Project ASAKAZE started life as a thought I’d slept on for a while – “Hey, wouldn’t this song (Graceful Gate by Japanese symphonic metal band Cross Vein) sound quite neat as a Spaghetti Western soundtrack?”

The Spaghetti Western soundtrack genre, most famously the work of Ennio Morricone, often used the same twangy guitar tone as the 1960s instrumental rock bands I enjoyed as a high schooler. I only got into Spaghetti Western soundtracks much more recently, especially after I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons and binge-listening to K.K. Western.

There was, however, a lot of learning (and unlearning) to do – since arranging for Spaghetti Western soundtracks was a bit less straightforward than the surf project that I had in mind: arranging synth brass and strings to sound as “natural” as I could, blending in live and MIDI instruments seamlessly, and staging a larger-than-life sound from the constraints of recording without a mic.

Nonetheless, the Spaghetti Western arrangements demanded a bit more creativity and allowed me more room for alterations, so I persisted with those to challenge myself after my attempt at a (comparatively loyal) surf rearrangement:

The exercise, of course, fed back directly into the further refinements I made to the initial demo of our forthcoming third song – a fuller string arrangement where my lead guitar lines played along with (and, indeed, like a violin), the addition of timpani, and of course more experience having to mix and master the tracks.

For the record, Project ASAKAZE is, in fact, named after the now defunct sleeper train that ran between Tokyo and Shimonoseki.

PS: It’s my first time in a long while coding. I think it is about time.

Take care,

John

Posted 11 December 2021, GMT +8.