Song a Day-ish 19 (Sy-Fy-Birthday Song)

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Backstory

• Idk why I struggle so much with being on time, cause I’m 2 days late. So lemme do this correctly rn so I can get it right next week lolol! I remember starting this one on BART. But it’s really funny, the original idea that I had sat for a couple days, probably from before the previous VG song. But I completely got rid of that idea and this one came in. I lie when I say completely, cause if you listen all the way through the end you hear a little motif that hasn’t shown up anywhere else. That was actually the original idea! I didn’t wanna get rid of it cause I liked it so much, so in a bit of a fallen soldier salute I gave it it’s moment at the end! Ok! Now to the rest of the music, there’s a good amount in this one!

Music

• Liverpool Bass/Sequence Bass: So these two tracks are the first tracks in the picture that have midi all the way through. I put them together here because they are always playing the same exact thing. I remember watching a documentary about “Pet Sounds” and they said they tried to make what were essentially new sounds by combining 2 or more sounds that normally wouldn’t play the same things to get something new (so I tried to emulate that). Only difference is that the Liverpool Bass has double octaves, which is the really low bass you hear (ps probably should use headphones for this one). As I look back at it the Bass line might be a subconscious call back to the original motif, I really liked the skippy syncopated sound at this time in my writing lol!
• Sweet Lead (4x): So these are, you guessed it, the LEADS! lolol! It’s so funny, when you look at the main motif (the very first track) you see that it’s one note all the way through, that’s because it IS technically only one note! This particular synth has a function on the midi keyboard that you can slide it from note to note (little blue dot where your finger is on the screen, real fun, you should try it out if you haven’t already). That’s where the slide effect was created from. The second one of the 4 is the Verse lead. With this one I mainly pressed the keys like normal until the ends of the phrases where you hear the slides. The walk down at 0:53 was done because I wanted something different with the walk down from what I had heard and done previous to this song. I remember recording the notes and then just shifting them around until I got that pattern. This one also has the Bridge Lead in it (super long held notes with the stop time drums behind, yeah that one, you got it). The third one is just the low harmony on the ending walkups. The last one is the Original idea super low at the end.
• Vintage Kit: This drum set is the one that’s pictured, that one was a drum machine that I placed the piece to get the sound I wanted. This one plays from the beginning to bridge, then the choruses after.
• SoCal Kit (3x): FROM SCRATCH DRUMS ALERT! Granted it’s only two parts but…shutup lol, no one asked you. The first two are just doubles of each other to give more volume and force basically. But that is the stop time drum part I mentioned earlier. The other part that I made a pattern for is the very end when the Sweet Leads do their triple walkup. The last SoCal set is just Crashes and corresponding kicks.

Conclusion

• Gotta say writing this one was really fun and was funny enough the only one that my friends didn’t like when I sent it to them! And I actually love this one, it kinda has a charm and quirkiness that I can’t get enough of. But I totally see how the lead can get annoying [not to me, cause I love all my babies equally ;-)]. It was the first real outside criticism that I got in all of the time I’d been doing the songs. And I was actually really pleased to hear that, cause it meant my friends weren’t just saying they like my music cause they are my friends, which gave me even more of a little boost of confidence (that my music really was as good as I thought)!

“Sometimes a healthy criticism can be the best confidence booster”

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Song a Day-ish 18 (Video Game Song Part 4: Journeying)

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Backstory

• Ok! So even though I put a schedule on I still am late. I was in Riverside most of the week for my cousin’s graduation from the UC! But that’s not a real excuse it’s just my justification for procrastination lolol. But this song is now really in the headspace of wanting to finish a full album of VG songs! I realized I had a boss, an over-world style song, and an opening town theme… so now it was time for a secondary town, like when the game is still showing you how to play and the learning curve hasn’t spiked yet. And this is what I tried to capture, I always see a Pokemon avatar talking to a shopkeep or something when I hear this one.

