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”

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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.”

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Song a Day-ish 8 (Piano Song Quitos Liked)

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Backstory

• Happy Wednesday everyone!! I hope you all had a great week and are ready for some more music!! Let’s jump into it! This songs origin comes from the tail end of the backed up ideas. Everything you hear up until about 1:16 I had already finished, and that’s because of when I wrote it. The idea came to me because of the animated short that played in front of Moana (if you remember from the first post, Moana was the music that basically got me out of the funk). Anyways, the music in that short was really synth driven and I wanted to take my shot and incorporate the feeling that its music had for me, think computers, desks, technology, you know, geek stuff.

Music

• Beginning/Verses
• I started the whole thing with the piano hits, which loops for a good 25 bars.
• And the first 8 bars have the techno synth which just arpeggiates an E chord and hits C#, E, B to finish the 4 bars. Then it shifts down and resolves to the B again at the end of the 8.
• For the drums, everything until the groove comes in were made from scratch. At the time I remember only liking Classic Studio Kit so I used that one more than any others.
• I added the held string notes to give some color and had the Liverpool Bass (the only midi bass I think sounds good of the GarageBand plugins, even to this day).
• Right before the groove comes in there’s 8 more bars of another retro bass that’s bumped an octave up and is lower in volume to help the song build. I actually omit it the second time that section comes up, I kinda wanted people to feel like something was missing, and secretly hoped they would go back and find that riff, or try and play it in their heads whenever it came to that part lol!
• Once the groove/second pass of the verse comes in the new drums are a drummer, this one was Kyle. I just got it to what I wanted and looped it till we got to the Chorus.
• Chorus
• Surprisingly the piano drops out completely anytime this is played, don’t worry it comes back soon.
• Basically the Retro Basses take over and do what I initially wanted to be a vocal melody. That’s why it has just the 3rds as harmony, but what ended up happening is that I spent so much time listening to the song while making it that I couldn’t imagine it without those sounds as the focal points. So in they stayed.
• The Liverpool Bass stays in and just has a new line but the drummer changes! We get a new guy named Logan, that actually plays a simpler pattern through the rest of the song. Same deal, just found what sounded right to me and looped it to death lol.
• Since the song just repeats out I’ll talk about the end before the bridge. There’s a 3rd Retro Bass to the harmonies and that walk up, that jumps all around… Yeah, I have no idea how I did that, to this day still don’t know how I made that work. In listening to each part separately, I can’t even pinpoint where each note is placed, and the third harmony sounds like I messed up hella bad while recording and quantization just worked in my favor lol!
• Anyways, after that comes a Glockenspiel!!! My favorite instrument in the world! I tried to play that motif on the electric guitar first but it was way too overpowering (it’s cut off of the picture, but the track is still there in the project).
• Bridge
• Last part of music! PIANO HAS RETURNED! If you look at the second picture you’ll see what I did all the piano on. It was easier, I didn’t know chords well enough to do it manually, get over it lol. But on the bridge it was super fun cause I accidentally rolled my hand down one of the notes and I loved the way it sounded. So in the bridge I took that and made it the foundation. I would hit the second to top box twice and just drag my finger all the way down to the top gray box and it got what you hear in the song (you can try it yourself, I just did it a few times to make sure)
• Bass pretty much follows the piano until the walkup that goes back into the chorus, I made that harmonize, cause why not, harmonies sound pretty, always put em in!
• Drums are still Logan but just with the crashes turned off, and the only other instrument is the Retro Bass acting again as a vocal melody that never came into being.

Conclusion

• I think this song holds a place in my heart cause it was another one my brother really liked (if you can’t tell his opinion of my music is pretty important to me)! So much that he wanted to write to it. I gave him the reigns and sent him the project to let him do what he wanted with it, sadly nothing ever came of it and he probably has that project still somewhere collecting metaphorical phone dust. But it was just one more bit of confidence boosting that just kept me on track, I was gaining traction and although it was slow, I was soon getting to a downhill slope where no one was gonna be able to stop me!

Every time you start something, whether it’s a new venture or something you’ve done a thousand times, you are always gonna have to have that period of not knowing what’s happening until the ball starts really rolling. Funny I use that, look at the bridge and how that accident turned into an integral part of the song. Like Bob Ross said, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy accidents.” And what I will add to that is a snowball metaphor, “Keep it rolling, you never know what your ball is gonna catch”

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

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