Song a Day-ish 7 (Misdirection)

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Backstory

• Another Wednesday another song to give to you all! Here it is, number seven on the list! The whole song started from just the motif of the first organ you hear in the very beginning. I remember moving pretty swiftly on it and getting the verses and stuff done really fast. It was for sure another BART song that was written on the way to Millbrae, so that was an hour 20 mins of uninterrupted time to write!!

Music

• As stated above I started the song with the organ motif. I remember just opening it up and playing random keys and that first progression (A, F#, A, E, A, E). Then I added the (B, A, A up an octave) to give the bars a feeling of closure.
• The bass you hear, that comes in with the electric guitar, is actually another organ (no bass in this song) and was put it in for color, I don’t think I intended for it to act as the bass for the entirety of the song at first but I kept building on top of it and it just worked. The guitar basically follows and compliments whatever the Bass does. It changes in the chorus, but only the first note (which just jumps the octave).
• Drums were again a drummer machine that I placed each part (see second picture) until I found what sounded right to me. In the second half of the verses I added claves and then at the choruses I brought in toms and tambourine. In the bridge, for the first 4 bars, there’s only a high hat and a tambourine, and then a casaba comes in for the next 4. After that it goes back to the drum pattern of the verses, and then takes the chorus pattern all the way until the end! Final piece of drums were crashes that I did on the same drum set but a manual placement.
• There were the strings and an acoustic guitar that came in only at the chorus. For both I used the window that gives you chords and clusters for each instrument. If you go into the instrument, on the right hand corner you’ll see 4 solid vertical lines, it’s in there and you can play strummed chords on the guitar and do plucks for the string sections. There was a little bit of wiggling notes around to get the perfect sound, like how the first notes of the strings are a high octave, that isn’t there when you play it, so I had to just move them in the editing window. Nothing crazy, but very effective in my opinion!
• In the Bridge and out there is this pulsating synth called Classic Arp Echoes that I put in just to keep the song on it’s toes, It gave it another twist that really didn’t need to be there but just helped the song be a little more original than before! I also put the synth into last chorus to give the ending a feeling of coming full circle and it became something I really like to do to make songs feel fuller and more complete. It took a second but I eventually started learning how to write bridges that complimented the main song so well that I wouldn’t even have to change what was brought over, I could just copy and paste and it would fit well, complimenting while tugging just enough to keep it interesting.

Conclusion

• This song is where a little more confidence really started getting to me because I showed my brother this song right when I finished and he was caught off guard by the way the chorus was and that was a really cool feeling, that the thing I was going for was actually accomplished and effective! Knowing your own capabilities is already good thing, but finding new ones on your first try is just so gratifying! It’s one of those things that you can’t help but be so proud of yourself for! 

Something worth doing will always be gratifying, especially in the end, and I think this song represents that really well. It was created with excitement and optimism for trying new things and, it’s also a really good starting point in history to my personal theory and mantra for writing songs. “Start with simple, something everyone can grasp, then just give it that little twist to surprise/impress someone.” It makes for such a great listening experience and is just fun for music! Fun song. Fun times ;-)

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Song a Day-ish 6 (Summer Camp Theme Sped Up)

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Backstory

• Writing this one like super last minute on Bart, but getting it done nonetheless! Now this is honestly one of my favorite songs because the fun feeling I get from it! I mean just listen to it!. I was at work (I’m in catering) at some office building near the Transamerica Building, the pyramid shaped tower in SF for those of you who don’t know the Bay Area well. I was running coat check and it was just the most boring shift ever, like I had a rush of only 15 coats which was my grand total for the night. I was just standing in the room watching people drink basically lol. Anyways, about 5 hours into the shift I started whistling just to pass the time, and the first thing that came out was actually the main melody of the song. I recorded it on the Voice Memos App on my phone and let it sit for a couple days.