Music

• Arcade Synth (4x): The first one of the 4 is the main melody that you hear through the chorus, verses and bridge. This one is just the highest frequency you hear of this synth. The second of the 4 is the 1st of 2 Basses for only the Choruses. The 3rd synth is the second Bass that essentially loops for most of the song. When you hear a bass synth in the verses, that is what is looped. This is also the track that has the bass for the bridge. The 4th of 4 is a loop of 5th notes that goes throughout all verses and choruses. This 4th track is the one that has the 5th note hits in the bridge as well but doesn’t do much more.
• Live Rock Kit (drums): This one is only Kick, tambourine, and a cabasa, this is the main drum kit and it loops throughout until the bridge, which has a bit of stop time for the bass, and I believe the other drum kit, to fill in.
• Deep Tech (drums): This one is only kick that back and forths with the LRK. I know not much here but It’s a simple song lol.

Conclusion

• This is a bit of a rushed post and slightly distracted throughout but it’s a really simple and fun song to listen to. You know, not really any quotes that come up either, tbh. soooooo….

“A wise man once told me, Always….no wait, Never….”

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Song a Day-ish 17 (Through a New Lens)

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Backstory

• GUESS WHO’S ON TIME THIS WEEK!?! LOLOL!! It’s time for a new song and fun one too! I’m pretty sure this was a BART song, mainly cause it was on my phone, but also because I remember being too scared to start writing songs on the laptop, even though I figured out how to do it. Not much backstory, other than just wanting to write a song tbh, but it ended up being one I really enjoyed.

Music

• Arp Animation (2x): I remember with this song I was just looking for something to define what it was, like a sound or a synth that would be the songs backbone. And once I found this synth it was crystal clear that I had found it! The Chords are easy, starts in F… F, A, C then to E, A, C, then F, Bb, C, then Eb, Bb, C and Finally E, Bb, C. And the synth takes care of the rest. The Bridge has it starting with F3 and D4, goes through rest of notes and ends on C# for the 1st pass, it repeats for most of the second pass but ends on C4 before it to go into the breakdown. The second one plays that you hear in the verses, like an arpeggiator up the chord, but it’s only 8th note chord hits. The effects gave it that sound.
• Agile Synth Bass: I basically just followed the chords of the first synth here and made the bass accentuate the notes that change and shape each chord. Worked the same way on verses but just toned it down (simplified it). The Bridge just had held tonic notes, I’m pretty sure, to have a foundation.
• Live Rock Kit (2x): 1st one was drum machine and second one was crashes, high hat in intro, and open high hats and crashes in the bridge.
• Endless Ocean: These are just the chords of the song in super reverb-y synth to give the song some meat.
• Dreamy Bells (2x): The first track of DBs plays what you hear at about 10 seconds, and plays that same pattern strategically throughout the song. The second one is only at the very end, it’s started by doubling the bass but deviates at the 3rd bar of its initial entrance.
• Finally there’s Hard Rock Guitar: This only comes in during the bridge and starts the same as the Arp Animations (with two held notes) but compliments it after the initial held notes.

Conclusion

• Gotta be real it was 100 degrees all day today so I’m dying, so sorry if this isn’t as well written as usual. But this song is perfect for what its purpose was. To just keep me going and keep on creating. I know I named it “Through a New Lens” for a reason and I’m pretty sure I was struggling on continuing on but getting this one out was all I needed to keep chugging on!

“Even if it’s rough and feeling like it’s not worth it, keep trying, keep creating, cause it’s gonna pay off eventually”

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Song a Day-ish 16 (First Song with Command K)

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Backstory

• Sooooooo umm….it’s Thursday and I can’t seem to get good at the schedule thing. I need to just like get 4 in a row ready or something lol. But anyways, This song was the first one since number 1 to be done on my laptop and the reason was I didn’t know how to use GarageBand without a midi keyboard to make the files! So once JD (piano/keys player in our band 2morrows June [check us out]) told me that Command K was the input for the Pop up keyboard, the SADI’s took a massive leap! I wrote this song at his house on the flat screen in his living room after we were just hanging out. It was hella funny though cause the HDMI cable we were using had this weird delay that made the picture and sound lag from what the actual song was doing, so I had to keep unplugging it and plugging it back in to record and listen back! lol! But Let’s get into the music!

