Last time,
I wrote about why I chose to share my creative process
on Instagram and TikTok.
Since then,
every time I finish a song,
I make a simple short movie
and post it on social media.
Before I realized it,
that had become part of my daily routine.
Songs that were born as instrumentals
slowly begin to gain color,
their worlds deepen,
lyrics are added,
vocals come in,
and finally, visuals overlap.
What was once only sound
rises up as a story.
That process was genuinely fun.
But to be honest,
carefully building a single, coherent world
is also quite exhausting.
Even when using AI,
continuously facing a piece of work
requires patience and stamina.
So sometimes,
as a way to take a breather,
I would try playing in a completely different way.
I’d take a song I had already made
and rearrange it.
Turn it into a stripped-down, singer-songwriter style
and think,
“Could I actually sing this myself?”
Or turn it into a piano solo
and imagine,
“It would feel amazing if I could play this.”
AI responds to even such casual ideas
with surprising sincerity.
That’s when a thought crossed my mind.
— Maybe it’s okay to try things
I could never do on my own.
What came to mind
were traditional Japanese instruments.
Koto.
Shamisen.
Flutes.
Of course,
I’ve never touched any of them.
I don’t know anyone who plays them.
I’d never even seen them as DTM sound sources,
and even if the sounds existed,
I wouldn’t have known how to use them.
Still,
somewhat hesitantly,
I typed “koto” and “shamisen” into the prompt.
What came back
was an astonishingly beautiful,
Japanese-style arrangement.
…This is incredible.
As a change of pace,
I kept experimenting with those kinds of arrangements.
As the number of tracks slowly grew,
another idea emerged.
If I wanted to deliver music
to people overseas
who are interested in Japanese culture,
music that includes traditional elements like this
might resonate more strongly.
I was already paying DistroKid every month.
Not using it felt like a waste.
— Maybe I should release these as works too.
I came up with the project name
together with ChatGPT.
Koto + Electronic Music
= Kotolectric
Not bad.
But this was clearly
different from the world I had been building
as Bluepiece Lab.
That’s when I learned that
with DistroKid’s Musician Plus plan,
you can register two artist names.
— Then I’ll make it a separate alias.
The name I chose was
harusame ao.
It’s actually one of the handles
I used a long time ago.
If Bluepiece Lab.
is a place where I carefully construct a worldview,
then harusame ao.
is a place where I experiment freely,
fully embracing AI.
That’s how I decided to position it.
When I actually released Kotolectric,
to be honest,
the play counts weren’t that high.
But people from countries outside Japan
started listening to it, little by little.
I could feel something I had never really considered before:
the global market.
That, too, was a big learning experience.
While the album “Falling Petals”
was slowly taking shape in the background,
other projects were moving forward under harusame ao.
“Kotolectric,”
using traditional Japanese instruments.
And another one:
a jazz-arranged version of the album “Melty.”
A Jazz Café Bathed in Sunlight: Melty
Soft, warm jazz arrangements
that feel like they might be playing
in a café in the afternoon.
When I’m tired from work or creating,
listening to it somehow calms me down.
By this point,
my life was completely filled with music.
I worked my regular job,
and cherished time with my family.
And in the small amount of free time left over,
I spent all of it facing music.
And finally—
I finished creating
the last song of the album.
Next time is the final chapter of this series.
Part 10: About the Album “Falling Petals”
I’ll write about how everything so far
came together
and crystallized into a single work.
