On the subject of "non-classical" artists, someone said they didn't know who Ryuichi Sakamoto was. He is a Japanese composer and pianist who does lots of film music (including the Last Emperor) and has wonderful solo piano compositions. There's a magazine in Japan put out by Rittor Music called Piano Style, the magazine has sheet music and a CD, and on this webpage you can hear about a minute of this song, Asience (which I plan to start playing as soon as I can get George Winston's version of the Canon nailed!)

The page is in Japanese, but the song title for Asience is in English letters. If you go down a little more than half the page, you should see this song title, and a column of blue speaker icons, the first one is for Asience (if you can't see any English lettering, change your encoding). It should say "track1.ram" and then have the icon. Click on the icon and you should be able to hear it. (it uses real player). Here's the link:

http://www.rittor-music.co.jp/hp/ps/index.html

Let me know if it works! This piece is one of my favorites right now.

It won't work on my Mac, but will try it on a Windows PC tomorrow!

Either no one has cared to listen to this, or they listened, hated it and were too polite to comment

If you have a Windows PC, and can use Real Player, it should work, so give it a try. (Sorry it's all in Japanese...)

If you would post it as an MP3 file (standard audio format for the internet and computer gadgets) or as an MPEG or QuickTime file, then I could listen to it... who uses RealPlayer? "Get real" and use a standard non-proprietary format!

Don't be too hard on me, the link is not my site, it's from the Japanese site for Rittor Publishing, and I'm sure you know that Japan has been way behind the US in terms of internet stuff and is only now starting to catch up. Real player is quite common here.

I would love to post it as an MP3 file or something else.. but I don't know how! If I take this piece from a CD maybe I can figure it out... Until then, people willing to brave a page with mostly Japanese writing (see the top of this thread for more directions), please take a listen, it's lovely music and I'm curious what others think of it.

I agree with seebechstein. I haven't heard it because they use RealPlayer. mp3, please.

Wow, I am really surprised, I guess Japan is more behind than I thought (or maybe mp3 is bigger than I thought, or just totally not catching on here in Japan yet, or something).

Anyway, sorry! if I can get it up in a different format, I'll post again...

So, if you don't mind doing some explaining, what's the big difference about mp3, or why is there such resistance to Real Player? My PC has a Japanese OS and I use the Japanese version of MS Internet Explorer, so that's probably why I don't see any problem with Real Player, but I also haven't had any problems using internet sites that are based in the US or other Western countries. I guess there's more of a culture gap in my computing than I thought...

It works on my Mac running OSX 10.2.8. My browser is Firefox 1.0 and I have Real Player 10.

so, did you listen to it?

Yes, I did. :-)

ShiroKuro,

I did listen. For me, it's a bit too stylized, almost as if it's written by formula.

I hear what sound like standard Japanese themes which to me are almost cliches because they're so similar to background music I've heard in films.

Towards the end I hear some Latin-American rhythms which I guess is meant to make this some attempt at world music.

I was hoping I'd like it but I have to be honest with you that it is not to my particular taste. But, of course, that's just one person's opinion. In any event, I appreciate your post.

MusicMagellan, I REALLY appreciate your post. It's refreshing to hearing a different opinion, and one expressed in so friendly a manner. Also, it's an opportunity to look at/listen to things in a different way. (which I am always thirsting after being here in Japan and not having very many critical opinions floating around me)

On the one hand, I now have this desire to find more links of his solo music to see if I can find something that would win you over! There are other pieces he's written which are significantly different from this one, and I'd love to know if you hear the same things in them.

On the other hand, I agree that it's very stylized.

Regarding it being formulaic, I suspect you may be right. This guy is a hugely sought after composer in Japan, and I am pretty positive this song was commissioned (not that there's anything wrong with that) to sound "Asia-y" (hence the title.) And since he did the music for Last Emperor (among others) he probably has a lot of those themes up his sleeve.

If I recall correctly, the link doesn't contain the entire song, but I'll have to listen and see if I can hear something that sounds reminiscent of Latin-American rhythms to me.

Anyway, thank you for your post! Very interesting. I will certainly be keeping this piece on my list of things to play next, but it's really good to think about the piece in a more critical way rather than just the way it's treated here in Japan (as the be all and end all)

By the way, MusicMagellan or anyone else who's listened, what category or genre would you put this piece in? In Japan, it's called "iyashi-kei" which loosely translates as healing music (a term I'm not very fond of)

I really liked that song! It's a bit diatonic, but still good.

Yep

It gets a thumbs up from the UK too...sounds pretty good to me bro'

However, I quite like "Ryuichi Sakamoto" anyway and enjoyed the music from the last emperor.

Definitely has an oriental feel to it...which I think sounds kinda cool


regards


Lee