Rydeen, the Galaxy Superhorse

♪ La, Ti, Do-, DoReDoTi-TiLaSo-Mi-La-

On January 11, 2023, Takahashi, the former vocalist and drummer for Yellow Magic Orchestra (1979-1983), passed away at the age of 70. When the news of his death was made public a few days later, there were calls for mourning all over Japan. Despite his fame, Takahashi did not leave behind any extremely famous tunes or songs, but as the composer of YMO's most iconic instrumental piece, "Rydeen," his passing was mourned. The idea for the tune came from an interesting idea of what it would be like if Akira Kurosawa made "Star Wars." This space adventure story inspired many Japanese pop musicians of the time, including Takahashi. According to his own recollections, he wrote the famous main theme and chord progression at home and played it on the piano in the studio the next day, where Sakamoto boldly rearranged the harmonies and added some melodic phrases to make it cooler and more sophisticated.

Here is his arrangement score for "Rydeen". At the time, he had already established his own approach to arranging pop music. He actually arranged the music of many musicians on the spot on the day of the performance recording with the piano in the recording rooms, completing this level of arrangement scores in about two hours each time.

For those of you who want a more detailed and overall analysis, please refer to the analysis article on my blog. In this chapter, we will focus on analyzing the very first three notes and the accompanying chord progression. It is a very short section with only three beats, but it contains the essence of what makes "Rydeen" "Rydeen," the most popular YMO tune in Japan and familiar to almost all generations of Japanese people.

♪ La, Ti, Do~

Firstly, we will focus on an interesting trick done in this section with sound effects. Before we get into it, check out the clips from the "Rydeen" video below.

Below is a diagram of the overall structure of the first half of "Rydeen". The main melody is shown in red. The second one is shown in yellow. The third one is in green. The cut appears in the section marked by the speech balloon. This is the second appearance of the phrase "La, Ti, Do" at the beginning of the piece.

As mentioned earlier, this is a musical realization of a simple idea of what Star Wars would be like if Akira Kurosawa directed it. The sound effect of a horse galloping is dubbed over the main theme to convey the image of a galloping horse named Rydeen galloping through the galaxy. This sounds thorough in the main melody every time it comes up, including the part highlighted by the speech balloons in this diagram. However, if we listen more closely to this short part, along with the sound effect of the horse's hooves, we can hear a bass track playing arpeggios at a very high tempo. It is interesting to note that this track is interrupted for a moment when the phrase "La, Ti" is played. Instead, with each note of the phrase "La, Ti", the bass drum (or something similar, created artificially with a synthesizer) sounds; Dum (La), Dum (Ti). The sound is repeated every time the phrase "La, Ti" comes up in the first half of the tune. The melodic phrase "La, Ti, Do" is accompanied by a simple and incredibly dramatic harmonic progression. To emphasize this, in this part the synth bass of the ultra-fast arpeggio steps is muted for a moment, and the synth bass drum sounds in the same rhythm as "La, Ti". This makes us imagine a scene of a horse rider trying to speed up even more, putting his weight on the stirrups and lifting his hips from the saddle just for that moment.

Going back to the video for "Rydeen", the three members play their own parts to the same rhythm with blank expressions on their faces, as if they don't want to disturb each other. However, it is only in the scene above that their faces align with the rhythm of "La, Ti, Do", as if they were sending their energy to each other to the rhythm of "La, Ti" for a second before quickly separating to act alone again on the battlefield. (Incidentally, Sakamoto soon turns his face away from Hosono, perhaps as an amusing visual reflection of the fact that he did not get along with Hosono at that time.) Be that as it may, the space samurai horse Rydeen lifts his spirits and further gallops each time to return to the "La, Ti".

Here is a diagram of the musical structure of "Rydeen". It shows that it consists of four parts. Melody A, Melody B, Melody C, and a cadence full of sound effects of laser beams.

The phrase "La, Ti", followed by Melody A, serves as the rider temporarily lifting his butt out of the saddle to further accelerate the horse.

Phrases of this type are called "anacrusis" in musical terms. It is a phrase that starts somewhere other than on the first beat of the first measure, or in the middle of the previous measure. The first phrase of "Rydeen" corresponds to the latter definition. In my opinion, Takahashi was inspired by "The Theme from Star Wars" and came up with this trick of the A-melody.

♪ SoSoSo↗Do↗So, FaMiRe↗Do↘So

This piece has been studied by many musicians and music analysts, but almost no one really understands the significance of the fact that it begins on the fourth beat rather than the first. It is this "SoSoSo" anacrusis that gives the main theme its heroism and energy. "Rydeen" follows the same technique. If you think about it, the structure of melody B, then melody C, and then back to A, reminds us a lot of the structure of the "Theme from Star Wars". Sakamoto analyzed the tune and applied it to the arrangement of "Rydeen". Incidentally, Melody C uses the same technique as the intro to his commercial debut "Thousand Knives". Both remind me of Darth Vader. (For more information, please refer to my blog posts).

Returning to the subject, the melody of "Rydeen" (or more specifically, Melody A) is clearly influenced by the main theme of Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, "Seven Samurai". What made that story stand out is that it didn't portray the seven samurai as absolutely righteous heroes, although they were brave men, and reflecting this, the main theme, far from being heroic, was much simpler, conjuring up images of samurai simply traveling alone, walking the streets from one town to another. It was no wonder that Sakamoto was confused when Takahashi came up with a melodic phrase similar to the main theme of Seven Samurai and suggested that it be placed in the exciting universe of Star Wars.

