Name: Tujiko Noriko

Nationality: Japanese

Occupation: Musician, singer-songwriter, filmmaker
Current Release: Tujiko Noriko's soundtrack to the movie Surge, a collaboration with Paul Davies, is out now via SN Variations / Constructive.
Recommendations: Long Goodbye by Aneil Karia; 最後の冒険家　(Saigo no boken ka) by Naoki Ishikawa

If you enjoyed this interview with Tujiko Noriko, visit her official website for more information. She is also on Facebook, and twitter.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I didn’t grow up in a musical family. But whenever I had musical experience I remember myself being so deeply touched, with a feeling like it fully understands me.

I took small music opportunities in school seriously, it was just pleasing to me very much, I was lucky to be in a school with many instruments, and choral concerts etc. Also I had an influence from radio and television. I loved singing. I loved cassette tape recorderw, I was just so impressed that we could reserve sounds which passed by.

I started making sounds/music 1 or 2 years before 2000.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?
 
Similar to you. Maybe it feels a bit more abstract to me, what I feel from music is a space. With texture and lights, and sometimes a structure but those stay rather in an abstract level, it is even before the colours occur.

But when there is singing, I think sometimes it might be a bit different. It goes to emotions and it is more like pure energy movement.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I am still like a child for making music, I started to understand that I am growing and developing myself as an artist only recently. I listen to some music and I always feel like oh those musicians are all so matured, and I admire them.

I started to pay attention to focus to be true to my personal voice and also to my nature which wants to experiment to be at my own frontier.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I am not a vigorous music listener searching for a lot of music but I do really appreciate listening to music since always, like I mentioned above. But I need to create stuff like music and poems.

I am making a story with Joji Koyama for our second film and it is so fun, to me sometimes making a story for a film can be more fun than watching a film.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Maybe the way to say it changes every time but now I would say - To meet myself, and to meet everyone.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I don’t really think those are opposing each other. But ‘continuing tradition’ sounds not so important to my personal motivation though I know it is very important in general and I appreciate tradition a lot.

I am more curious about the future - originality and personality reach universal feelings, and innovation reaches timeless feelings.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

The computer.

After knowing what we want, we can go very simply and intuitively, randomly even, enjoying coincidence.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My routine is one of a person who has children and pets and works from  home. I have 3 kids and 2 cats and my partner is often away for his work so I have a lot to do and I am messy and not at all that competent in multi-tasking. Always in a rush and full of emotions, forget to drink the coffee I made, forget to look at myself in the mirror for days, always at the last minutes.

Among this rush I am so happy to find time to dive into making music even for 15 minutes here and there. It's a very peaceful moment. After the kids sleep, I happily lie down with my computer and edit music in bed. Maybe my music is sleepy music, I get sleepy while I work and I sleep.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

After having the idea of the texture and atmosphere of the music, I record a lot, mostly in improvisation, or I decide on a melody and a very simple harmony for recording when I want melody or songs. And then I edit everything.

For the Surge Original Soundtrack, I had a special process. I watched the film and I found the music and sound design were fitting together well. Paul Davies, the sound designer, and I decided to add more tracks to make the album contain more than just the score.

I like very much the way the sounds from Paul and mine co-exist.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Listening is a bit like feeling empathy for each other - I feel its composer and musicians and feel collaborative with them in solitude. It's similar to a concert, it is a totally collective experience for everyone.

I can’t think of the listener side and the creative side separately well. We are in the same place at the end. I love collaboration and solo both.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I am living and creating in a very small world. I am dreaming that these small things from me or someone else give a space with peace, empathy, vividness, and beauty in someone here and there. It is a space that we all have the right to have equally, it is a space which is very important for us and important to keep nourishing.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

It relates to the question and answer above.

As we all know it seems we need to constantly access somewhere and something else than what we inevitably meet on this earth in this country in this town and in this office and house and room, to deal with our incredible emotions.

I wrote 'we', but personally music helped me from time to time to go through all these mysteries without having the guaranteed answer.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Music has intrinsically physics in it.

I have the impression that occidental music theory is similar to science, math. And the way music was considered and played in Japan seems to be close to something like unsystematic philosophy.

To me it seems, including science, those are all human activities similarly which try to deal with all these unanswered questions. And they progress / change with time together.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Little by little I progressed I think, but I haven’t been so good at dealing with earthly and concrete things probably. Though those are also essentially important for our well being.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I don’t know really …!

But it is a bit like language. Language is an incredible invention, also a phenomenon.