The Upward Spiral

As suggested by its title, her signature jazz/prog-ish track brings to mind the physical pyrotechnics of a Bruce Lee film. Follow us, if you will: Armed with a deadly sharp, morphed-out Clav patch on her Nord Lead 2, aided by 88 monochrome Yamaha assassins, Hiromi strikes hard with rapid two-hand attacks. Every Fierce Chromatic Dragon Kick inspires awe in all who listen; each Graceful Harmonic Shift reaffirms that her World-Crushing Synthesizer Technique is everything the elders feared it would be . . . and then some. She plays with the ease of a super-funky Drunken Master, though the only intoxication that stretches her senses is the excitement created by the genre-smiting music she plays. Sugoi desu-ne.

Kung Fu melodrama aside, the diminutive Japanese artist has a remarkable artistic breadth in addition to her preternatural technique. Listen to glistening tunes such as “Wind Song” and you’ll see that she can be romantic as she is bombastic, as lyrical as she is percussive. And compositional feats such as the four-part suite “Music for Three-Piece-Orchestra” off her newest disc Spiral (Telarc) demonstrate equal parts playful creativity and patient motivic development and manipulation. (Check out “Composing” on page 56 for a closer look at Hiromi’s suite.)

After she completed her studies at Berklee College of Music, Hiromi’s hybridization of jazz, rock, funk, and classical styles began grabbing attention in Japan with her 2003 Telarc debut Another Mind, a disc that quickly went gold in that country and won the Japanese Recording Industry Association’s “Jazz Album of the Year” award. Spiral is her third Telarc release and, given the quality of music contained therein (including a high-powered sequel to “Kung-Fu World Champion”; check out page 48 for lessons and transcription), the disc will no doubt continue to inspire listeners on both sides of the Pacific. We sat down with Hiromi at Yamaha Artist Services in Manhattan to chat, jam, and find out just where this Spiral started.

I’ve heard that your first piano teacher used colors to teach you to play.
I was little and she never really tried to explain things in musical jargon. She colored all over the score with colored pencils. Blue here, red here. When she really wanted a strong sound, she used highlighter.

Do you use colors like that when you’re composing?
No, but I see colors. I don’t really read or write scores anymore. I write guidelines.

What sort of guidelines?
Most of the tunes I start writing from bass lines. It’s because I’m always trying to use the instrument, the piano, to the max. Not only in jazz, but in pop and rock music, when the band has a bass player, they only use half of the piano. The bass part is always played by the bass; you play chords and melody on top, but I wanted the piano to sometimes be the bass, to take the role of bass, and the bass to be like a guitar. I just want the 88 keys to sound really full, so I write a bass chart and I explain to the drummer how I want him to play with that bass line, who’s playing the solo in 21/8. . . .

Wow . . . 21/8.
21/8 is not that hard actually, because it’s three times seven. The difficult part of the suite [“Music for Three-Piece-Orchestra,” Spiral], is in 19/8. It’s a groove of 4, 5, 4, 6, and I just played it until I got it. I really like the sound and I didn’t think, “I want to write in 19/8.” I was just playing and I got the riff from somewhere. And of course, in the beginning, I couldn’t even play it. [Laughs.] I played until I felt comfortable with it. I played with it until I could play it as if I was playing 4/4.

Compositionally, what’s behind the choice to call that suite “Music for Three-Piece-Orchestra?”
The orchestra is made of three different instruments — piano, bass, and drums — and my goal was to use multiple colors of each instrument. For example, drums are rhythmic instruments, but I wanted them to play melody. Bass makes a groove, but I wanted it to do other things, too. I came up with this concept with both of my musicians who are really rhythmic, but really lyrical at the same time. And me, I play very percussively, but I’m lyrical as well. I just wanted everybody to take turns in their roles. I become drums sometimes; the drummer becomes the front man. It’s not like I’m the front man — there is no sideman. All of us are the main dish. [Laughs.]