Music

• When I first came up with the idea I knew exactly where I wanted this song to go. Funny, yesterday I was talking with David, my band’s drummer, and we were talking about how we go at writing songs. For him he said he can actually hear the entire song and it’s parts when he first has the ideas, but for me I can’t really ever say that happens (except for once) I normally just know the feeling the song wants and I just have to find the right parts, unearth it carefully to get it right.
• Basically I started by recording the main whistle melody just straight into my phone’s microphone and just getting it on time, I’m pretty sure I used headphones so I didn’t get any bleed from the click (I did that once while recording a song for a high school project and that was my teacher’s only note for me, so never again lol). I did two separate tracks of that main part and recorded two different takes of each.
• I have the bass track on the top of the project so that usually means it was one of the first things I did. So I’m gonna say that the bass part was the second thing I recorded, it was something I had already laid out in my head in the couple days I was sitting on the song so putting it down was really easy. 
• I moved onto the harmonies of the melodies and started with a 3rd above, and moved the 5th I guess? (I never learned what the high harmonies are called, kinda just go by what I hear and like and I learn the technical names as I need them) Anyways, I just followed the main part and got the harmonies, simple enough, nothing too difficult. Only thing I remember struggling with was the highest note you hear, like hitting it consistently was hard cause I was not even close the whistler I am now. I genuinely get compliments on it now and I get confused cause it’s not something I practiced lol, just kinda happened.
• Wow lots of tangents this post, my bad, but back to music. If you listen closely there’s a little walk down that a whistle does in the main part as the harmonies are holding the long note. If I remember correctly that was actually a part of the original idea, like I wanted that part from the very beginning. Also an extra little sound you might not know is also my mouth makings vibrations, the crashes are all me just making a “tshhhhhhuu” sound.
• Oh and to add on, for percussions I found a clap sound from one of the hip hop drum machines and just used that to make it seem like it was just a bunch of kids making the whole song!
• I remember making the melody for the B section up on the spot while recording the song and just a single lower harmony to give color to the double tracked melody.
• The outro was fun to do cause I just experimented. I had the initial motif and just added and added until I got a really satisfying climax out of it.
• Ooooh, almost forgot to mention, I recorded this hella slow but once I finished I took the mp3 and went on a website that speeds audio up to whatever tempo you want without distorting the pitch. It went from 110 bpm to 133 bpm really making it feel like kids making a song whose tempo was a runaway train lol!

Conclusion

• This song took so much inspiration from like the feelings of all the old summer camp songs I used to hear, “ARE YOU READY FOR THE SUMMER?!” (never saw the movie but I know the song lol) and Camp Lazlo…premiere show of my childhood! Does the song sound anything like them? No, not at all, but it’s the feeling of freedom, the no cares in the world, just having fun and being with your best friends away from your parents! That’s what the song wanted to capture and I think we got that pretty spot on. It’s totally a darling little song that if you need a break from adulting and need to reminisce on fun times, this is what you would listen to! This song was really cool too cause it was just me really taking a step out of my comfort zone. I have never written anything like this and haven’t to this day! One of a kind in my repertoire and I really love it for that!

I think this song really represents like the best part of everyone, their inner kiddo. I forgot who said it but the quote is along the lines of “Why be an adult if you can’t still be a kid every once in a while.” And I truly hope this song finds someone’s inner kiddo who needs it! If there’s anything this song says to me is “Don’t forget to have fun, just like everyone needs food, our inner kiddos need nourishment too”

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Song a Day-ish 5 (Chinese Guitar Song)

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• Backstory
• ALRIGHT ALRIGHT!! Hope everyone’s week was great and that y’all ready for some more music! Word of warning, we are still in the beginning stages, the World of Simplicity and will be for some time. With that being said, let’s go on to the next one! Number 5 started off as an idea I had in the back log for a couple months that was coming to about three months old when I put my hands back on it. The song already had the Pipa (main motif), Bass, and the drums (which for the first time in all of the 100 I used a drum kit that wasn’t an acoustic set), and it was written on my phone on GarageBand.
• Music
• Start with the glaring instrument in your face, the Pipa. Like I said it was an Idea that I had recorded on that same GarageBand Project a few months earlier. It was right when I really tried fiddling with some of the world instruments that were in the software and just liked the way it sounded. If I’m not mistaken the Pipa only can play in the Major Pentatonic Scale so that really takes freedom away from you. But as my godfather always says, “There is great freedom in conformity.” But in this case I substituted that for simplicity, built the song around the Pipa, and went from there.
• Next to come was the bass. I wrote it the same day as the Main Motif and tried to make it lasso the tone of Pipa to more of a Western sound (not like Old West, just American sounding if that makes any sense). It acted as a counter melody to that motif and it has such a cool sound to me! There’s only one thing I really wish that I would have changed about the bass line, and it’s the second time it goes up to the pattern’s highest note. I would have held the D with the F#, that major 3rd, on both passes because it has such a sweet sound that plays with the melody so well. For the bridge, the bass was the first part I wrote and ended up being a foundation to see what I could do for a change up.
• There’s a midi rock guitar that just mirrors the Pipa and is pretty much just added color until the Bridge. This piggybacks off the bass and really helps change the tone and direction of the song, not too far that it’s unnecessary, but just enough to keep interest.
• The drums are really cool!! I say this because….IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I MADE DRUMS FROM SCRATCH! For the main drums I used the Drum Machine called Big Room and just made the four bars with the Kicks, Snares/Claps, low tom and shaker (it’s the tempo sound in the beginning). I got those recorded and just copy pasted where necessary. The crashes and kicks were all done on the live drum sounds, mainly because I didn’t like the synthetic crashes, they sounded too fake, but man can you tell I didn’t know how to use crashes yet?!? Lol every 4 bars have a crash! I’m pretty sure I’m better at that now and probably fix that fairly quickly into the hundred, but for now, enjoy that learning curve lol! The Bridge have a different set too, Hip Hop Drum Machine. This one was done by the player, not from scratch, but it gave it that super cool twist in the song I never would have done without it, basically switching Genres mid song! I’m pretty sure I just pressed the Dice icon on the bottom left just to see what random thing it spawned and I was down to try and write off whatever it gave me. It definitely helped me see that anything can go with what’s present, you just need to find a way to bring it in.
• Conclusion:
• I feel like I keep saying this, but this song was a lot of fun to make. It was one of those tunes where I really felt like I could just let go and just see where it would take me. Granted it’s simple and follows a single motif for most of the time but it was intended for that. I always wanted this song to be in like a cheap local commercial for a market or a small restaurant. The song never wanted to be a big spectacle and honestly would have been just fine with staying the Pipa part for the entirety of its duration. It could have just been a loop for all it cared (there’s like three of those coming up throughout), but I wanted a change of pace so I put the Bridge in. It’s really an easy turn off the brain kind of song that anyone looking for commercial music on a budget would love lol!