Look at this. It all started with this simple, or clumsy, melodic phrase that Takahashi brought into the recording studio.

♪ La, Ti, Do-DoReDoTi-TiLaSoMiLa

Then, noticing that this melody begins with an anacrusis and the initial three notes rise on the whole "La, Ti, Do" tonal scale, Sakamoto arranged the melody in the simplest way possible, adding harmony three degrees below the melody, but changing the harmony five degrees below the melody only on the "Ti" note. With this rustic but very brilliant idea, Sakamoto turned this nursery-like melody into a superhorse galloping across another galaxy, far, far away.

♪ Fa, So, La – LaTiLaSo-SoFaMi-Do-Fa-

If possible, place your thumb and middle finger on the musical keyboard and play the notes in the order of this Do Re Mi notation.

♪ La, Ti, Do-, DoReDoTi-TiLaSo-Mi-La-
♪ Fa, So, La-, LaTiLaSo-SoFaMi-Do-Fa-

You will be surprised to find that the melody turns into "Rydeen" as we know it, with such a simple harmony. You will also notice that when you play, your thumb and middle finger have the same level of openness for almost all of the notes. As I mentioned a few pages back, the easiest way to add harmony to a melody is to add a note third-degree below each of its notes for the melody. As for "Rydeen," only on the two notes of the second beat, the thumb and middle finger open a little wider. This is a fifth-degree instead of a third.

Harmony in the fifth-degree interval has an interesting property. When the harmony is played, the note in the major third-degree above the root note can be heard by the ear, even though it is not actually sounded. In this keyboard diagram, the note "Mi" (corresponding to the white key touched by the thumb) and the note "Ti" (corresponding to the white key touched by the middle finger) form a fifth-degree interval, so the ear will hear the note "So#" (corresponding to the black key marked by the purple arrow), which is a major third-degree higher than the note "Mi". This is one of the notes that make up the dominant chord in a minor key. As a result, it is allowed to exist even though it should not be available in the seven-note scale.

There is another very bold musical device in this simple phrase, "La, Ti." Let's take a look at the first beat of the phrase.

♪ La – Ti – Do –

In the harmonic part, there is a note "Fa". It is just three degrees below the "La" in the melody. It may seem like the most common harmony, but in this piece, or rather in Sakamoto's music, the "fa" note occupies a very peculiar position. What I mean by this is that in "Rydeen" and his other works, all the notes of the seven-note scale of "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti" are available in harmony, while the "Fa" is not available in melody. More specifically, the left-hand can play all the white keys, but the right-hand always bypasses only the white key "Fa" when it plays the melody.

♪ La- (in the melody)

When "La" sounds in the melody, "Fa" sounds in the chord (marked in red). Given the prohibition on the use of "Fa" in the melodic section, the "Fa" in the first chord acts as a fanfare, indicating that the piece is about to jump out of the confines of established music theory.

♪ Ti- (in the melody)

The note of the second chord is "So♯". This is the sound of a black key, not a white key, because of the "So♯". Our ears will immediately notice the deviation of this sound. However, it is the "third note of a dominant chord in a minor", which is an acceptable black key according to music theory. (See the comments at the end of this book for more details.) This note deviates from the usual seven-note scale but is not considered a deviation in theory. That musical disagreement shocks our ears on a subconscious level.

♪ Do- (in the melody)

Then the "La" sounds. At this moment in the melody section the "Do" is played. They form a very common harmony. The extremely simple melodic phrase rising from "La" to "Ti" to "Do" accompanied by a dramatic harmonic progression from "foreshadowing deviation" to "it is a deviation but not deviation" to "back to harmony" is really impressive.

Now let's go back to the score of Sakamoto's completed arrangement. I imagine that this arrangement score was probably originally written in Sakamoto's mind like this.

♪ La, Ti, Do – DoReDoTi – TiLaSo – Mi – La -

This was assembled in his head or while playing piano in the studio, presumably not on paper. Here is the completed arrangement score that corresponds to it.

As shown, this is a four-voice chord progression. Sakamoto created another melody line (colored in water blue in the score) that was close to but was also partially contrapuntal to Takahashi's original melodic phrase and added chords to it one by one. Presumably, the four-voice chord progression was meant to musically represent a horse galloping on all four legs. The score might look very complicated, but in fact, it is not. Here is the same score where the auxiliary lines of four colors are drawn.

The extant score of the four-voice arrangement gives us an idea of how he completed this extremely simple harmonic sketch to this score. More details can be found in the analysis article on my blog. This is a very mature and complete work, using the compositional approach of a string quartet. Based on this score, Hosono, the recording engineers, and the synthesizer engineer contributed their own ideas to the sound, and the result is the "Rydeen" we all know and love.

♪La, Ti, Do-, DoReDoTi-TiLaSo-Mi-La-

Incidentally, a few pages ago I pointed out the fact that in "Rydeen" the "Fa" note is deliberately avoided in the melody. So far, I haven't explained why. This is because talking about it in this chapter requires more pages and is a somewhat advanced topic in terms of music theory. In the next chapter, I will start with the basics and explain them in turn.

TO BE CONTINUED