Hiroaki MINAMI
“Electronic symphony N°1”- Obscure Tape Music of Japan vol.10

Electronic Symphony No.1 (1977). “This unknown composer (not only for foreign fans, but also for domestic) is a pioneer of synthesizer music in Japan. However he was a professor of the top of academy of art university in Japan ’Tokyo Geidai’, actually he had a class of electronic music in there firstly. Also he built a private studio for self-made synthesizer in his home in 1976. This “Electronic Symphony No.1” is the earliest composition of the series. The spacy and very noisy sounds of analog synthesizer are like Roland Kayn’s 60’s concrete works.” (label note). “At the age of 15, having more of an interest in technology than music, I began to build radio sets and vacuum tube amplifiers. In the next 20 years, electronics advanced into the realm of transistors and integrated circuits creating a huge potential for the use of the synthesizer for musical applications. In the 70’s as knowledge about experiments in transistors, integrated circuit oscillators, and filter technology became available in electronic technology magazines, I attempted IC even though I only had vacuum tubes to completed an analog synthesizer, and purchased 2-channel and 4-channel tape recorders. I was finally equipped with the necessary equipment to create electronic music when tragedy struck my family: my eight-year-old daughter died from liver disease. It compelled me to compose the fifth movement “Sorrow Song the Stars Sang” of the Electronic Symphony No.1 as the requiem for my daughter. The piece, created from my own analog synthesizer, was distributed throughout the world as an individual work, and only later did I compose the rest of the movements in order to complete Symphony No. 1.” Hiroaki Minami.