the GazettE Sound Analyze Book – Uruha

I: You started with the guitar after you saw Sugizo (LUNA SEA), didn’t you?
U: Yes. When I saw a PV of LUNA SEA, Sugizos showiness for example attracted me and his instrument was the guitar, so I started also with the guitar, right? And also, Reita had a red guitar and a bass, so I asked him whether I could use it, because I wanted to start with playing guitar. That’s why I went to his home from time to time and he let me play his guitar. He also had a small effector, so I used it for the chorus and was able to hear the same phrases Inoran played in ROSIER. I was instantly drawn in. Afterwards I bought the Horizon from grass roots!
I: Around that time, do you remember some equipment where you though: „I guess I reached the next level“?
U: I remember that I felt regret about not being able to copy LUNA SEAs effective parts. Especially Sugizos delay used 2000ms and a dull delay of approximately 2000 rotations which I couldn’t reproduce! Then I saw the GT-5 from BOSS (multi effector) in GIGS (magazine) or somewhere, and just said: „I want this!“, so I worked hard at my part time job to buy it. When I finally bought it I first of all fumbled with it. As a result I got a huge impact when I played the phrases I couldn’t play before, right? When you buy a guitar, there usually is already an amp in the set and you’re able to distort the sound with it, right? That’s why I created sounds just with the distortion of the amp. I wasn’t picky with the distortion at that time and was happy with just using it in any way (lol).

I: Right now you’re playing erotic and deep driving phrases, but how did you start to be aware of those sounds?
U: When did I start…? I really didn’t know anything about tunes and even after we started with the GazettE I still fumbled a lot with doing trial and error! I asked the technician who worked with us for the recordings which amp would be good to use for spreading the sound and I bought and tried them out again and again.
I: For some time you piled up 3 to 4 of them on the wings of the stage which you used accordingly, right?
U: I was pretty lost, wasn’t I? At that time (lol).
I: In trying out different things, did you find an amp where you thought that it was close to your ideal?
U: If I have to tell one where I released the perfect sound during the whole live, it’s pretty difficult! Usually it matches one scene, but isn’t really useful for others. That’s why I came to the conclusion that I won’t deliver my ideal with just one main amp (lol). I tried exchanging the amps countless times, but it was pretty difficult, wasn’t it?
I: In that matter the amp is something that responds to the guitar you’re using?
U: If possible I want to use the appropriate guitar for every single scene! But that’s the most difficult part, isn’t it? That’s why I leave that thought aside, and started to think whether I couldn’t create a system I could apply.
I: But, since your green HELLION-II was completed, you continued to use it ever since, right?
U: It would be better to say… that when I made that guitar my main one, other things stabilisied, I think. I thought about how to shade the guitar! In the beginning I thought that I could make the model more freely like I wanted it to be, but then I decided to create a completely different model and that creation taught me some things, right? I wanted to make an extreme model in the beginning, but the person in charge told me about a guitar that could be used for all kind of scenes. I received a direction I couldn’t imagine before. But because ESP had a more flamboyant image, I imaged my future guitar to become extremely flamboyant, too.
I: Which guitar in concrete?
U: I like the PR Sugizo uses and aimed for a similar model (lol). But in the end I’m happy I settled down with an orthodox specification. I laid my hands on a standard one without knowing anything in the past and studied a lot. I also didn’t know much about the material I used and also wasn’t picky at all, right? Sugizo once asked me: „You don’t even know the material of your guitar?“ and I replied with „Ah, I didn’t really care about that“ and noticed how wrong that attitude was (lol). Of course marble top and mahogany back are standard material, but I never tried out different things either. For recordings I try out all kind of different guitars, but at lives it isn’t possible to reflect those, right? But the lives are the most important. To release the ideology of a song, I rather felt like facing the system or the environment that creates the sound of the guitar than the guitar itself. That’s basically the complete opposite from the time I started with the guitar, but I didn’t care about the look of the guitars anymore. Now natural coloured guitars are completely fine for me too. As long as the sound is good, I don’t care about the look or the form.
I: What made you change your mind?
U: It was step by step for the flow of the live, right? In the beginning I just played the 3 or 4 songs when we played at events by feeling, but since we started to have one man lives, I started to think that it would be boring if our show wouldn’t have capacity for development. I’d feel awful as a guitarist if I wouldn’t be able to release that capacity. I started with the guitar because of thoughts like. „guitars have a high potential“ or „it is supposed be able to do much more“! And I searched for the potential of the guitar in how freely I can use it, but after the phase passed where I piled up countless amps, with the Helix Floor I reached the current system where I was able to support different scenes with, right? Even if good material and a good guitar led to great sound, that alone wasn’t enough for a live. More than that, now, I think it’s better that the guitar can support many different things, even if it’s not the best sound, right? I’m kind of fickle, so I tried to not get tired of it, I think. I don’t want to do things I might get tired of and don’t want to show those things at lives.
I: Are you trying to not get tired of shows too?
U: Of course, I think that the level of the whole band wouldn’t increase if I don’t get better at playing the guitar, so I’m always thinking about polishing up my skills! But it’s not just about wanting to widen one’s horizon there. With improving both, the skills and the width of the sound, you’ll become a more independent guitarist, I think. In widen the width of the sound I wonder what kind of play I should use. If I have to decide between those two, for me the play might be the more important, though.