Music

• Wide Suitcase: So the two synth tracks you see at the top are actually different sounds but the midi tracks always open up with the second track. And the piano motif was an idea I had in my head for like a day or two but I didn’t think I had the keyboard to get it into a session.
• Sunrise Chords: I know the 1st track says Wide Suitcase on like every piece but it’s because I recorded everything in the 2nd track to actually know what the notes were before the big effects came online. So if you listen to that little pre-chorus section, before the Fadd9 chord comes in, there’s a walk up in the notes that this one plays, you just can’t hear every note because of the synth’s effects.
• SoCal Drums: Lemme get the easy one out the way first. The second of the two drum tracks was only for claps. They hit on the 1, the and of 2 and the 3. They’re only present for intro, pre-choruses, and ending chorus. The other drum set has everything else in it. It’s a simple drum beat, not meant to be crazy overpowering or the center of attention, just that goldilocks state to be there for the song. The one thing about these drums that I really tried to experiment with was to have it close out the song. I have only heard that happen (like as long as I did it for) in one other song from one of my favorite bands, Maná. In their album “Amar es Compartir,” the third song “Ojala Pudiera Borrarte” has that exact thing and it always stuck with me. Not sure what I loved about it so much but I always had been wanting to do that in a song, and I found a spot in this one!
• Liverpool Bass: Uhhhh Duh! hahhaha! The verse patterns were just me channeling my inner Paul McCartney, just trying to give the song even more movement through the bass. But I do remember the bass was the first thing in the chorus and I built it all around that initial track. The only other thing it does are the intro, which are just long held single notes, and the pre-chorus tonic (and I think, not exactly sure) Fifth note back and forth.

Conclusion

• This one was sooooooo important! I can’t stress that enough. Because this was when I finally was able to use the computer version of GarageBand (which is vastly superior to the phone version) opening up so many more opportunities to expand my knowledge and challenges to myself!

If there’s a takeaway from Command K is, “When you allow yourself to learn one thing, the creative potential and output can and will increase infinitely.” Don’t be afraid to learn something or to be wrong, be afraid of the opportunities that you’ll miss out on because of that lack of knowledge!

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Song a Day-ish 15 (Video Game Song Part 3: Boss Battle)

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Backstory

• It’s Wednesday and I am late again! Jesus I’m not good at this schedule thing lol. But let’s get into it. Number 15 of 100, another Video Game song and another little challenge for myself. This is when I was in the beginnings of the VG songs and knew that I wanted my own collection of them, so the challenge was to write a boss battle. And I think it turned out pretty great! 

Music

• Digital Wave: I started off by just finding a sound that would be cool as an intro, sort of scary but in a non-threatening way. When I stumbled on this synth I immediately fell in love with it because it could do a vibrato by pressing harder and harder on the screen. The intro is just a little walk up with a single note bass, but it puts you in the headspace of “this boss means business.” The only other time it’s used in the song is the sound of the walk down in the bridge, meant to act almost like a bass, it’s the main foundation for that section of the song. Then I added a second one of those synths for harmony specific to the walk down.
• Arcade Synth: What is a VG song without Arcade Synth? So the next 4 tracks are AS, starting with the lead, it’s really interesting because all the notes you hear in the lead’s pattern are actually a mix of that one and the rhythm track. When the lead is solo’d you hear that it’s a much more skippy pattern (as well as open) and the upbeats of the chords are actually what fill those gaps, giving it a fuller sound. The 3rd AS is the bass, I wanted to stick more with the syncopation to counter the constant hits of the rhythm synth, only going straight in the bridge. The last one is the really high octave synth in the verses. I just tried to find a catchy motif that played off the lead synth to keep it feeling the same throughout. In a boss battle you should have this sense of urgency throughout the fight so it was really important for me to keep it consistent.
• Pulsar Wind: This synth is used exclusively for the long held bass notes in the intro, end chorus and bridge. It’s only there for filler on the bottom. Nothing to see here, smile and wave boys ;-).
• Hip Hop Drum Machine: Yep a drum machine. The thing with no soul lol, was just a kick and cabasa. And it just works! You can see where I placed them in the second picture.
• Oh and at the end of the song I added the high octave synth back in as a full circle bit of the song and the low Pulsar Wind Synth for when it’s looped so it’ll be seamless!

Conclusion

• I always say, when I talk about this song, that this one is like the 1st boss you battle in the game. I never saw it as the end all 8-bit boss battle song. It’s no Undertale Megalovania lol! But it’s a good song to listen to and to fight a battle to!

