Music and Lady Gaga

Basically, I’ve been on a Lady Gaga binge the past couple of days. Why? I have not the slightest clue. I mean, she’s certainly not my favourite artist–she has Fleetwood Mac, Susumu Hirasawa, and Coldplay to contend with! Despite that, I find all of her singles quite catchy and pretty good to dance to. Now imagine an ORCHESTRA playing Lady Gaga. Strings. Woodwinds. Brass. Percussion. Wouldn’t that make her music even better? I can hear in my head what Bad Romance or Paparazzi would sound like played by an orchestra. Not only can I hear an orchestra playing Lady Gaga’s music, but also the music of Coldplay, Susumu Hirasawa, video games, and so forth. This leads me into what I want to talk about.

Susumu Hirasawa

I can make music on my computer; I can emulate the timbre of each instrument in an orchestra; I have the hardware and software …I sometimes create music for a well-known project in the videogaming community called Zelda Reorchestrated (or ZREO for short). The goal of the project is to “reorchestrate” every track from every Zelda game. By reorchesrtate, I mean transcribe each song by ear and then apply high-end instrument samples to the transcriptions. ZREO has inspired numerous, although less successful, sister projects like Super Mario Reorchestrated and Metroid Reorchestrated.

The point is, what if I take some time and arrange and orchestrate these songs by Lady Gaga, Coldplay, etc? I think I can do it. I think this would make a great idea for a project this summer. I just have to wait for some cables to arrive in the mail so I can hook up the M-Audio Firewire 410 that my uncle gave to me. …Or even arranging songs for concert and marching band. My band teacher jokingly suggested performing a Lady Gaga marching show one time. I think the idea has a lot of potential in terms of both the music and the visuals. The same goes for a video game marching show, such like the show that UC Berkeley did a few years ago. Lady Gaga’s music is not the most amazing work ever created, like some of her fans think; however, I think–and this goes for just about any piece of music–if arranged in an impressive or “unique” way, her music could cater to non-fans and even the most ardent haters.

Not only do I envision orchestral arrangements of songs, but also electronic-orchestral fusion. Much of my inspiration for this comes from Susumu Hirasawa, a Japanese electro-pop artist. He has done several anime soundtracks and has released numerous solo albums. His work is incredible to say the least, and I’m not sure if I’d be going too far to say that he is possibly a musical genius. His work has its own distinct flavour, a flavour which I have not heard anywhere else. I feel like I’m derailing from my original topic… To end, this discourse (or is it a digression?) take a listen to Aurora 2 by Susumu Hirasawa. Can you hear this type of work fused with an orchestra? Eventually, I’ll have to stop arranging and reorchestrating others’ music and start composing my own, but one must start somewhere, right?

–Peace!

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