, so when I arrived in London, the film was edited differently. The music wouldn’t fit, so I had to rewrite overnight to prepare the recording for Abbey Road the next day. We didn’t have a computer to recalculate musical tempo and the sequence, the time sequence, so I had to use my pocket calculator. Torsten Schmidt You should have called Carsten. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Tick tock. Torsten Schmidt I somehow have the feeling that working with a Japanese director first and then with Bertolucci is a little different maybe. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Very different. Very different. Well not only was Oshima was Japanese but he is that kind of film director who gave us almost total freedom so he didn’t give me any strict direction or something and just he let me do free, whatever. And during the three months of recording, he just showed up once to listen to everything I got that time, and then he left, no complaints or no fixes, no revisions to anything. But working with an Italian film director was totally different. So first time I was at Abbey Road in the very big room with him, British string orchestra and the first time Bertolucci said, “Where are the verses? Where are the verses?” You know I’ve got trumpets and trombones and the horns. I explained, “We will have brasses tomorrow, we will overdub brasses tomorrow. And we record strings first today.” “No that’s impossible.” And he didn’t understand all the dubbing at that time. And also he shouted, “Where’s the big screen?” In those days, they had the musicians and a big screen in the studio and that three, two, one and music starts. And the conductor direct according to that film, the signs on the film. And the musicians had to react to whatever the mood of the sequence, so he shouted. He intend to have the big screen in the studio for musicians to watch the film. So one hour later, the big screen was brought to the studio but, obviously, no musicians watched the film because we had the click so we didn’t need the big screen. But he is happy, of course, the Bertolucci was happy. Anyway. Torsten Schmidt Well scoring for film, I guess, is a something a lot of people in here would love to do themselves at some stage. And I want to probably pick one scene, and just assuming that most people would know the general theme, would like to know what you did in order to fit it to a different screen? It’s only one minute so I tried to pick an example that’s rather easy and let’s hope the syncing works better this time. That works really well so far. Yeah, new Magic City Series out now. Can you please stop downloading whatever you’re downloading in this room so we can use the Internet? Alva Noto That’s the sound. Torsten Schmidt Do I have sound on here? (video: clip of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) Torsten Schmidt Can you recall how you approached that because it’s definitely one of the movie scenes where the soundtrack works very different than you what you expect it to be and there’s a really interesting friction of the visual content and what you hear and how that works with the rest of what you’re doing in a movie. Ryuichi Sakamoto I don’t, I didn’t have any theory or anything, any method. I just followed my instinct. It’s strange that, you know if. Torsten Schmidt Don’t worry don’t worry Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah, if I have to make music now, I would write totally different music. Might not be as good as this. I don’t know, it sounds like a copy and paste to me. It could be something else, like it could be some fragment of pop music or something. Torsten Schmidt But there’s still hints of the theme in there but just very lightly. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yes. Well, actually, my intention was to create another story, different from the story we see in this film. Another kind of storytelling structure by music, so I, of course, the method of leitmotif. Which [inaudible] leitmotif, so I wrote four different themes for four different characters, and combined them. That’s probably the only method I used out of them. Torsten Schmidt Was it different later to write for something where you’re not one of the characters? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, it’s hard to say. The main engine I wrote this music was my acting, because it was so bad. I almost fell into the floor when I saw first time my acting. That is before I started to make music, so that was the major engine to write music. [laughs] Torsten Schmidt Speaking of engines, I mean this war has clearly a strong humanitarian message as well. You seem to devote a lot of time of your work to that as well. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Torsten Schmidt So you’re active in I take it anti-nuclear? Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Torsten Schmidt Do you do that aside from the music or do you try to combine them in a way? Ryuichi Sakamoto Well, like nine or ten years ago I became a very conscious about environmental issues. Then many people ask me, “Why don’t you make kind of eco music, or how would it be possible to write eco music?” And I didn’t think about eco music, you know I cannot write eco music. It would be too new-agey kind of music, which I don’t like. Sometimes when we have to go to the dental clinic you know they play very easy eco music, and I hate it. So I cannot write eco kind of music right. But my theory is there would be a kind of an eco conscious thrash metal band. They don’t have to change their music, but they can change the source of the power in the form of fossil fuel to you know, renewable energy, so. Torsten Schmidt People should probably get into bikes instead of mosh pits and power the amps that way. Ryuichi Sakamoto So simply the music or culture and infrastructure are two different things to me. Torsten Schmidt Actually getting some signals about being short on time, but what can people expect from what we’ll see tomorrow? Alva Noto I mean the music, and the little video you just saw I mean give you maybe a little bit of impression. But it’s a very simple setup, it’s basically piano and electronics and we have a screen behind us, which will provide the visuals. It’s not a big rock setup. It’s not so like – it’s very clear and easy to understand elements. Torsten Schmidt I found it almost really interesting how the place determines your, especially your combined show. If you just think of the different places it happened in Barcelona, for example, when you played in an open amphitheater, how different it is to that really beautiful hall as well. I mean they’re all good venues but it’s extremely different for you as a listener to take it in. How different is it for you to play there in these different environments? Alva Noto I think one aspect is of course the connection to the audience. Like some venues are great, you really feel the audience and audience can see you better and the energy in the room is simply working really from the beginning. But, for instance, last year on tour we had one location where I never experienced something like that, where, basically, I played a sound and I heard a different sound coming back. And I said, “OK, can somebody please switch off this speaker sitting in the seating there,” and I had a discussion for one hour. I said, “There must be a speaker up there.” They said, “No, there is nothing, there is nothing.” And then we looked in the venue and we realized there is a very... like a decorative element of... that the architect puts in, some plexiglass, what was very specifically ordered in a circular would bounce the sound back in such a weird way that it almost like sounded like a Mickey Mouse voice. And I was sending a bass drum out it made like [imitates Mickey Mouse]. Ryuichi Sakamoto Dusseldorf? Alva Noto Dusseldorf, yeah. I had a long discussion with the guys with the PA, and I was like, “I don’t believe you. It’s not crystal clear. There’s something broken, something broken in your speakers, some speaker’s broken.” Ryuichi Sakamoto Actually, that’s short wave delays, which create that random sound. Alva Noto The weird thing was that I on stage could hear that sound from my position, Ryuichi not so much anymore. Anybody in the audience not, only me. [laughs] And I really had to laugh during the concert because I heard always this Mickey Mouse imitation of my bass drum. Ryuichi Sakamoto What strange punishment. [laughter] Torsten Schmidt I guess we would, despite the time can we take one or two questions maybe. And there’s also one track. We strongly obviously we always encourage you to research both gentlemen’s material further at your own leisure, but here’s a little something that you might know, well sampled, and yeah let’s hope YouTube is better this time. (music: Yellow Magic Orchestra – “Computer Game (Theme from the Circus)”) Torsten Schmidt Yeah as you guessed there’s more to figure out in that one, as with many other tracks. Do we have time for one question? Does it work? Two. Maybe question, audience, someone? Audience Member Thank you so much for being here and sharing with us today. So I was wondering if there was one thing that you guys wish that you would leave behind when you’re gone based upon your musical experiences, what would that be? Torsten Schmidt You know, we bring the easy ones at the end. Ryuichi Sakamoto I guess, you know you see a collaboration by two men, which have totally different backgrounds. It’s almost two different genres where we came from. Still, we could collaborate, make something we can enjoy. That’s great for me, I don’t know. Alva Noto Yeah of course, me too. I think it’s not so much that you think about what you leave behind, I think it’s rather you look forward always and then you keep forgetting what you did. [It’s] better because it gives you energy to face new things and be curious and I think that’s maybe... Yeah, I think all the five albums we did are always very much enjoyed. Looking forward to the next one. You could continue endlessly in a way, but you want to make it interesting so sometimes you make it more difficult, I think it’s more look forward than rather back. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah, the more we’ve done, the possibility gets. We didn’t want to repeat our past. Alva Noto Yeah. I made five albums and I think we consider them as a circle, a body of work. And we both want to continue. We wrote some new pieces, we play maybe tomorrow. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. After we’ve finished the fifth album we’ve been really looking for something big jump, you know, totally on another level of something we could. We’re still waiting. Alva Noto Waiting for inspiration. Ryuichi Sakamoto Yeah. Torsten Schmidt Well I guess you did quite good for the first five albums, so we’re really looking forward to the next ones. But looking back for at least the last two hours, we’d like to thank you very much, and please give it up for Carsten Nicolai and Sakamoto Sama. [applause]