Japanese freestyle

[koganbot]

Japanese freestyle — is there a lot of it? I wouldn't know. Just glad that the style, which is pretty much gone from U.S. airwaves, is still strong in Asia.

(h/t arbitrary_greay, of course)

Tomato n' Pine FAB ("Free As A Bird")

Watch on YouTube

The rhythm is simply a hopped-up electrobeat,* not freestyle's fast twists and breakneck turns, but the melody, at least in the verse, could have come out of NYC or Union City, 1987. Like this:

Maribell "Roses Are Red"

Watch on YouTube

Also, in the midst of this week's Brave Brothers discussion I discovered a freestyle riff right smack center in the debut days of After School, 2009:

After School "Play Girlz"

Watch on YouTube

*[UPDATE 2018: I didn't know it when I made this post, but the correct term for the rhythm is "Eurobeat" (a term a couple readers use in the comments); but FAB's melody resembles freestyle in a way that most — but not all — Eurobeat doesn't. (I say "not all" given that Italodisco itself was in interplay with freestyle and feeding this into Eurobeat.) The term "Eurobeat" has had several uses over the years, but the one relevant to this post is an Italodisco-derived sound in the early to mid '90s that sold almost exclusively in Japan, though some producers and performers were Italian. The beats move fast at '90s speed, though, unlike vintage Italodisco.]

Comments

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

Would these also qualify as freestyle melody style? Because if so, then this stuff was pretty common in Jpop up through the early 00s.

1994, 1993-2005, 1985, 2007, 2003 but kind of cheating because it's from an artist whose music gimmick is 80s era sound

More common, though, was to take that type of melody and speed it up for Eurobeat, especially for anime themes. (Most of said anime themes do major-key modulations for inspirational effect, though.

[koganbot]

Wow! That's an interesting style(s). This is where my lack of music theory is a real handicap. No those melodies are not freestyle, but my adjectival description of freestyle — "sad, but upbeat!" — sorta fits those, too. There seems to be a show-music element in some of them that isn't in freestyle.

Anyway, where description fails, maybe links can help. Some classic American freestyle, '80s to early '90s:

New York:

Cover Girls "Inside Outside"

Judy Torres "Come Into My Arms"

Cynthia "Change On Me"

Lisette Melendez "A Day In My Life (Without You)"

Miami

Debbie Deb "When I Hear Music"

Sequal "It's Not Too Late"

Company B "Fascinated"

[koganbot]

So, what I think is going on in "FAB (Free As A Bird)" is that the verse melody is what I'm calling "freestyle" while the prechorus and chorus are in the style — you get to choose a name for it — that you're identifying.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my reaction to the Tomato n' Pine is that the melody is the kind of J-pop I do like (I don't like the current idol type of tune) and was common when I got into J-pop/anime music in the 90s; whereas the instrumental is more deliberately "80s dance" than you would've gotten at the time**, and reads to me as intentionally retro.

I've mentioned this to Frank before IIRC, but the Eurobeat style was pioneered by ex-Italo disco producers -- that's why it's called that. (This guy uber alles, but I think there were others as well.)

I don't really think Eurobeat has the same kind of melody as the slower, earlier, 80s-inflected stuff, actually. The latter also reminds me of freestyle (or rather the other way around), the former doesn't. (Frank's comment that there's a show music element to it is apt; quite a lot of this stuff would have been TV intro themes, just like a lot current CJK pop singles seem to be cell phone commercials.)


** Specifically, it's a bit acid house, and J-pop never actually did acid house in the acid house era insofar as I know. But a producer nowadays would have access to that "retro" sound, of course.