What do classical and metal have in common? Why I, a pianist, keep arranging BABYMETAL
Nursery Rhyme Sheet Music WarabeeI provide piano arrangement scores of BABYMETAL, and I’d like to share—honestly—why I created BABYMETAL arrangement scores and why, as a classical music specialist, I continue to deliberately challenge myself in other genres.
The catalyst for the arrangement was a lesson close to home.
I teach children and often use nursery rhymes.
Singing together, playing together...
But there are very many scores and accompaniment arrangements that aren’t appealing.
Perhaps it's because, in many cases, only the melody is conveyed.
I always thought that even without changing the length of the song, if the harmonies were crafted more thoughtfully, it could become a lovely piece.
So, I came up with the idea of arranging children's songs by difficulty level.
After I arranged, recorded, and published a few nursery rhymes a couple of times, news about BABYMETAL came in.
I'm not a specialist in metal, so I ignored it at first.
However, my husband is into metal, and it had gradually become impossible to ignore.
Someone suggested, “Why don’t you try arranging it?” and that made me start listening seriously.
If it went well, we would publish the sheet music—that’s how the conversation went, and I began tackling it with my pride on the line.
Opened up my world of music
I used to think, admittedly, that metal was “just loud noise,” but inside my heart, an incredible transformation took place that led me to become a fan of BABYMETAL.
It took me over a year to understand the metal genre, but by arranging BABYMETAL’s music, I ended up listening to them constantly and eventually came to understand it in my own way.
Now, I feel a sense of respect for the messages and musicality inherent in metal music.
Also, by engaging in two different genres, the way we channel our energy has become even more intense.
By taking on a new genre, my sense of excitement has grown.
For someone like me who has studied classical music, it felt very strange to be seriously pursuing metal—and even more baffling that I was becoming so absorbed in it.
There might have been a notion somewhere that “metal is frivolous.”
Life is a mysterious thing, I used to think many times.
I discovered commonalities with classical music.
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There were similar aspects in both metal and classical music.
The pride of creating a single work.
How perfectly we could perform a completed piece, and how much energy we could convey to the audience through it, were the same.
Longing for technical things.
It seems that both classical and metal exist in much the same way, and that both genres have gone through an era of virtuosity.
BABYMETAL is particularly technical, and trying to play the guitar improvisation on piano is, to use an analogy, like cutting cardboard with scissors—reckless.
The way notes are arranged in piano pieces and in guitar pieces differs much more than you might think just from listening, so if you keep trying to play them, you could end up hurting your fingers with awkward fingering.
the intensity of energy devoted to the performance
Since these are two genres that require tremendous concentration, performing in front of an audience demands an enormous amount of energy.
The kinds of things discussed in the classical world probably apply in the metal scene as well, and the topic I’m currently researching—how to perform better under pressure—isn’t limited to classical music, in my view.
It strengthened my pride in the classics.
Classical and metal have many things in common, but when it comes to engaging in dialogue with oneself, classical music is decidedly stronger.
It probably stems from that, but it’s true that there are criticisms—prejudices, perhaps—toward classical music, such as that it’s “difficult,” “hard to understand,” or “high barrier to entry.”
I can’t speak for other countries, but I feel that J-pop is still the mainstream in the music scene.
There’s a stereotype that people who like listening to or playing classical music are stuck-up.
I'm sure there's also prejudice against people who like to listen to or play metal.
I’m not familiar enough to write about it, but actually, I’ve experienced it too.
But it’s thanks to BABYMETAL—thanks to arranging music for BABYMETAL—that I was able to arrive at the idea that it’s okay to have enough pride to stand up to that prejudice.
Classical music, especially Bach, is the same as what we call martial arts in Japan.
A life of pursuing my goals is the life I wanted.
It made me feel even more strongly that I want to keep sticking to this from now on.
Come to think of it, I remember that something like this happened before.
It was when I failed my university entrance exams and became a rōnin (a student taking a gap year to study for reexamination).
It was when I became a ronin student myself that I realized the way I had seen them—without ever questioning society’s prejudice—was, in fact, prejudice.
What do you want to do from now on?
I want many people to have the world of music opened up to them, just as it was for me.
And through my BABYMETAL piano arrangements, I want people to understand how to listen to metal songs and appreciate what makes them good.
I want you to know that it is within the storm of sound that the truth resides.
And I want many people to understand what metal is and what classical is.
Our main concept going forward is to stem the decline in the fan bases shared by classical and metal, so we aim to create arrangements that incorporate elements of both.
This is something only I can do, and I think it's the right way to present what I have.
I want people to take an interest in metal and classical music and understand how wonderful it is to devote yourself to something seriously.
I’m not sure yet whether I’ll branch out into arranging metal beyond BABYMETAL, but I didn’t expect to get this absorbed in arranging, so I’ll try to keep at it as much as I can.