If there’s something to take away from this song, “Make you song feel like what you are feeling.”  Everything in this song is purposefully there to capture the feeling of urgency that is needed in a Boss Fight, at least that’s how I feel when I play, so follow the emotions and capture that, cause that’s what’s really effective in music!

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Song a Day-ish 14 (Clogged Up)

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Backstory 

• I SKIPPED A WEEK! Whoops, but I’m back!! Work has been quite intense recently and I’ve just been getting home exhausted. But I got really sick this week so I can write again lol! Been bed bound for the past few days and finally had some time! Alright enough of personal present life. It’s all about the past for this one! Clogged Up started with a Drummer on GarageBand, I wanted to do it as a challenge to see what I could come up with if I was given a completely random drum beat to start. If I’m not mistaken it was like the 2nd or 3rd beat I heard (you can randomize it and get new beats). So I used that and got to writing!

Music

• Drums: As stated above I used a Drummer (Kyle specifically), and once I heard his beat and how he accented the “And” of the 2nd and 3rd beats I found the song.
• Bass: Liverpool (Obviously). I know the guitar is the first thing you hear but the bass was actually the first thing I wrote. You can hear that the guitar is playing the same thing, mainly because I remember having the bass done and it not feeling right, like something was still missing (not because it was by itself with the drums lol).
• Guitars: 
• For once I didn’t use Hard Rock guitar lol! I actually used Rock Roots. After I copied the bass riff to the track and had it loop it felt way too repetitive especially because the chorus does the same riff. So I decided to experiment and pushed that next section up a half step to give it a different sound. AND BOY DID IT WORK!! I made the walk down back into the original key with this track. This guitar does the same riff as the verses in the choruses, but it has a cool little skipping sound in the bridge (I’ll get to that in a sec).
• Acoustic: This sound is only in the choruses playing F#m, A, Bm, and C# (have fun figuring that out), and when it ends each phrase this guitar drops out.
• Organ: Classic Rock Organ. I used this one to fill out the choruses and had the high single notes really drive in the walk downs and key changes. The choruses are cool because while everything else is hitting those really syncopated notes the organ is pretty much playing straight against them. (I love motifs and riffs that all clash   intentionally, it’s such a great sound to me!).
• Bridge:
• This only consists of bass, drums (from scratch), and the Roots Rock guitar. I started it with the bass and it’s long held notes, got the guitar to do a walk around, I’ll call it that, and added the drums right after. But what’s really cool are all the effects I put on top of the instruments. There’s a delay from the DJ effects (in the second picture) that is on during the entirety of the bridge. But the best part of the entire song, in my opinion, is what is in the “Dreamy” audio track. It’s only used in that bridge, and it’s…..drum roll…BART! The high pitched roar-like sound is the sound that BART makes from the inside of the car (for those of you who have never ridden BART). It’s so seamless and goddamn was I proud of myself for that!!!

Conclusion

• Another challenge conquered dudes!! And this one spawned some creativity I never would have done otherwise! This one was more of a technical win for me, not so much emotional, so this might seem like a dry ending, but I’ll leave with this…

It’s definitely true when they say “The best innovations come from being out of your comfort zone!”

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Song a Day-ish 13 (Action Movie Chase Scene)

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Backstory 

• IT’S WEDNESDAY GUYS!! A great day as always because I get to share another song with everyone!! This one is soooooo simple and was when I was starting to feel clogged again. I remember that I was feeling like I was getting to a point where I was only able to write the VideoGame songs, mainly because I only wanted to write them, and that was a red flag for me. It was like I was trying to take the easy way out and only do what I was comfortable with (if you are wondering why that’s bad, the whole point of the Songs a Day-ish was to get out of the writers block by making myself step out of my comfort zone in music. It was directly against what I set out to do). So for this song I went at it by forcing myself to not do a VG song. Gotta say, best song? By no means, a good “get one out to stay creative?” Absolutely! Now let’s get into the music!

