Star Musketeer Bismark — Making Of BGM (from Osamu Totsuka)

 

The liner notes inside the 2nd BGM Collection soundtrack release for the Star Musketeer Bismark anime contain some comments from composer Osamu Totsuka that go a bit into detail in regards to how the show's BGM was made. This was translated by @GANGO_Subs (Twitter) and posted onto Twitter on November 2021 but I am re-posting here for easier accessibility.

Scan taken from my vinyl copy of the album. Translation can be found below.

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Let me tell you a bit about the production of music for "Star Musketeer Bismarck".

First that we did was the "arrangement of music". This is where about 15 people such as the anime production staff, the music editing manager, the TV side-staff, the record company staff, the musician inspector etc, including myself (production, arrangement) gather.
At this stage of meeting no actual editing for the anime can actually be done, so the arrangement is only based on images as we are checking the storyboards.
 
Then the music director comes up with what will become the "Star Musketeer Bismarck music menu", and a rough appraisal starts being considered, starting from M1 (numbers of compositions are used instead of song titles). To cite an example from the record: "Infiltration - The Giant Enemy Mecha Factory" is the combination of M25 and M22. The M25 one holds sharp tension giving the feeling of suspense. Whereas M22 is the Deathcula robot factory. The tune sounded mechanical, evoking inorganic factory work - we got an idea to try to use the MC-4 (Music Micro Computer) for the composed tunes.
And so as we listen to opinions of all sides of the staff, observe the storyboards, once we finish the last M[number], we finish the day with scheduling the days for the recording, the studio time and the scheduling of musicians.
 
Then starting the following day...I spend days and nights filling the notes on the music paper. On the evening before the recording, I rewrite every part all over again from the score given to me by the music copier. In this case we organized the days into 24 channel multi recording - rhythm section, strings, brass, woodwind, synth, with every workday being 5-6 hours each.
Let me give you a glimpse of the actual work of music recording using the aforementioned "Infiltration - The Giant Enemy Mecha Factory".
 
In order for M25 to continue the tension, the heightened mood was supported by the monosyllable tone of the strings and synth and accentuated by finely honed hi-hat. Also to make suspenseful tone really stand out I used the minor third and then switched to minor major seventh chord with piano and electric guitar.
 
M22 was supposed to convey an inhuman sound, so I fed the data to MC-4 and I let the computer perform the music, with the exception of the string melody by the development section. I think we did at least 5 or 6 dubbings for this tune. Also I put the finishing touches on the tune by adding stuff like brass and included some strings and flute.
Then the mixdown is done.
 
In this case we did one for TV and one for the soundtrack in one day each.
 
While this music is used for the scenes it was originally designated to, of course, it is also used for other scenes where it seems to synergize well with the art. The fact that there were surprisingly times when the scenes worked out unexpectedly well, makes this another fun part of combining music and visuals.