From time to time, I am carried back to those childhood days, when we would build our little comfortable corners decorated like a tiny home, and our parents would put on a Ghibli movie they bought at a neighborhood store during summer vacations in Viet Nam. Not that my brother and I would catch that much of the monotonous Vietnamese voice-over within the movie at that time. So, our attention soon shifted towards the music – the memorable melodies and musical expressions accompanied us along the animation out of which we could make sense of the story. Back then, I did not play any instrument but I enjoyed listening to and immersing in music. Being exposed to these beautiful pieces from Joe Hisaishi, I now learned to be grateful for those experiences. As a result, I’d like to believe that it has encouraged me to keep playing the piano until this day. As time passed, I learned pieces from different epochs, from classical to modern music, from solo plays to duets, and from etudes to sonatas. Then the curiosity to play the piano ebbed away as I started to get consumed by other life demands. Until recently, when music started to become a more important part of my life again, as a way to process or maybe escape the daily flow of information.
A music genre that resonates with me the most is called minimal music. The movement originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s led by composers such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass. As Richard E. Rodda described it, minimal music includes repetitive melodic patterns, constant harmonies, and motoric rhythms where common chords change slowly and in steady rhythms. Interesting is the assembly of the seemingly unrelated parts, so that one can listen to it without expecting what comes next. Joe Hisaishi, who is and remains one of my favorite composers for contemporary classical music, supported the movement in Japan. At the same time, he’s writing all those magnificent pieces for Hayao Miyazaki’s animations – was he aware how many hearts he could touch all around the world with his compositions? In an interview which was published as part of the “Miyazaki Nomura’s Ghibli production report” serialized from December 1987 to May 1988, Joe Hisaishi shares his experience of creating music for the well-known animation “My Neighbor Totoro” and when asked about what the music was based on, he expressed the challenge of coming up with a melody full of imagination, kindness, and warmth. In parallel, he was working on the music for a theatrical piece called Azuchi which plays in a dark and evil world. In contrast to the innocent world of Totoro, it is inspiring to read about his capability to express a diverse range of emotions within his musical creations in parallel (“The Art of My Neighbor Totoro – a film by Hayao Miyazaki”, 2005).
Learning and understanding more about minimal music, keeps me motivated to explore my style when doing music. Although composing needs a lot of dedication, reading the stories of great composers always reminds me that the time spent to master this skill is worth it as long as it is something you really want to do or care about. My own composing experiences are limited at this time. Only now, I learned to apply what I was taught in music theory lessons in parallel to my piano lessons back in school. And like every study, theoretical knowledge, no matter how much it was studied in detail, does not ensure practical achievements, let alone mastery. There is a reason why our human brain is drawn to repetition. In musical terms, repetition can give us the chance to understand the piece to which we are listening. So, in terms of composing or playing an instrument, I see practicing as a form of consistent repetition out of which new learnings and improvement can emerge. At the same time, even the smallest progress needs to be connected to the efforts of this practice which is important to keep in mind when setting out for a longer musical journey.