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Big In Japan | |
Article from Making Music, July 1986 |
Is what Yamaha do. Our brave and selfless editor finds out how, first hand.
Yamaha's influence on the sound of 80's rock has been remarkable. To see where, how and why it started, Paul Colbert joined 20 of Britain's top dealers on a unique trip to Japan.
Peasant farmers grow DX7s, did you know that? Well, that's not quite true. They're actually ex-peasant farmers. Very ex.
In the midst of the farming district of Hamamatsu, central Japan, one large section of an even vaster factory complex builds DX7s, DX21s, SPX90s and a cross section of other Yamaha hi-tech products. The scrupulously attentive labour force is drawn from local landworkers. Yamaha took them, retrained them and instilled a thorough devotion to the products and company.
The production team is almost religious in its concentration on the passing components. At the far end of the conveyor belt hangs a board, spelling out the target number (DX21s today, 250 of them) and the running tally (181 by 3.30). It's not unknown for the team to stay behind in its own time to reach that figure, should they be a few under the score.
The Yamaha factory is a sobering and silent outing — the workers are not encouraged to talk — but is an illustration of how seriously Japan and the Japanese take music, particularly western music. A job producing Yamaha keyboards makes you a celebrity in out-of-town Hamamatsu. Or central Hamamatsu, for that matter. Or Tokyo. Or just about anywhere else.
Quite apart from the triumphs Japanese industry has had in producing outstanding musical instruments — with Yamaha's share being arguably the grandest — they all want to play the stuff.
Japanese kids are taught it at school, adults study it during music store evening classes, even drunken businessmen harangue you with Eurovision selections in every corner bar. Karaoke sets — which thankfully never caught on in Blighty — contain backing tapes unfolding the full arrangements of popular ditties minus the lead vocal which you deliver, at full scream, through the purpose built reverbed / echoed / ADT-ed mike. While British musicians may pick up their first guitar to break out of the system, Japanese musicians do it in order to belong.
It's hard to believe that Japanese instruments could become even more important in the UK. But they will. For those who follow the markets — and a shade of inside knowledge never hurts — the next couple of years will witness some titanic struggles between the major Japanese instrument companies, much of the campaign being fought in Britain. Those manufacturers who have already done well in one area will bring the weight of their R&D departments to bear on other instruments, converting the whole band to their wares. Guitars, drums, amps, keyboards, effects, mikes, PA, stage clothes even... to Japanese companies it makes sound commercial sense for every item to spring from their production lines.
So today's geography lesson involves a tour round Japan, and its music shops, to make some sense of what may be hitting us in not so many months time.
Yamaha's own Tokyo store is the guiding example for their plans for a central London R&D shop. The four floors are divided into the R&D studio, digital gear (the keyboards and computers), acoustic gear (drums, guitars, basses and brass), and a wide range of musical score. Just about every heavy metal band has its solos rendered in dots and tramlines — another indication of the Japanese learning curve.
You will find other manufacturers' gear (Roland, Korg, Casio) but in small amounts and principally, you might suspect, to show off the Yamaha stuff in comparison. Nothing secondhand, and most of the shop assistants are girls — Japanese pop and rock have nowhere near the degree male dominance found in Europe.
The R&D floor is at the top, with its own coffee bar and studio attached. Musicians can try gear in the studio, and offer opinions on prototypes or views on forthcoming Yamaha projects. Whether that's by invitation, or open to anybody wandering in from the street is a matter for consideration.
By the end of the year London, Paris and New York will also have R&D stores acting as showcases for all the gear, and a chance for Yamaha to demonstrate the power of their band collection. It's not certain how much actual selling will go on. The shopfloor techniques of Tokyo may not function in W1, but if they do some crystal ball gazers are already predicting a dozen Yamaha centres scattered up and down the country, and perhaps a reduced number of local dealers handling the gear. But that's purest conjecture.
Incidentally, the Tokyo store was excellent... clean, polite and crammed with gear, though with less emphasis on MIDI interconnection than over here. Strangely, it was awash in cardboard boxes. Japan's population is 120 million, but 70 per cent of the country is unusable mountain. Land prices are astronomic (£41,000 for one square metre in Tokyo), so shops can't afford vast storerooms in which to dump boxes.
Premier Class |
Tape Dates |
Who Did It First? |
The Allen & Heath Headline |
Made in Japan (Part 1) |
Forum |
Six Great Moments In Sound History |
Go East Young Band - Roland Report |
The Making Of A Guitar - Bourne Dragoner |
Company Report - Sequential |
Analogue Equipment Design - for Rock 'n' Roll (Part 1) |
The Search For Expression - A History of Wind Synthesizers |
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Feature by Paul Colbert
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