Recently (and yes, I’m always behind the curve on these things) I found a song by Momiro Clover Z called “Nippon Egao Hyakkei”. It’s a fun little song about laughing and might be one of the most Japanese things ever. Everything about it just reeks “Japan”, and I’m all about that. It’s the ending song for an anime about five women doing rakugo (Joshiraku – don dokodokodoko don dokodokodoko), so it’s very heavily rakugo themed.

But it’s got some fascinating musical aspects that most people will just skip over. And all the sadder, I think.

It’s got a bridge that has what’s called a “direct modulation”. It goes from C minor to F sharp minor, with no intervening chords. The more musically knowledgeable about you might recognize that this is a tritone, or augmented fourth interval, which means these keys have absolutely nothing to do with each other. They are just about as far apart as keys can be in the western musical idiom.

It also contains an interesting use of an augmented chord – it actually taught me something really interesting. It’s being used as a dominant (no, you silly-billies, not that kind of dominant, a musical dominant), but the actual secondary dominant can’t be used because the melody centers around an A and the dominant contains a G sharp, which would be horribly dissonant… but what they did works. You can tell that’s why they used that, because they use the real dominant when the melody’s not hovering around the A (towards the end of the bridge).

It’s surprisingly musically complex. And based on the context, the author seems to have done everything possible to distinguish the bridge musically from the rest of the song – when the bridge is over, it direct modulates back to the c minor. It really works, but you wouldn’t expect it to.

JPop in general seems to have that characteristic. Sometimes it’s just basic chord progressions, but sometimes they really toss the kitchen sink in, and by analyzing the music, it teaches me some really interesting stuff.

Another song that does really interesting stuff is “Idol” by Yoasobi. I know a lot of people just like it because it’s rockin’, and the lyrics are really kinda deep and sad. But musically, they did a lot of really interesting stuff – and it goes by so fast you barely get time to hear it before the next thing assaults your ears. It’s kind of amazing.

I think one of the things people should be taught is music appreciation, and everyone should learn to play at least one instrument passably. I’m not saying everyone should be a semi-pro pianist or composer like me, but I think people would appreciate music so much more if they had a basic knowledge of how it works. But… that’s the wonderful thing about music. It would be nice, but you don’t need it. Nearly everyone loves music even if they can’t carry a tune in a bucket. It’s part of the human experience.

And I really appreciate when someone, like some random JPop composer for some girl group who can sing passably but not a whole lot better than that, can give my ears something to feast on.

(The music is interesting, but Momoiro Clover Z is still an idol group, and they don’t have to be good, just cute and good enough. And I think “cute and good enough” is a good description of their musical abilities.)

I love the classics. Chopin, Beethoven, etc… they’re great. They were groundbreaking for their time, and they still have much to teach us. There’s a reason us pianists tend to keep many of those pieces in our back pocket. But I like Jpop just as much. Or, at least, some of it. Some of the Morning Musume stuff is kind of annoying, if I’m being honest.

I’m not saying idol culture is great. It’s really not. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn or take away from the music itself.