This month’s Ruly Mix, See So Clearly, is a fitting recession anthem and comes from Tokyo-based musician, composer and producer, Danny Stewart-Smith and features vocals by North Carolina native, Evin Gibson.
I began my musical journey at the age of 6 learning piano under Scottish composer of note, Ronald Stevenson. Stevenson was a fantastic teacher inspiring creation and internal understanding of notes and scales not just pontificating on the mechanics of playing as subsequent teachers seemed to do. Anyway, I gave piano up after moving from Scotland to Devon. It was not until I was 16 that I picked up the guitar and listened to Hendrix, Santana, Zappa, Satriani, Vai, and Pass among many more. Everyone seemed to play guitar and when we wanted to form a school band we had no bassist, so I volunteered. After a couple of years playing cover tunes I got offered a job with a local pianist playing Jazz gigs. He taught me all about walking bass lines and I took his left hand patterns onto the bass guitar, then onto upright bass. I spent a couple of years playing Jazz and Funk around the UK with him and another funk band with some of my school friends. We did the pub and club circuit all over England. I then decided to move to London to pursue music seriously and was fortunate enough to get picked up for a touring position with Real World Records and also accompanying acclaimed vocalist/actress Kate Dimbleby for a theatrical production. While in London I worked and lived in a project studio where I met my future wife. She visited the studio on an assignment and we became friends and worked together on a few projects including a Japanese Embassy subsidized event named Tokyo Mania. We grew closer through our work and became romantically involved. We came to her home country of Japan seven years ago, to have our first child. I liked it here, so we decided to stay. Since then I have been involved in radio, composition and arranging more so than performance.
What inspires you when you are writing/producing music?
The actual subject matter I am writing for; for example, if a client asks me for music for a fighter jet flying scene, I then immediately start visualizing the scene and the music just comes. Of course the frame work of existing music for similar scenes has already been ingested through viewing films in the past. So typically composers like John Williams or Hans Zimmer have influenced me. The thing is, I can hear the workings of all kinds of music on a first listen so I constantly digest music in any situation, be it in the supermarket, watching TV or movies and I expect much of what I digest plays out through my compositions too.
If I get stuck for ideas I look to existing music in similar genres to get inspiration. For dance music I get inspiration from all over the place, I compose for many different purposes and sometimes I find a commission work inspires a new dance track, or I start hearing the possibilities of the work in different genres or hear a great track on the radio and feel inspired to do something in a similar vein. In most cases however, a tune just pops into my head and no matter where I am I just have to hum it into my mp3 recorder. After that the rest just flows, beats, bass lines, chords etc. all just materialize from the initial groove or melody.
What were you thinking about when you composed this mix for beruly.com?
How obsessive we can be about money and possessions. See So Clearly is really about how comparison to others and living in excess or beyond your means is not of great importance/or is actually dangerous, and that success and happiness is really down to how you feel about your life.
If you are happy in what you do, you are successful, never mind the Jones’s.
How important is money in the music world?
Since artists can now run their own digital record labels for next to nothing, money is of far less significance to independents as far as I can observe. Distribution and promotion on the web is also very cheap, you have virtually nothing to lose and you can “test drive” your releases on sites like Jango, Reverbnation and many others for free.
Money is of course important to the majors, and they need to offset the loss in CD sales to illegal downloads by selling merchandise and affiliate advertising. Bizarre as it may seem, these days it is possible to become “popular” without even performing live. Many independent artists have seen sales of their own material create a second income for them, but it does take hard dedicated, web promotion….you have to reach your target audience and to do that requires work…if you like, a virtual tour of many websites, forums and music distribution rings.
This of course, has sparked a torrent of bogus “opportunity” sites that prey on the independent musician’s penchant for success and I suspect they make a lot of money!
How has the recession affected Japan?
Japan’s ties with America and its subsequent Americanization has of course seen a slight rise in unemployment and a wider range of salaries due to the linear structuring of American companies trading and operating in Japan. However, it still seems that there is less of a class gap in Japan and this helps it feel as though nothing much has changed, at least on the surface.
Some Foreign companies such as HP, have had to reduce salaries or employ a work share strategy in order to battle the recession without axing employees. However, in Japanese companies, employees are well protected by the law, it is not easy to be sacked from a Japanese company, but many are reporting salary or bonus cuts (including management) to get through this downturn. Most Japanese see this as an amicable option versus losing their job. Another side effect is that low interest rates in Japan have caused many banks to branch off into the loan market, where they can earn much more interest, and this in turn is beginning to feed a small but growing culture of debt.
As far as I understand it the government and the FSA have plans in place to try and curb this activity, but the younger generations are not so wise when it comes to money, which is a shame as in the past the Japanese have been notoriously good at saving money. Catastrophes like the Leamann collapse also affected Japanese banking systems negatively too due to the quantity of shares held and integrated banking laws, and play a large part in this outbreak of loan companies. It seems like Japan, a nation that appeared to think long-term about its citizens future, has thrown down the gauntlet of job security to compete in today’s volatile market, through fear of losing its place, and as a result company cultures are restructuring to match the market. This, in my opinion, is a long-term mistake leading to long-term financial difficulties.
Evin contacted me over the web before he visited Japan to tour. He was wanting to hook up with some musicians during his visit so I obliged and prepared a song for him to perform on. Evin not only provided excellent lead vocals, he also helped to rephrase some of the lyrics and added some lines based on the topic of the song. What he brought to this tune is excellent, his vision seemed to complement mine nicely. I hope to work with Evin again, he is a true talent.
Ready to listen? Click the picture below to play or right-click to download. (If the picture is not working for you, you can also download by clicking here.)
The lyrics to this song were so fitting and poetic that I wanted to print them below so you can enjoy them (and sing along!)
You wanna flashy car Mercedes Benz or Jaguar baby,
Rolex watch diamond ring and all these things now
you want fine cigars, warm champagne, and caviar,
you want designer jeans, Gucci, Prada, latest styles
What do you do with 1000 shoes and can only wear one pair at a time?
Wonderin’ which watch to choose and they’re all sayin’ the same time.
Chorus
I can see there’s more to life, I can see, see so clearly
Pushin’ back the sands of time it’s all fine, life flows on by.
Fortune shines when we’re satisfied in our hearts and in our minds.
Pushing through and we can find and redefine what makes us all so blind.
I gotta tell you…..
Verse 2
You’ve got those credit cards and plastic dreams manicures and facial creams,
What does it really mean, to have almost everything and still want more?
What do you do with 1000 shoes and can only wear one pair at a time?
Wonderin’ which watch to choose and they’re all sayin’ the same time.
(repeat)
You’ve got those credit cards and plastic dreams manicures and facial creams,
What does it really mean, to have almost everything and still want more?
Bridge
There is so many things to think about
There is so much that we can live without
There is so many things to think about
There is so much that we can live without..
So many things oh yeah…
(Bass solos over chorus and refrain…)
Refrain
I don’t need it, you don’t need it, we don’t need it o-oh no (etc…)
Don’t need no diamond rings, don’t need no fancy cars
If you like what you hear, please comment and feel free to share the song with others! To respect the rights of the musician, please comply with the simple Ruly License terms below.
Ruly License: You may download and play any Ruly Mix song for your own personal use so long as you keep the voiceover tags intact indicating the name of the artist and that the song came from beruly.com. Businesses may also download this song to play as background music in their establishments so long as the voiceover tags remain intact. Any other uses of the song (such as in videos, etc.) must be pre-approved by the musician. Questions about license permissions can be addressed to info@beruly.com.
What do you do with 1,000 shoes? Hoping you See So Clearly this weekend!
