Marty Friedman has pulled back the curtain on what it actually takes to write music for Japanese animation — and the answer varies wildly from job to job.
The former MEGADETH guitarist, who has lived in Tokyo since 2003, appeared on "Side Jams With Bryan Reesman" for an anime round table alongside singer/harpist Lindsay Schoolcraft and CROWN LANDS drummer/singer Cody Bowles. "Each case is completely different," Friedman said.
At one end of the scale sits his work on the "Sailor Moon" theme. "I was just playing guitar and I was working with a songwriter named Revo who has a band called SOUND HORIZON. He does a lot of anime stuff and he's really quite intelligent, a great songwriter. I just came in and played the guitars on that, so he just wanted my sound on that which is fine. I didn't have to know anything about 'Sailor Moon'. I had no idea what the story was. I just came in and played."
At the other end sits "The Perfect World", his theme for the Netflix series "B: The Beginning" — a project that consumed roughly twelve months. "That literally took an entire year of when they were in development for the anime series," Friedman recalled. He was fed new episodes and scenes as they were built, and had watched the finished show before anyone else saw it.
"They were in the loop with me month after month to say, 'We're going to change this character. He's going to become a little bit more of a good guy, and this character is going to be like this.' I had to keep up with the most minute details, and to be honest with you, I didn't really care. I got the vibe, and I know what to do to make the song work for this. But I respect them for this — it was so important to them for me to understand the depth of the story in great detail and really get behind the characters and really put that feeling into the song."
Between those two poles is everything else, he said, including directors who simply hand him a blank cheque: "Sometimes the guy creating the anime is a fan of mine. 'Dude, play anything you want.' It goes from zero to 100, and either way I'm just honored to be a part of it."
Friedman moved from the United States to Japan at 40 — a decision he has called crazy and necessary in equal measure. "It was all about the music," he told Australia's Amnplify in 2019. "I had lost interest in what was going on in the American music scene. I thought the only way I can really continue to grow as an artist is to make music that I really want to make, and contribute what I can to a music scene that really appealed to me. I was really right. Sometimes it takes a really crazy decision like that to get to the next step in your career."
Source: blabbermouth.net