What kind of piano do you practice and compose on at home?
I have a Yamaha C3 at home. They also provide me one when I tour.

Why Yamaha?
The action is percussive and it comes up quick. I really want to use the piano in a percussive way, and I really like the attack and the reaction of it. The piano has the percussive action and also a really warm, musical sound and it’s really hard to find a piano that has both. A percussive piano can sound harsh and crystal clear, but not really warm, and the warm-sounding piano is not really percussive. I always ask them to bring the warmest sounding piano available, especially for recording sessions.
That’s one reason why I record in Nashville [at Blackbird Studios]. I really like the piano there and the rooms are really big. I really want the ceiling to be high so I can make it sound big.

And why do you play the Nord Lead 2?
It’s really flexible and you can get sounds that are really percussive. There are so many other keyboards, but one thing I really love about Nords is the pitchbend. The reason I started playing the keyboard was because I wanted to bend the sound. That was my first will to play keyboard. I don’t know why, but a lot of my heroes are guitar players, such as Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck. They’re always bending notes with strings, and the piano doesn’t bend the sounds. [While looking at keyboards] I was trying a bunch of bends and they all are made of plastic and are really light. The bend of the Nord is really heavy. I can really bend the sound. The effect’s the same, but the just the feel of it. . . .

How’d you learn to program sounds?
I just really use my ears. There’s a specific clavinet sound I want. I want more warmth. I really want some sort of darkness in the sounds and I just experiment as much as I can until I get the right sound. I want to experiment with sounds in a live situation as well.

Did you take any classes in synthesis or have any training?
No, I just got it and messed around. It’s the same with the piano: It’s like a big toy that I get to play with until I get bored, but I never get bored, so I’m still just playing with it. [Laughs.]

On “Keytalk,” you have this amazing expressive synth sound. Is it a voice sample?
No. It’s a sound that I found; it’s not preset. I was just playing with the Nord. I wrote that song about playing the piano and feeling like the keys are trying to get my attention to be played. I was trying to find a voice kind of sound and I got it once, so I just saved it.

Do you remember how you made it?
No. [Laughs.] It was an inspirational moment. I didn’t make the sound after I composed the song — I composed the song because I made the sound.

I really dig your song titles. Do the names come first, then the music?
A visual image comes first, then I compose after that. For example, I’d want to compose something about talking keys, then I’d compose the song, then name it “Keytalk.” I always have a concept I want to compose music around.

On the subject of cool synth programming, I’ve heard you’re a Dream Theatre Fan.
I really like how tight they sound. I feel it’s beyond rock and it’s beyond contemporary, you know? It’s beyond everything. I always like things that go beyond categories.

I’ve also heard that athletes sometimes inspire you to make music.
I just like somebody who has big focus into what they’re doing. For example, Michael Jordan — when he’s jumping, the stadium becomes one unit. I have this poster at home where Michael Jordan’s high in the air and everybody’s looking up in the exact same place. That’s the moment that I’m looking for in music.
I like when people have strong statements, when their music really needs to be them. And when I listen to their music from speakers, I feel that what they’re giving us is huge. The same thing happens with sports players. Continuous effort and talent and focus.

How do you approach capturing that Michael Jordan sort of moment in music?
It only can be born with continuous effort, training every day, and being really focused on stage. When it happens, then it will happen. That’s one of the things behind the name Spiral. It was the best word to explain what I was feeling on stage, when I can feel the unity in the public place. The spiral is a thing that I feel on the stage when that moment is happening. It starts from one point and it flows to have everybody in the spiral.

How do you turn that thought into music?
It’s very interesting. I felt that when I wrote “Spiral,” I was trying to capture that moment into music, and when I play that song live again, it’s reverse, you know? It’s a really interesting process to try and get the feeling of unity into music, and with the music, I’m trying to create a unity again. In concerts, in any song, the first note decides everything.