I think the reason I really like this song is because it’s just charming. It has a cute little innocence to its simplicity and when it goes to the bridge it kinda hits you out of nowhere. I see myself in it cause that’s basically me. Until I’m truly comfortable with you you’re probably gonna just see my innocent side, and if you think that’s all I am, YOU ARE IN FOR A RIGHT SURPRISE LOL! It’s funny, just the other day a coworker of mine was telling me how people’s problem with journaling is that they always end up sticking to a rigid template that they can’t be swayed from. When really you should just write what is needed, even if it’s just a sentence, or just a smiley face. This was the first song I let myself do that with. So a takeaway from #5  is just, 

“Not everything needs to be Bohemian Rhapsody, turn the brain off every so often”

P.S. The song title sucks I know, most of the titles are just so I remember them. There’s 100 of them, I needed to do something to pick it out quickly lol

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Song a Day-ish 4 (E, F#m)

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• Back Story
• Lemme start off with a welcome back to the newest blog and song! Number 4 came while sitting on the couch in our living room, my family calls it my “office” because it’s my spot in the house. I was watching TV and playing my telecaster at the same time when I played E to F#m. I remember really liking the way it sounded and just added a rhythm to the chords. It was something catchy enough to give me inspiration to make the idea into a full song.
• Music
• THIS ONE IS SIIIIIIMPLE! Like seriously one of the most uncomplicated songs I had ever written to that point in my songwriting repertoire!
• Like I said earlier, the back and forth pattern and chords were created first but the four hits came because I just wanted to change it up when getting to the end of the phrase.
• I remember vividly having so much trouble recording the hits on guitar which goes from F#m to A, Abm, and then C#m, which doesn’t sound hard but at that time I couldn’t do it! (I just played the song on my guitar to see if I wrote down the right chords and I played it no issue lol) It must have been because of the major-minor back and forth that I wasn’t used to. All I know is the struggle was real lol!
• The verses were made different just by plucking the chords instead of strumming (I did strums with fingernails, didn’t have a pick cause I was trying to be quiet while recording, my parents were asleep) ALSO, the guitar was recorded straight into the Beats microphone so that's why it sounds the way it does. (like stinkapoopoo)
• Anyways, drums were the same thing as the previous 3. You can see in the screenshot that one drum track is yellow and says Kyle. That was a drum track that I made to my liking and it fit well!
• But there is a second one! It was literally only for the intro fill and that’s it lol.
• The organ came from a lack of color. The song was just drums bass and guitar and needed something extra to give it a sound I was okay with. They were just back and forth chords to match but with out the syncopation to give the song some grounding (so everything wasn’t doing the same thing rhythmically).
• The Bridge started with guitar, I just tried making a nice compliment to the surrounding parts and those chords came out. Just had the Bass and Organ follow along and it gave it a little extra flavor, something to change up the song!
• Conclusion
• I’m not exactly sure what to say about this song. It was really one of the first songs where I just wanted to get one out, like I had the idea and just needed to write it down. Which when reading that sentence back is actually a good thing. Whereas #2 was me intending to write a song from the very beginning, this one was an idea on a whim and I just let it take me from what I was doing.

Ok then, with all that being said I think Number 4 was another first. I took the first leap in writing whatever came to my head and not letting anything get in the way of it. I didn’t have anything to record guitar with so I used a headphone’s microphone, I couldn’t make drums yet so I used the drummer, I didn’t know how to fill out a song really well just yet, but I did what I could. And that can be the lesson from this song “Do everything you can with what you have, it’ll only help you learn!”

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