A koto, Miya Masaoka and "Schooldays Over"
The koto is a boss of an instrument. Basically, it’s a traditional japanese stringed marvel of engineering that looks like this:
It’s made out of wood and has moveable bridges that you can adjust to change the pitch of the strings. When plucked or strummed, it sounds punchy and articulate (great for highlighting certain harmonics or notes). It can also sound like a long plane of glass or even take on a romantic quality if bowed. Certain projects I work on deal a lot with textural counterpoint and the colors and timbres the koto is capable of producing are conducive to that type of music.
My use of the koto has been pretty tame in comparison to Miya Masaoka. Miya’s a musical genius and has really plumbed the depths of what this instrument can do.
The reason I bring her up is because she’s been inspiration for me for years and was one of the reasons I became interested in this venerable instrument. Miya’s musical thought process is consistently amazing and in many ways I feel her work gives permission to those of us who have a deep respect for the koto and want to see what it can do outside of a “traditional” framework.
For the project “Schooldays Over,” I’ve talked about using Grant’s vocals as a human and lyric anchor. Just as Grant was a human anchor point in the music, the koto was used as an instrumental one. I went with the koto because of its “leadership” quality: it can cut through textures or blend in. In “Schooldays” we used it as a signifier of the beginning of a new musical thought.
Throughout the piece, when the listener hears it, I hope it provides a subtle invitation to pick up and move to the next musical space. It served this purpose in a very direct way for the musicians during the recording process; the koto acted as a signal to change to the next event.
Here are a couple examples:
At the start of the piece, you hear the koto ushering in the cellos.
Halfway through the piece, after the big crash of pump organ and gongs and keyboard, the koto comes back (below at about 45 seconds in)and again clears out the space and opens it up to the next event.
With koto as leader, these cues are built in throughout the whole piece. Some are subtle, some overt, but in all cases the cues are invitations for listener and musician alike to take a breath and move forward.
