My short pieces, lasting just a few seconds, have been around since the 1980s. They have always formed part of the albums I create. My 2007 album C’est La Dernière Chanson (Krecords) was dedicated entirely to such short pieces. Then, the 2018 album Gala-Kei (Bruit direct disques) was a work centred on the theme of ‘postal transmission’, utilising such short pieces. That album was structured in three stages: I would send my short melodies, recorded on a mobile phone (a ‘Gala-kei’), to a family to be reproduced, and then the band would perform those versions. Furthermore, on the 2019 album “Je est un autre (Okraina Records)”, I first played my melodies on the piano in front of the participants; the recording captured the process whereby the participants, having heard this, attempted to discern and reproduce the melodies without a score. When released as a work, the order was reversed to create a single track: first the participants’ performances, followed by the piano part played as if revealing the secret. In this “Pandemicky Pieces”, recorded in 2022, the theme is still the difficulties of ” la différance postale” that are unique to the pandemic. My melody, recorded on an iPhone Voice Memo, is first reproduced as a MIDI file using the music notation app MuseScore. The participants, having learnt the piece by listening to the score alongside this audio file, gathered at the Ueno Open-Air Concert Hall in Tokyo for the first time in three years to perform it. The composition was then completed by adding a recording of me playing the melody on my piano at home.