I: That’s interesting! And it surprises me that you, who is quite like a guitar hero and who has enchanting phrases and solos on stage, thinks like that. Well then, do you mind telling us about the things you were picky with in regards to the guitar in NINTH?
U: We included many effective things and I was also picky about the connection to those, but I guess the sound is the most important for me. Not just for the guitars, but most attention was given to the sound of the drums when we came up with them or the vocals in the editing. Actually, now I can’t see nothing but the whole song! From the view of a guitarist I got tired of music for some time. I started to think like that slowly after we released DOGMA until NINTH, right?
I: Was it valuable that you were in charge of the engineering for TRACES VOL2, then?
U: It was. We had more data to deal with than we always have for the prepro (preproduction) of new songs, so the work in process itself was pretty hard, but that we had to discuss more things with the other members was different from the usual. That was funny, we got closer to the core of our bands sound and it was an experience I couldn’t have made in just being the guitarist of a band. In the end, the work of the GazettE’s sound is about pursuing your own core to the fullest and finding the answer to „How should my guitar be?“. I started with mixing and found my answer there.
I: To say it extremely, you were also worried about the workload being too much, right?
U: But if I hadn’t stretched out my hand (to do the mixing), I would have always been stressed, so it was something I had to do as a guitarist. Even though that was really hard too… but because I stretched out my hand, it is easier now. I was able to give my vision a form and present it, and that’s also the easiest way to convey my thoughts to the members. For example if I say: „I want to do it like this“, with just words it’s pretty vague, isn’t it? In a band you only have vague conversations and I don’t like that. When we work on songs, one will definitely ask: „How will this turn out in the end?“, right? And if no one will reply with: „It should reach that quality in the end!“ we’ll exchange guesses, and it turns out to be a completely unproductive conversation and we eventually end up in disagreement. To avoid that everyone will understand it more easily if you tell them: „let’s process like that, it will turn out like that in the end!“. You can then continue with the next step on clarifying what kind of directions you don’t want to pursue. I want to take over such a role. For NINTH, I think I was able to turn one of my ideals into a form especially with THE MORTAL.

I: So, from the position of „producer Uruha“ what role should „guitarist Uruha“ play?
U: When we start with a song, the guitar might be secondary (lol). First of all, the drums are the core. First the drums have to be solid, then we enter the bass and then finally to add details to the song we’ll add „Uruha & Aoi“, or better said the guitar parts. There I aim for the sound. When the drums and bass goes like „don!“, then I want to give the guitar some space or a back-and-forth-feeling. I feel like the guitars should lead the back (drums and bass), right? (lol)
I: From the time you started with the guitar it’s a different image on how a guitarist should be, right?
U: Completely different, right? I think it’s the complete opposite to the musicianship of LUNA SEA. But that’s because the musicianship is created by LUNA SEAs members and if we’d mix that with our independent sounds it would end up chaotic. The music wouldn’t be worth to listen to and I wouldn’t be able to create the kind of music I want to aim for. Whatever I’d do, it would end up in disarray and as a result I wouldn’t know how to summarise the song. Thinking that we might be able to do something like that was our loss, and something we had to revise!
I: But such a chaotic sound from the GazettE also has its charm, right?
U: That’s right. Just, in the past we often said so too, but it ended up being chaotic, so we polished our music for interviews, but it was just us phrasing it in a better way. In the end we couldn’t control our play (lol). But with just saying that it would be good to control the chaos, it was completely different from consciously creating such a chaos and not intending for it, and I think, in the end you aren’t able to control everything and you probably won’t be able to enjoy music at all if you aim for that!

