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”
If you missed last week's song "SADI 5" <---LINK
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