Music

• Retro Bass: So this was the first thing that I came up with when I was playing with this specific sound. I might have said it before, but a lot of times what happens in the BART songs is the Bass usually becomes the actual base/foundation of the song. If you haven’t noticed before pay attention to the next one, that’s usually how the songs would take me. There's a change in the second go around of the motif, I’m not exactly sure why I went for it but I assume it was just to give it more color, I do really enjoy the sound of half steps and dissonance (to a certain degree of course). Something interesting, the bridge bass is actually something I accidentally stole from myself from a song I wrote before the block, not necessarily the notes being played but the chord progression.
• Organ: All I wanted for this was just to fill it out, so there’s only really one chord with the top notes shifting around to give it life. I put the little walk up to keep your attention and in the last walk up there is a little 1/8 note rest on the first hit. In the bridge I just put some chord strikes on the up beats to just change up the feeling a little.
• Big Room Drums: There’s two tracks of it, the one on the bottom has only the high hat and crashes. (PS both tracks were made from scratch). The second track has kick, claps (snare substitute), and a shaker (I don’t even remember putting that in tbh lol). But the track with the kick only comes in on the choruses and the high hat one stays throughout the song once it comes in.

Conclusion

• Ok, holy shit, while writing this the A’s (my favorite team) just got a NO-HITTER! So I’m distracted and excited, it’s not gonna reflect my mindset from when I wrote the song at all lolol! Omg I really can’t think anymore, ummmmmmmmmm ummmmmmmm……

“LET’S GO OAKLAND!!!” :-)

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Song a Day-ish 12 (Video Game Song Part 2: Overworld)

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Backstory

• Another Wednesday another song! Today we have the second of like 11 of the Video Game Songs! Fair warning, all of the VGS are probably not gonna have long in depth Blog posts cause they were all done the same essentially. Same head space, same instruments, etc. But this one was a BART one. I opened up GarageBand and it automatically brought up the Arcade synth (it usually spawns last instrument you used in a new session). So I just went with it and started a new one!

Music

• Synths
• Like I said I started with the Arcade synth with the chord walk up. Im pretty sure the two note walkup was the first thing I did then tacked on the next harmony and next after that!
• The second one was just the main melody. I wanted to keep the same motif throughout the chorus but didn’t want it to seem too repetitive, so I dropped the octave in the third pass of it then brought it back up.
• I kinda don’t remember making the bass riff but I remember wanting it to have the skippy sort of feeling and I ended up giving it the walk up too (that became a theme of this song)
• There’s a 4th AS that does the “solo” at the climax of the song. I just took the keyboard and improvised lol, it seemed to work out! My favorite part about it was the whole back and forth it does with the other three just feels like a musical representation of a head fake. You know when football players do that little shimmy before breaking to one side? That’s what it feels like and the “break” is the resolve!
• Drums
• I used Big Room again but wow that shaker pattern is all over the place lol, so that means I hit them whenever I felt like it needed a shaker lol. Usually I would make it consistent but not here. The first 8 bars of it are looped throughout the song and there’s also the drum kit’s version of sticks hitting each other (it kinda has a rolling effect) so I threw those in every so often to add a little color.
• Ending
• For the outro I had it do the full circle thing and made the intro the outro as well, but that was more intentional than just full circle. I wanted the song to loop perfectly, when you listen on repeat it just falls right into place without effort!

Conclusion

• I think for this song it was a challenge of how can I use the exact same tools and make something completely different from the first one? And I think I accomplished that pretty well. It’s one of the ones that isn’t as significant than a majority of the other songs but a fun one to listen to nonetheless.

I guess the lesson for today is, “Everything isn’t going to be the best or most significant thing you create. But enjoy it for what it is!”

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Song a Day-ish 11 (Heart Of Barb)

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Backstory

• Okieday it’s time for songs and stories about songs! This without a doubt is gonna be a fun one to write about. I say that cause when I wrote it I felt like a musical genius afterwards lol! This one was a BART song that I started on the way to work, a quick day but I didn’t finish on the first ride so I had time to let the song simmer in my subconscious for the whole day/event. I was so excited to finish the song and I remember just going on my phone immediately and continuing where I left off. But I didn’t even finish there! I had an idea that I had to finish at home. So this one was a labor of love lol! If I’m not mistaken HoB had the most layers on it at the time it was written of any song I had prior. You can hear most of the instruments but a few that I didn’t put high enough in the mix got drowned out (I’ll tell you where). OH! Side note, HoB's name comes because while writing it my train got stopped in-between stations (on the way home) and a barbed wire fence top’s loops looked like a heart from my angle! So let’s jump in! 

