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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