In the previous article, we briefly introduced the experience of Yuki Kajiura, and I did not see that friends can click the link below to read.
Genie of the Sacred Song (1) - Anime musician Yuki Kajiura
Today we will continue with the introduction and simple analysis of Kajiura's musical style.
As mentioned earlier, Kajiura's musical journey was greatly influenced by her father, who loved opera and classical music, and when she was seven years old, she moved to Germany with her father's work, both of which laid the foundation for Kajiura's style. At her formative stage, world music was in a period of multi-trend development, and Kajiura successfully accepted the changes in world music. Among them, it is most deeply influenced by the two genres of world (world music) and new age (new century music). To this day, enthusiasts still label Kajiura's music as new age.
Speaking of which, I would like to popularize the concept of these two genres to you first.
World music is sometimes referred to as ethno pop. World music in a broad sense can refer to all the national music in the world. In the West, world music refers to non-North American and British pop music and folk songs, as well as the combination of different indigenous music. It can be simply understood as: all other ethnic music in non-North America and Western Europe.
New Century Music, also translated as New Age Music, is a form of music that emerged in the 1970s and was first used to help meditate and purify the mind, but many later creators no longer have this starting point. Another way of saying it is that because it is colorful and transformative, unlike any previous kind of music; it does not refer to a category alone, but a category, and all the improved music that symbolizes the change of the times and interprets the spiritual connotation can be included in it, so it is named new age, that is, the music of the new century.
After these two concepts are explained, we will look at the development of Kajiura Yuki's music. First of all, we are the group see-saw that Kajiura was involved in in his early years mentioned earlier.
In 1993 see-saw released her first album swimmer, and from the album's "スウィマー", it can be heard that this is a very old mainstream pop song, confirming that Kajiura's personal style was not yet developed at this time, but then in 1996 she participated in "New Orange Road. At the beginning of that summer, the arrangement of "ost" gradually had some similar styles and techniques in the arrangement and use of instruments, but the use of instruments was more based on piano. Since then, Kajiura has been constantly exploring, and in the ost of "Noir" in 2001, kajiura's personal style and maturity can be found, and it has been perfected in the following years to form its own unique style.
As we said earlier, Kajiura's style is influenced by the "world music" and "new century music" genres, so her songs are full of national flavor and melodies that do not conform to the mainstream music rules, and the combination of the two forms our first impression of Kajiura - "exotic". This sense of exoticism usually comes from Europe. The European style may have been influenced by church hymns from her childhood settlement in Germany, so her European style usually has a slight sense of church songs and the Middle Ages, such as "Yuanxing", "historia: opening theme", "sis puella magica". In addition, Kajiura is involved in the folk music of China, Arabia, India, and South America. The most classic example is "テトテトメトメ", which belongs to the Indian kind of curry-flavored song.
The second impression is "folk songs", because folk songs have a very large proportion in "world music". For Kajiura, the status of folk songs is also very large, and in many of her works, the guitar bound to the folk song is the highlight, such as the classic "Dawn Car", which is a classic folk song, in addition to "corsican corridor" in "noir", which is also a very folk style song.
Third, Yuki Kajiura is very good at using electronic instruments and percussion instruments. Among them, the album represented by electronic music is see-saw's "dream.field". That's right! It is the album that contains "Gundam seed" ed1 "あんなに一绪だったのに". It can be said that Kajiura played electronic instruments wonderfully in this album, and if there is no participation of electronic instruments, the quality of the songs on this album will be greatly reduced.
Fourth, the arrangement of harmonies is just right. Harmony can be said to be Kajiura's signature dish, she usually uses a clear female voice to make harmony, and then with Kajiura's melody, it can often present a sense of sacredness and majesty. She is very particular about the combination of harmony and tone. Most of the high harmonies we hear tend to be in harmony with the melody of the mid-bass, so that the solemnity of the mid-bass complements the clear and pure highs, and the pieces become very full, and highlight the atmosphere of grandeur and non-failure, the more typical pieces are "credens justitiam" and "surgam identidem". However, Kajiura's music is also composed of a small number of bass harmonies and high music tones, and the effect is basically the same as the former. Of course, there are also high-pitched and high-pitched pieces, which also depend on the music, but their purpose is to highlight a sense of sacredness.
"Credens justitiam" is ba mami's exclusive soundtrack
The above four points are the very obvious styles of Yuki Kajiura's music. Let's briefly analyze the structure of Kajiura's music.
Although we often say that Kajiura's music has a medieval flavor and has a taste of many ethnic music, she sometimes adds the rhythm of modern music, and the change of melodic mode is relatively simple, for example, the first section of music is played, the second paragraph is repeated, but the end is slightly changed, the third paragraph repeats the first paragraph, the fourth paragraph makes a relatively large change, and then adds a similar "chorus" in the middle of the song to form a complete piece of music. In addition, her probability of using the instrument solo in her songs is also relatively high, such as violin, guitar, flute, accordion, and some ethnic instruments.
At the same time, she pays great attention to the integrity of the music. For example, the combination of treble harmonies and mid-bass instruments we mentioned above is a point of integrity. In addition, if the song does not have a harmony, she will also use mid-bass percussion and effects, or guitar, and treble orchestral instruments to create this complete fullness. It can be said that Kajiura is a fanatical seeker of integrity, and even in the absence of harmony, in order to achieve the effect of musical performance, the harmony is forced to be added, which is what we call "Kajiura". It can be said that language is used to assist the music. At this point, the lyrics are no longer important, and the harmony has long been integrated into the music to become a member of the instrument.
The above is a brief introduction and analysis of Yuki Kajiura's musical style, although the analysis may be unprofessional and incomplete. But I hope that these two articles will allow you to start from the content I described as a clue, to find the other side of Kajiura music, to find some new content that is different, and perhaps, you will also touch the inner world of this holy song elf.