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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