Music

• Synths
• There are actually three synths, "Sequence Bass," all three the same they just play different things. I’m writing about these first cause they were actually the first things to be recorded and created! The motif you hear after the strings was the very first thing that the song had and was built around (If I haven’t said it yet, that’s how I write. I usually take an idea that I like and just built around it. Sometimes it’s a bridge and I have to work my way backwards but HoB was one straight shot). Anyways, from there I just made the bass with the 2nd synth. It was just meant to be like steps, so it hits mostly on the 1’s and does little skips at the end of each phrase. Like normal, just meant to support and accentuate the main motif. But where it gets fun is when the 3rd synth comes in. Again, it’s the same sound just doing something different, but basically the intent was to make the bass sound now become a chord. So the last one adds two notes on top of the bass to complete the triads, and at the end of each phrase this synth breaks and makes a call and response effect between the 2nd and 3rd ones! The main motif, 1st synth, only plays when the song is in it’s choruses and the other two actually play throughout the song until the Bridge.
• Drums
• We got a done by scratch alert here!!! This kinda had the same story as the synths where It’s just two of the same instrument just doing separate things. The drums on the top, both "Big Room" btw, are only the Kick and the Snare and the one on the bottom is the relentless 16th note high hats, the crashes and the claps (bridge only). With the high hats I just did the 8 bars with 8th notes, quantized, copy and pasted lol! I can’t play those in real life so you sure as hell can bet I can’t do it on a phone screen HAHA!
• Guitars
• Ok, so there’s like 4 guitars in this song starting off with the one you hear when the drums come in. I just looped the drums and everything and just kept messing with melodies until I got that one. It’s funny I remember actually not liking them the day after I finish the song (more on that later). Same happened with the guitar that comes in during the second half of the verses, where I just fiddled, then I recorded what you hear now.
• Now earlier I said there was a mix that I didn’t do well...and here it is, the 3rd guitar I was talking about actually was hitting power chords @ 1:03, the second half of verses too. It’s super low but if you listen carefully you can hear it there and in every chorus as well! The last guitar is the 3rd note in the triads of the Bridge/Breakdown.
• Strings
• So strings are on the bottom of the session so that means it was the last thing I did in the song! I know for the intro I found the autoplay function and put it to  number 1 and played Bm, A, A, and F#m. I changed notes around in the edit window to get those really high notes. Try it for yourself and you can get it sounding pretty close off the bat! "Romantic Strings" are the ones I used.
• Bridge/Breakdown
• I love this breakdown so much and I needed to give it it’s own sub blog post lol:
• Backstory
• As I said earlier, I had the idea when I got off of BART, so I had to just keep singing it in my head over and over and over until I could put it down on my phone. I remember walking into my house and running past my parents “HI I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A SONG I NEED TO RECORD I’LL SAY HI LATER OR I’LL FORGET IT!”  And they let it happen lol! I was already driving when the three stop time hits dawned on me and I just sang the guitar melody immediately, it was just there, really magical tbh!
• Music
• Drums
• Just did what my mind's ear said to do and it was there, super quick, super effective.
• Guitars
• Like I said, the melody was there I just needed to put it down, I learnt it real quick and bam I was in business!
• Put the bottom harmony in for the first half of bridge and added the 3rd for the second.
• I remember listening to that breakdown like 20 times in a row when I finished the song and the feeling of “OH SHIIIIIIIT” was stronger with each listen!
• Outro
• Just did choruses out but added a guitar solo. Something cool I remember is when I finished recording it, while fixing timings, I moved one note too far back and it gave it a staggered feeling which I kept (@ 3:42)!

Conclusion

• THIS SONG WAS SOOOOO HYPE WHEN I FINISHED IT! I had not been prouder of any of the songs than this one to this point. And you might be thinking, “wow so far he was really happy again when he wrote these last few.” And that’s a good observation, but the day after I finished it (I sent it to regular people I send all these to and they all genuinely loved it!) I started to hate it. Thinking back there must have been a subconscious thing where I felt what it was like [to be proud of my work] before and I wasn’t ready to feel that again, so my brain went to the opposite extreme and made me second guess that it was a good song. I got over it in like 5 days, but very telling in the process! I love this song to this day and still get really hyped up listening to it! Hell, the note I gave myself for writing this blog was “HYPE” lol that was it!