Why is that?
The first note I play is like a key of the day of the concert. That’s the very first thing they hear. The whole message and focus needs to be there.

In my own playing, sometimes I have a hard time focusing before a gig. How do you make sure you’ll be in the moment when you’re playing?
It’s a weird feeling, but when I sit in front of the piano . . . how can I explain it? The most similar feeling I can think of is being in a temple. I really feel the silence — I focus on no sound to make myself focus on creating one sound into the silence.

When you were playing, I really liked watching how you used two hands to do percussive piano, especially on the “Kung Fu” songs. How did you develop it?
Maybe because I didn’t have a drummer when I was small. [Laughs.] I wanted to be a drum machine by myself, so I just tried to make grooves happen with the piano.

How do you practice that?
Technically speaking, there’s no better practicing exercise than classical music. Classical composers really know how to compose music and use the instrument to the max. There are so many classical pieces that use the ten fingers and make them work so much. And it sounds beautiful. That’s the amazing thing about it. You can make the ten fingers sound like nothing, or like complicated, difficult music, but people like Stravinsky and Rachmaninov and Bach — these people really know how to make something beautiful with the full capabilities of these ten fingers.

Speaking of stretching the fingers’ capabilities and making beautiful music, I love “Wind Song” from Brain. When you were playing it, I noticed that your hand position flattened out a little.
Maybe because I have to play a lot of octaves in this tune when I play this sort of thing [she plays a fast, perfect three octave scale], my hands aren’t like that. When I try to get a warmer sound, my fingers are more flat and when I want a crispy sound, they’re more arched.

In lots of your music — and especially this tune — you seem to have a lot of inner motion going on. Your hands seem comfortable doing multiple things at once. Where did that come from?
Bach. I’m a big fan. He makes the music sound so much bigger because it doesn’t sound like it’s just one note in each hand. It’s like having two people play each hand.

There are some beautiful harmonies and dissonances in that song. How did you approach composing that piece?
I don’t really write music with theory. I don’t think about “after this chord I should make this chord.” I was just composing and it naturally came out. I wrote the chords that I wanted to hear after the chords before. The only trick I have for music is using my ear to the max, for everything. I study music, I know theory, but I don’t really apply theory. I just know it as a fundamental and I never really use it when I create music.

Using your ear to the max . . . what does that mean to you?
It’s what I need to focus on when I write. I write and create sound and see if I really like it, if I’m not brainwashing myself that I might like it. Nobody else can judge what I write because it won’t be my music if anybody else does it.

When the best music is happening, I’m playing, but there is somebody in the air watching me — and that’s myself. It’s so weird, because there’s always so much emotion and crazy energy, but there’s always somebody calm. It’s like a multiple personality. There’s always somebody who’s controlling me up high that’s myself.
It’s that exact same thing in composition. It just takes a much longer time to write. So I just compose music and maybe three days later, I try to play it again and see if I really like it, if this chord really needs to come after this chord. It’s the same thing in performance. When I play improvisations, I always think if I really want to play this note after this other note. I never want to autopilot because it’s easy to depend on habit. Whenever I play a lick or a line with my hand habit, I hate it to death. I really hate it, and I really try to focus on what I want to hear after each note. Even when I’m playing a fast passage. And that requires so much brain processing. So after the show, I’m always crazy knackered. So tired.

“Crazy Knackered” . . . that’s a great phrase. [Laughs.] I’ve heard other players talk about knowing their own clichés and going around them. What advice can you offer to people for avoiding their own hand habits?
Never be satisfied with where you are. I’m never satisfied with what I play, never satisfied with what I played yesterday. I always want to go beyond. I’m always fighting with yesterday’s myself and trying to play something different. I don’t want to play the same thing over and over because that’s not improvisational music.
The hardest thing in music is surprising myself and I always like to keep surprising myself in playing. That’s always the hardest thing to do.