Current mood:	cheerful
Current music:	(all of the below)

The Music Of: Yoko Kanno
I promised a few people that I'd make an entry that attempts to give insights on this composer's shockingly diverse, often genre-bending music. I also promised that I'd try my best to avoid music theory jargon; this won't be completely avoidable, but I'll at least try to define my terms as I go along.

For those not familiar with her work, Yoko Kanno writes music primarily for Japanese anime, some live-action films, and a few video games. Along with Jo Hisaishi and Kenji Kawai, she's perhaps the most widely known and successful media composer in Japan. In general her music is known for its originality and diversity, as well as frequent use of solo singers. No two of her soundtracks sound the same, and there's often a great deal of genre variety within the same score. So it's perhaps unsurprising that some people would mistake her scores for compilation soundtracks (ie. scores derived from individual songs submitted by several artists).

But there is of course some overlap in how she writes, and her outlook towards anime scoring in general. I'll focus on a few musical components, using these scores as examples: Escaflowne (movie), Earth Girl Arjuna, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex (series), Wolf's Rain, Macross Plus, and Cowboy Bebop (movie and series).

Vocal Songs. Listening to a Kanno soundtrack, the first thing you'll notice is a number of vocal songs. In a typical Hollywood score, a vocal track in a film score might either mean a submission from a different artist than the composer, or perhaps an orchestral piece without lyrics (or in Latin) that doesn't follow a verse/chorus form but rather is used as underscore. Kanno's most noticeable innovation is her use of vocal tracks, written in song form, as dramatic underscore for a scene. For example, many songs from Cowboy Bebop are played behind fight scenes, emotional and dialogue scenes, and of course montages. The music takes an unusually foregrounded role because vocal music naturally draws more attention than, for example, symphonic orchestral music. And while several films use vocal tracks in montages and such, Kanno's are written by the composer herself, and are stylistically related to the rest of the score.

Lyrics. The lyrics themselves are worth noting as well. For her earlier scores, most of the songs would be sung in Japanese; Cowboy Bebop featured a number of English songs due to the show's heavy inspiration from American film and music genres. Starting with Macross Plus, a series whose main character was an AI-controlled superstar pop singer, Kanno began writing tracks in a gibberish language she invented herself. Escaflowne, Earth Girl Arjuna, and Ghost in the Shell also feature several songs performed in this nonexistent language (Example: "Sora" from Escaflowne). Mysteriously, she credits songstress Gabriela Robin for writing and/or performing these gibberish songs. Most people believe that it's a pseudonym for Kanno herself, despite the composer's repeated insistence that it's in fact a different person. Appropriately, Robin's first appearance was in the Macross Plus score, perhaps paying homage to the pop idol from the series itself.

More recently, Kanno has been writing polyglot scores with tracks in several different languages. Wolf's Rain tends toward a very warm acoustic sound, with tracks in Italian, French, and Portuguese as well as English. Ghost in the Shell takes this polyglotism up a notch with tracks that switch languages within the same song, for dramatic effect. The opening themes for the two seasons ("Inner Universe" and "Rise") begin with lyrics in Russian for the opening verse, then switching to English for the chorus; "Rise" reverses the pattern for the second verse, and "Inner Universe" also includes Latinate lyrics for a brief hook. Other songs in this soundtrack might have a single repeated line in an alternate language, or even a multilingual play-on-words in the case of the song "I Do" (in both Italian and English). It's possible that she experiments in polyglotism as a response to apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic themes in an anime series, as a way of portraying the entire world being affected by whatever disaster the series brings.

Genre. Kanno is perhaps the most diverse composer I've ever encountered, in terms of instrumentation and genre. It's always difficult for me to introduce her music to other people because in one score she might have classical orchestra/choir music, in another she'd focus on jazz and rock combos, another would be electronica and metal, world music from India and South America, the list goes on. Not to mention her frequent blending of various styles, and other genre-bending practices (you can probably combine any two of the previously mentioned genres, and she's written something that represents that). I'll even go so far as to say she's invented her own genre - whispery female vocalists with thick evocative instrumentation, electronic and/or acoustic ("Where Does This Ocean Go?", "Monochrome," "I Do," and "Dew" from Ghost in the Shell, several others from Earth Girl Arjuna).

While she usually uses several musical genres in each of her soundtracks, there's always a single overall "feel" that represents the series itself. In Wolf's Rain for example, the music gives a very warm acoustic feeling, often with Latin and Native American ensembles, jazz influences, small string sections, and very few cases of electronic instruments or manipulation (Example: "Silver River", "Pilgrim Snow", "Friends"). The series itself has an environmental subtext, mostly centers around nature scenes (and their contrast with urban environments), the artwork employs very warm saturated colors, and the protagonists themselves are youthful wolves. In contrast, Ghost in the Shell is futuristic, has a cold blue tint to many of the scenes, the protagonists are competent adults, and the story is focused around the social, political, and philosophical implications of a world infused with new technology. The music therefore is infused with electronic elements and manipulation, often in conjunction with strings (Example: "Spotter").

This stylistic variety is only possible with her successful collaboration with soloists worldwide. Stylistic legitimacy is a problem that composers face all the time, especially when working with MIDI approximations of real instruments. By working with extremely talented performers/lyricists in various fields (Maaya Sakimoto, Steve Conte, Tim Jensen, Joyce, The Seatbelts, several others), she avoids having to worry about just sounding legitimate, and instead can focus on doing new and different things with a genre. Cowboy Bebop is notable for having music in several popular genres from around the world, but particularly rock and jazz-related styles. This extremely commercially successful score was produced in collaboration with The Seatbelts, a band Kanno used to play keyboards for and subsequently reunited with to score this series. (Example: "Tank!")