Lesson time!! This song was just so fun and showed me how encompassing my music could be for me! So my quote is “Love what you do so much that nothing can get in the way of your process, not even saying hi to your parents…If you’re there, they’ll understand”

If you missed last week's song "Happy Town" <---LINK

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Song a Day-ish 10 (Video Game Song Part 1: Happy Town)

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Backstory

• WHAT A DAY! A WEDNESDAY TO BE PRECISE! CAUSE I HAVE ANOTHER SONG FOR YOU ALL! And it’s a very important song for me in the Songs a Day-ish for two reasons; 1) DOUBLE DIGITS!!!!! 2) This is the first of what actually became an album inside a collection and a defining part of this journey. This song is definitely when I can say I felt like I was back as a writer, not only was the song far from what I had ever done before, but it was another conquered challenge that solidified in my head that I was able to write good music again. I think right about now too you can tell that the down and almost lost feelings I had were pretty much gone before this point in the 100, and this one pushed whatever I fear I had left out the window!
• Ok, that was emotional backstory so here’s music version lol. I had been listening to video game music and movie scores in general and just thought how cool it is to just do that for a living and, hell, it would be so much fun to try out! Also If I’m not mistaken JD, our piano player in our band [2morrows June check us out, shameless plug ;-)], had started playing Undertale and it’s music was all 8-bit from what I remember (I never played it) so that just gave me another reason to try it out. I looked for some place to start and this YouTuber called “8-bit Music Theory” had a video come out a couple months earlier called “Why does Mario music sound “Fun”?” and I basically took what he explained in the video and tried to make a simple but fun sounding theme out of 8-bit synths! So let’s get into the music!

Music

• Melody
• Quick preface: there’s only 3 instruments in this song, 1) Arcade Synth (with the arpeggiator turned off), 2) Hip Hop Drum machine that did the shaker sound, and 3) Big Room drums that had the Kick sound that worked for the song. That’s it.
• So if you watch the video I linked you will hear him say that a main part of the Mario music is that it always starts off with a big and quick intro to get everyone engaged and locked in for the rest of the song (I did that with all the songs that are in the “SADI VideoGames” album) but it actually was the last thing I created. 
• I did the Major Scale player in GarageBand (2nd Pic) and came up with the melody after messing around with the synth. From there I made the other parts and moved to that B section, I wanted to keep the same motif so it wasn’t too massive of a change and was easy to follow. Something that I always did, in this song especially, was to resolve to the 1 at the end of every section. It gave the song a feeling of familiarity and could be understood by everyone.
• The C section followed the same rules but went minor, still has an echo of the original motif and just feels like it belongs. I also remember wanting every 8 bars to have something completely different so you weren’t just listening to the same thing over and over. The only repeats are the first two choruses and double choruses out (full circle feeling).
• Bass
• This was always the second thing I did in each section. But it’s the same synth sound only 2 octaves down. I just made it follow and compliment the melody, you can hear it skipping along to the punchy syncopations that the main motifs do, and for me it just drives the song so much because the melodies all have a powerful foundations in the bass. They are doing essentially the same thing and it helps dig that earworm pattern into your brain!
• The only time it diverges from the melody’s motif is the C section where it does that walk down into the chorus. Other than that I tried to keep them as close together as possible without feelings like they were just doubled
• Higher Synth
• This one was odd cause I just remember needing the song to have a little more fill. I already did middle C register and already did bass so I just went for super high and kinda just played until I found something that worked. Not gonna lie in listening back I just wrote a bass line and put it in a super high octave lol.
• B section I just played and got something that came close to what you hear now, but I edited it and found its stride.
• C section was chords, I realized there weren’t any real chords (like none that were actually played) so I threw those in to: 1) have chords and 2) to show this part was in minor lol!
• Drums
• I used the drum machine until I found an easy shaker-esk pattern that wasn’t intrusive. That just loops throughout the song and isn’t really a sight to behold lol.
• Kicks were done by hand and looped through the song just like the shaker. Yeah….not much to write here lolol

Conclusion

• Wow this one is way longer than intended, but it proves my point, this song is an important milestone in my journey! I’m not really sure what else to say that I didn’t say in the backstory. It’s all there: conquered challenge, confidence, made it to ten! All those are huge for what I was doing and just made me hungry to get through the next ten. It parallels the blog too really, while technically at 11 posts now, I’m over ten weeks into this process and if I may I’m gonna pat myself on the back for it. Even though there haven’t been huge amounts of people reading or listening I know it’s gonna be worth it in the end!  It’s the exact same feeling as when I was writing the songs. A long road ahead, and although good is here now, the great is yet to come! And I am so happy to be on this journey with all of you who are reading and listening!!