I: By the way, did the way change how you interact with the member?
U: No, not really, I think. I don’t really say anything about the vocals. I talked with Aoi before the mixing and also told REITA a few things. That’s why, I just do it for the drums, I guess. Also for other bands, if the drums are cool, you can hear the coolness of the song, right? How should we approach that? That was a topic we always thought of. That’s why, even though it was about the drums, I opened the data from past sessions, researched too, and found out that we were still doing bold things! Thinking about that led to me thinking that it depends on how much we play with every single kit. Usually at recordings for the drums all parts need to overlap, and there’s a limit on how much you can play around, right? But first of all, if we didn’t veer away from that way, we wouldn’t be able to have drastic edits with an impact. That’s why, just for the songs I created, THE MORTAL and BABYLON’S TABOO, I asked Kai to record every kit on its own and he did it for me. In our theory until now there were some disturbing things and it was about making those disappear, but with this way to record, we didn’t need the unavoidable EQ we used in the past in a processing meaning anymore and it turned out easy to do, right?
I: Did the guitars become easier to get into, too?
U: If you build a solid base with the drums, the overlapping with the guitar naturally disappeares too, and we were able to add some vacancy or additional things to the whole sound image. Eventually we always wished for our sound to level up since DOGMA. With a lower tuning the sound tends to be dull. That’s why cutting down low-passes, making the sound tighter and making the sound punch-like, is representing for DOGMA. But we felt that we needed to made those sounds fewer and to polish our play and with that we were careful that the low-passes with its solid dynamics and additional things won’t get a strange clicking feeling. However, I wanted to say that we created a wide range. That’s why we decided to quit narrowing our range. For that reason we needed an excessive disposal of the overlaps but without reducing our range, right? The result was that I got used to drawing out low-passes to a certain degree with my guitar. And also, rather than creating an invisible image, where you wonder how it will turn out in the end, because I did the mixing myself, I started to think that there was still something missing… First of all we got used to judge our songs when we decide for phrases and create the sound and we got used to not getting lost in doing so.

I: Is this way of thinking connected to your current system of using Mac and Helix Floor?
U: Rather than changing our system based on our flow until NINTH, we first made the system itself closer to the one of Mac and then we started to approach the mixing too. I felt the limit of my own guitar system. When I used the real amp there were a lot of limits, right? I entered the studio for creating songs with the guitar take before the tour for 2 to 3 days, but the gap of the many tone colours and the real amp with its available range, as well as the amp which I was using that flew over in the middle, stressed me. But now, we stopped thinking that we have to use an amp and most of the stress vanished. After we stuck to the fixed idea of „good equipment will produce good sounds“, everything became easier, right? But well, it wasn’t as if I trusted my equipment, though (lol). Rather than saying that I use my Helix because it is good, it supports a wide range of the things I want to do. It’s better to say that the Helix is part of the equipment I don’t feel much harm from. That’s the benefit of digital: what is impossible for the real amp, isn’t for the Helix and can be realised. I accepted that and therefore use it, right?

I: Did you like digital from the beginning?
U: Not really (lol). But at a previous live I decided to use the plug in for the PC and that was a turning point. In doing that, we were able to play with tribal things of the plug in and were even able to set internal things, but for the sound that was created with this, I thought that it could be used even for bucking. We removed the amp that usually did the bucking, prepared the Mac instead and used the Mac just for the bucking and unexpectedly we were able to arrange it with our level and were able to use it like that! First of all because we had to go oversea for DOGMA, this came into view and the occasion for that was, that we thought about a compact system with PC base, which we could accept. Even if it’s a reduced system, we tried to not make it lose too much to the big system we have in Japan, right?
I: From there you started to use it, right?
U: Yes. In doing so, desire emerged and we intended to do all the effects with Mac but the trouble continued… it was just good for the bucking, but in exchanging the preset sound, which was made with a huge plug in for every live, the Mac was crashing under that load or errors occurred and it was awful. Even during rehearsal I was causing troubles for the other which made me nervous and right before the main act of big lives too, I had troubles. Those are tough memories.
I: Even though you encountered such troubles, you didn’t stop with investigating digital ways, right?
U: After doing a guitar take I was told countless times to finally return (to analogue), but even though I thought that it would be more effective, stopping half way would feel like losing (lol). After all I wanted to investigate the cause of why it wasn’t working. If I left it at not knowing anything, everything until then would seem as if I denied everything (I researched until then) and I’d hate that!
I: Same as we said before about „controlling the chaos“, you’re the type who wants to grasp and makes the complete cause obvious, right?
U: That’s right. Well, Because of the Helix that was created properly for the specialised use of the guitar, the steady preset tuning and delay vanished and the play turned out smooth. The current system makes me feel save!

I: Please tell us again about the charm of your instrument.
U: It’s deep, isn’t it… Sometimes I wonder whether the guitar is a percussion instrument (lol). For the violin for example the impression that it’s playing the melody is strong, but for the guitar I got the impression that its attack is more like life and I end up thinking that it is a percussion instrument after all. Of course it’s different for guitar solos, but it also has a nuance like a percussion instrument, hasn’t it? It also cuts off the rhythm often, especially if you play the music of the GazettE and it has a lot of percussion instrument-impressions. I play the guitar while focusing on the drums, though! That’s why the guitar might be close to a decoration of the impact emerging from the drums, right?