Quote:
Originally Posted by iPonbiki
Japanese music is basically American music from the 80s as far as I'm concerned. 
Anime music in general tends to use a lot of the verse, chorus, repeat structure from what I've noticed as well. Harmonies for the most part are simple in Japanese music (I even transcribed one song recently that used almost nothing but the tonic and dominant chords for its chord progression. Basically a lot of primary and secondary triads, a few 7ths here or there and maybe a borrowed chord or two. The songs tend to stay in the same key throughout the entire song as well with the exception of a few rarities.
Japanese mainstream music also doesn't tend to experiment that much and go outside the norm, thus it tends to evolve slowly. It is also a youth dominated market and high tenors with lots of falsetto notes are often present in male vocals. Female vocals for the most part, from what I've transcribed and listened to, often stay within the middle C to male high C range only occasionally traveling to the E above that (and hardly ever any higher). On that note Japanese (and Asia in general) is known for chewing up young talent and then abandoning them like yesterday's garbage. Seldom do you see a singer or group survive in the industry long term.
I wish I could speak for their lyrics, but I'm not familiar enough with their language to note any trends there.
The basic drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar (i.e. K-On!) is typical for a lot of anime music instrumentation as well. There are a few dance inspired synthesizer based groups though. R&B seems to be spreading at a rapid rate as well and a lot of non-animus artists seem to be gravitating towards that genre. The Oricon charts always seem to be cluttered with new R&B inspired groups every time I check.
Basically Japan is always one step behind America when it comes to music, and they really like to listen to and imitate all of our music. |
You are so wrong is not even funny, Japanese musicians are very eclectic most of the time. Western music is very simple, in American is very common the use of the same four chords progressions in mainstream music.
That's why you see videos like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
Japanese musicians like modulations a lot, they tend to incorporate pop melodies in their music and it doesn't matter if they are making Death Metal or a Rap song, It has to do with the music they grew up with, which is enka and old jpop. I also think that a lot of these Japanese musicians have a background in fusion. I suspect that some of them learn their instruments playing fusion or developed their skill jamming in a fusion band, even the "Malmsteen clones" are more versatile than Malmsteen himself, they can play everything.
Japanese songs tend to have a lot of chords because they like to modulate (change Keys) and those chords move around a lot in a Jazz kind of style or in a Classical Guitar kind of style (I'm classical Guitarist), R&B is not that present in jpop as this person said, actually Blues in general is not very prominent in Japanese music, their guitarists have a more classical approach to it like the guitarists from Europe, Metal in Europe doesn't have that many Blues in it and it's the same with Japanese Metal.
They do experiments in their music all the time, come on you need to be serious when you talk about something, this is one of the reasons why Marty Friedman lives there and not in America.
This was number one in Japan
Perfume Polyrhythm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PrYKtahrWU
Talking about "simple" rhythms. This is from K-On, IMHO Yui and Ritsu couldn't understand the rhythm in this song, let alone play the song.
GO! GO! MANIAC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDngv...=results_video
Another difference is that in western rock or metal music the Riff is the main thing, everything else is build around that and in Japanese music the melody is much more important doesn't matter what are you doing, so obviously they sound very different, there is a lot of more thinking in the building and release of tension when the Japanese are composing melodies.
There is a lot more going in on when you're talking about arrangements for the instruments as well but this thing is too long and I'm lazy as hell.