If I’m gonna make a lesson out of it, it’s got to be “Take the goods and appreciate them to the fullest, these long journeys are hard, and if you don’t it can feel like your effort isn’t worth it.”

If you missed last week's song "HFIG Backwards Idea" <---LINK

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Song a Day-ish 9 (HFIG Backwards Idea)

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Backstory

• Number 9 Number 9 Number 9 Number 9 Number 9 Number 9 Number 9! I said it on the instagram post but I’ll say it here too. It was my birthday on Tuesday, and Tuesdays are normally when I write these out, long story short I got lazy and just wanted to enjoy my day without having to dig deep down into my soul for writing lol! But I digress, you guys are here for the song! This one started because of Moana again! I assume you can tell that HFIG is an anagram, but it’s for How Far I’ll Go! I must have just been looking for performances of the song and somehow stumbled upon a video that had the song completely backwards. (If you can’t tell by now I’m a massive Beatles fan and there was a bunch of backwards stuff they did so I find that effect really interesting). I clicked the video and heard when the chorus came in and just fell in love with the motif in it’s inverted form!!!! Aaaaaand now begins the..

Music

• Bass
• So the bass is almost identical to what the notes of the backwards melody sounded like. I think I just changed some timing around to make it sound like a riff that was written normally, you know, with the intent to go forwards lol. I used the Liverpool Bass and had it loop for 24 bars and held that as the foundation of the entire song. It only really changes in the bridge, 8 bars, and was the same rhythmic pattern but the notes switched up and made the song go minor for those 8.
• Guitar
• This is only played through the choruses and the bridge using the chord player screen, the same used for the piano in the song from last week, and I put a picture up too. If easy enough (now and for future posts) I wanna show you what I played so I circled all the ones I pressed and you can figure it out. I don’t like giving handouts, you gotta work a little for it!! But the song is simple and basically the most radical change it has is an F#m in the Bridge.
• Synth Bass
• See Bass ;-)
• Drums
• THIS ONE WAS ALL FROM SCRATCH! If you’ve ever used GarageBand you know the drums have a literal kit that pops up on the screen and you basically just tap the drum you want and you get sound! I layered it up until I got a pattern I felt fit for the song. The choruses and bridge are the same pattern but the intro and verses are essentially just stripped down version of them.
• There’s also a drum machine sound called Pile Driver that gives the song that punchy fake sounding kick and actually doesn’t follow the real kick. It’s mostly there to fill dead space and make the song sound more Nokia Brick ringtone rather than Disney Princess lol.

Conclusion

• As you can see this song wasn’t a masterpiece, nor was it intended to be, it was just something I wanted to try. To see if I could make something completely new out of a well known song, it became an exercise for me and a bit of self confidence boost. Another step in the right direction, and it kept me feeling good about writing, cause it was challenging enough to take on, but not too hard where I was setting myself up for failure (which was the thought process on the Songs a Day-ish as a whole too [I love when things come full circle]). I remember thinking that it would be a great ringtone too! I would use it lol!

Challenging yourself, it’s always a scary thought, usually based on fear of failure and it can be daunting, but the higher your expectations are the more likely you are to fail. If you are reading this while actively trying to get out of a writer’s block, don’t be afraid to lower your personal bar. You need to “Be gentle with yourself before you push yourself the way you could before.” It’s a process and as you go along you can start egging yourself along harder and harder. What I think I’m trying to say is that this challenge wasn’t a major one, but every little step helps you, big or small, masterpiece or ringtone. They all lead to the common goal and it’ll take time, but you’ll get there, and you’ll be writing things you never thought could come from you! “I guarantee it.”

If you missed last week's song "Numero Eight" <---LINK

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