Harmony, Instrumentation, Production. There are precious few common traits among Yoko Kanno's various scores, but you can find some recurring characteristics in harmony, instrumentation, and production. She cites Maurice Ravel as her favorite composer, an influence which can be seen in how she deals with harmony. She often uses jazz-influenced chord progressions and modal harmonies*, within the context of various other genres. One of the most noticeable cases is in the Escaflowne soundtrack, during one of the main action sequences, an orchestral/choral cue uses a Gershwin-esque jazz progression during a particularly dramatic moment ("Dance of Curse").

• Modal Harmony basically means that instead of writing harmonies with chords (like major, minor, etc.), you simply combine notes from the scale in any way you want. Effectively, the difference between chordal and modal harmony is that chords are expected to lead to other chords, whereas modal harmonies don't necessarily have that kind of "gravity".

As far as instrumentation and production, there are some definite patterns you can hear throughout many of her scores. Her vocal tracks give unusual weight to the instrumentation, putting it on an equal plane with the voice. Often very complex orchestrations and/or synthestrations are used as backing, in a manner somewhat reminiscent to Trevor Horn's work, and Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" technique. You get the sense that her songs aren't about glorifying the solo singer, as is the case with most pop music, but rather are acting as a collaborative effort; the singer is a part of the ensemble. As far as production goes, these songs typically have the voice mixed unusually far back in the mix, sometimes with nearly unintelligible results (Example: "Dear John" from Ghost in the Shell). De-emphasizing the vocalists in this way has a practical application as well - it makes the music less competitive with dialogue in the same scene, which is vital considering how frequently she uses vocal tracks.

The production itself often plays an integral role in the composition of the song, to the point of which a piece is radically altered by filtering, reverb, or echo effects. For example, Earth Girl Arjuna's soundtrack often uses reverb, pan, and echo settings on the voice as a way of embellishing the part, or for dramatic effect (Example: "Early Bird", "Gentle Time"). The Arjuna soundtrack is also notable for subtly infusing electronic elements into an otherwise acoustic piece of music, and for its heavy world music influences (Example: "Earth Resonance").

Kanno's music often has deceptively complicated instrumentation as well. Often she'll introduce unexpected electronic or even vocal elements into an otherwise ostensibly simplistic song. For example, in "Monochrome" from Ghost in the Shell, a soft peaceful vocalist sings amidst a rhythmically chaotic background that uses several bizarre disjointed sounds (such as various clicks, misplaced kick drums, and even the AOL door slam sound). This song also illustrates her tendency towards modal harmonies, as you can hear in the chordal pad that sweeps around in an indistinct blend of notes.

Kanno also seems to pay particular attention to string arrangements, using both small and large string sections in many of her pieces, regardless of genre. In Wolf's Rain for example, she uses both solo and sectional strings in conjunction with woodwinds for an ornate agrarian warmth ("Float"), whereas in Ghost in the Shell she uses them both as an energetic element (the filtered strings from "Stay Home") and as an acoustic foil to other electronic elements ("Spotter"). She also seems to use polyrhythms* and irrational rhythms* frequently as an ornament to her background string parts - for example, this passage from "Valse de la Lune" (Wolf's Rain) uses irrational rhythms to give the impression of an acceleration (2, 3, 4, and 5 notes per beat). "What's It For" from Ghost in the Shell is notable for switching the entire song to a different time signature for the chorus.

• Irrational Rhythm simply means dividing a single beat into an uneven number of notes. So for example, a quintuplet has five notes in one beat, making it slightly faster than a group of 16th notes (four to a beat).
• Polyrhythm is where two or more instruments play in different rhythmic divisions of a beat or a measure. For example, one instrument can count two notes per beat (8th notes), but the other counts three (triplets); they'd "meet" at the beginning of each beat. This is different from irrational rhythm in that it requires two simultaneously-playing instruments/voices, whereas you can play an irrational rhythm within one line.

Melody. This is the last element I'll talk about, since it's not so much a binding principle as it is a casual observation I've made. One surprisingly frequent feature of Kanno's melodies, especially in her vocal songs, is what I call the "climactic staccato." Often in the chorus of a song, a vocalist will hit a high accented staccato note at the beginning of a phrase, followed by a brief pause. After that, notes will either descend from it ("Tell Me What the Rain Knows" from Wolf's Rain, "What's It For" from Ghost in the Shell) or start again at a lower pitch ("Lithium Flower" from Ghost in the Shell). Surprisingly many of her songs use this same pattern, or at least a general tendency of taking an unexpected pause after a high note. Frequently she'll apply a noticeable echo effect to this high note as well, such as in the first two examples.


Well that's just about all I can do as far as demystifying Kanno's music. One of the reasons she has such wildly disproportionate playtime on the soundtrack of my life is that every time I hear a song of hers, I hear some new element I never even noticed before (and I have pretty good ears, too). So what makes her music attractive to me is that it succeeds on several levels - the pieces are often extremely memorable, they have a powerful and surprisingly eloquent emotional contour (especially when heard in context), and the attention to detail keeps me coming back time and time again.

But I think her most important musical accomplishment is that despite all of the variety, detail, depth and originality, the music always seems to come together perfectly naturally. That synth that came in during the orchestral piece works subtly well, that Middle Eastern vocal chant somehow managed to fit with that mellow jazz ballad, and somehow it made perfect sense for that Indian piece to feature a sax solo. I think that's what it means to have a "musical aesthetic" - when what you're doing might be unusual to the point of not even really making sense, but the music follows its own logic.


Thanks for reading! Hopefully this wasn't too lengthy or undirected, and definitely feel free to ask me if I need to clear up some of the terms; it's tough analyzing a composer without using at least a few music theory terms.

Feel free to share this post with other Yoko Kanno fans!