#04 | The Making of “Summer Street,” My First Solo Track

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Hello, this is Chiai Nagano, the shop owner.

Until last month, since I didn't have any subscribers yet, I'd been writing these as if they were newsletters, in this archive blog format — but starting this month, the long-awaited first real newsletter has launched. Thank you to everyone who signed up!

...and with that said, this is truly the fourth archive blog post.

▼ Recent update: My aunt's funeral and BGM registration

Let me start with something personal this time. My 89-year-old aunt passed away in July, and over the last two months I attended a family funeral and the interment of her ashes for the first time in a while.

The funeral hall was out in Chiba, somewhere I hadn't visited in a long time. She was such a friendly person, the type who'd quickly get along with anyone she'd just met, and I remember watching her get gently teased by her daughter — "you're chatting again," "come on, we need to go" — those little back-and-forths, often with a laugh.

Back when I was a kid, there used to be a custom of the whole extended family gathering at relatives' houses around New Year's and summer break. I remember once in middle school, when my allowance was tight, she quietly bought me the manga volumes I wanted when I was heading home on the train. She really took good care of me.

She had this remarkable sense of timing and distance in how she connected with people — including moments like that — and was naturally well-liked, the kind of person others would just start talking to. Standing there to say goodbye, I found myself remembering that about her all over again.

Having been there for the interment gave me a sense of closure, so I'm hoping to gradually get back to the personal things I'd put on hold.

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As for the shop itself, I'm right in the middle of working through BGM registrations. I've got 26 tracks registered so far, but things still aren't fully settled, so I'm hoping to have it in better shape by next month. I'd also like to gradually polish up the track descriptions.

▼ September's café playlist is up

How are you enjoying this month's Monthly Chill Songs Pickup, the café playlist I put out every month?

This playlist gets refreshed on the 1st of every month with 20 carefully chosen tracks, and we're now at a wild 126 updates! It actually started as a weekly playlist, but that was clearly starting to eat into my time for making music, so I switched to monthly updates around the 100-episode mark, haha.

That's how much I love digging for good tracks — my life with music really started with collecting CDs, so I make sure to set aside real time for this every month, partly to stay connected to that origin.

The overall image is a chill café playlist, but genre-wise I try to keep it wide-ranging — vocal tracks to instrumentals, rock to chill beats, even club sound sometimes.

This month's main genres are #Chillhop #Jazz #Electro #Fusion #BossaNova, and my picks are track 2, UMI's "happy im," and track 3, Kanako Yamamoto's "With You" — both feature really striking acoustic guitar.

For more details, check out this month's playlist blog post.

If your taste runs similar, I think you'll really enjoy it!

Available now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.

▼ How my first solo track came to be (BGM feature)

Last up, a track feature. Since this is the first newsletter, I thought I'd take a bit more space to tell the story of the track that started this whole journey — a song called "Summer Street."

▷ 1. Coming up with the motif

This was the very first thing I made, back before I even knew how to make music on a computer. My solo activity started in 2016, and one summer day, I just picked up the acoustic guitar we had at home and was casually strumming around when I stumbled onto a nice arpeggio.

At the time I was living in a neighborhood in Tokyo called Yūtenji, and I'd always had this image in my head of "chill within the city." I don't actually remember whether the song came first or the photo came first (I should check the file dates sometime) —

but around that same period, I also happened to take a good photo in Yūtenji.

Timing-wise, they felt pretty close together.

Once I had the rough shape done, up through around the pre-chorus, I thought, "alright, that's it!" I did consider making more songs, but decided to focus on turning this one into something finished first. Though — I was completely obsessed with parkour at the time, so before I knew it, the year had turned over, haha.

▷ 2. Trying out guitar lessons

The following year, I came across an ad for guitar lessons in my area and got interested. It turned out not to actually be a teacher based at my station — it was more of a referral-style ad connecting you to a nearby instructor — but I figured, why not, and reached out. I ended up taking my first lesson at a studio in a busy area near my station.

I had this image of guitar teachers as being hard rock or metal types — "let's shred!" — and since I'm not great at fast playing, I went in thinking, "well, if that's how it is, I can at least pick up some shredding technique." Honestly, I didn't expect the lessons to get into anything more personal than that.

But I'd written on the intake questionnaire, pretty enthusiastically, "I really want to write songs!" — and the teacher who showed up turned out to be someone who could play everything from jazz to metal, who also knew the UK and US indie music I loved, with an incredible depth of knowledge and range for sound.

The moment I walked into the studio, I remember thinking, "this person is incredible, this is the top of the top," "am I really allowed to take lessons at this price," "someone amazing just walked in" — I still remember that feeling clearly, haha.

The instant we started playing together, he instantly picked up on the sound I was going for, and after we talked a bit, the phrase he played back was on a completely different level. I intuitively thought, "This might be the best guitarist in Japan when it comes to musical approach."

That was about ten years ago now, and I still think that instinct was right.

▷ 3. Finishing the track!

After meeting him, I decided on the spot to ask him for lessons — and the biggest reason I chose him was that he could also help with songwriting, not just guitar.

At first I thought we'd meet up a few times at a studio and build it through sessions together, but in the end, it turned into home recording at his place (his parents' house).

At the time, caregiving responsibilities had suddenly landed on me out of nowhere and things were pretty intense, so going over to someone else's house felt like more of a mental reset than having him come to mine. His mom would bring out barley tea sometimes — such a nostalgic feeling, haha.

I had zero knowledge of recording gear or techniques — the closest thing I'd experienced was one recording session back in my band days, paid for by the label. He had all sorts of rack-mounted gear, and he taught me piece by piece. It became this blend of guitar lessons, a mindset for approaching music, gear knowhow, and just enough music theory, all mixed together while we actually built the song — learning as we made it.

What was funny was that I didn't feel much attachment to, or even see the need for, a melody in what I was making — I figured once I had a good arpeggio and a good accompaniment, "great, that's a solid BGM track," and I'd be done. Then he said, "okay, now let's work on the melody," and I remember thinking, "oh — I actually have to come up with a melody from here," haha.

We met roughly every two weeks, and it took about three to four months to bring it into shape. I made it in 2017 and released it in 2018.

▷ 4. My first release!

Since it was my very first release, I did consider Japanese services at the time, but the recurring annual fees felt like they'd add up, and I figured it wouldn't get that many plays anyway — so I went with CD Baby, an overseas service where you pay once and can distribute indefinitely. Interestingly, Harry, who I'd later co-write with, happened to be releasing music on CD Baby around the same time too, which we ended up bonding over — a fun connection looking back. It was a US service with an English-only site, so I nervously worked through it with the help of translation, but I'm glad it went smoothly.

For the cover art, in the end I didn't use the photo I'd taken in Yūtenji (that's often how it goes, haha). Instead, I reached out to a friend I'd done parkour with for about a year, who'd since moved to Australia on a working holiday — they'd posted a photo that fit the image perfectly, and I asked if I could use it.

I used that photo for the cover and posted the release link on Facebook for the first time, and to my delight it slowly built some response — about six months later I got offered work scoring an independent film, and a year later a former classmate told me they still remembered the song and had been listening to it a lot, which really meant a lot to me.

...that's the track I wanted to share for this first feature — one with a lot of history behind it.

Of course it's also available in the shop, and on streaming, so I'd love for you to check it out.

This got long, so I'll leave it here for now.

Please do sign up for the newsletter too. See you next time!