November 2020 | Somewhat Incognito

Current Status: Making revisions after 2 feedback rounds, adding garnishes and touch ups.

About the track:

It is a dead simple 2 note progression throughout.

The rythem and vibe change in a few ways to keep that intersting, see below for more details on the writing and production.

Before that, here’s a bit about how the idea came to be, and why on earth do I keep making songs in such a similar vein of concepts.

I think I’m overdoing it a bit on this concept….

I feel like I’ve beaten these music lyric concepts to death at this point, but its often what i feel most sincere about and what comes out in the days session for lyrics for whatever reason. Part of what these tracks are is what inspiration can be drawn over mostly a single day of writing, the time pressure sometimes forces a concept in the moment.

The idea came from Popijinsky‘s community music chat podcast session type thing, (haha I think it will be a blog post at some point). It was an structured 1 hourish chat with questions to artists about being a musician, But he asked me to elaborate on what I meant by me saying I have to release my music to close a loop.

I never really elaborated and instead rather stewed over it the thought for a few days.

I don’t feel like a song is complete until it is out in the wild in a place where it can be found by the general public. I’ve made a few songs in a similar conceptual vein like Put It Online and Wish Upon You. Putting music online closes a loop and lets me confidently move on. The loop is something like

Get idea for song
Record it
Mix it for a few days
Mix it for a few more days
Question the mixes I have been doing
I don’t think I like this anymore
I like it again
Mix it for a few more days
Put it online
Someone else hears it and can like or relate to it

The last step feels like some nod from the universe that I’m not the only person in the world who likes something I made and like, something I feel is important I do and I’m not sure why. In theory I could just keep all this music to myself, enjoy it, and never show anyone. I would have exactly the same amount of fun enjoying my time making music. Why post it at all in the first place, why do I advocate this?

My music feels undone to me until someone out there comes across it and likes it, the more they like it the better. Not all artists are like this, but I am, and I would bet there are many others that have similar feelings about their art. This song is about those kinds of feelings.

Production Details

I felt like doing a slow jam, in the vein of Made My Day, and set the bpm to 80 to get things going. The first bit i made was the wonky wobbly high eq synth that opens the track and persists through nearly the entire song.

This sound is actually 4 variations of a reason Grain Sample Manipultor:

I made very light tweaks to the preset. I have a few varying EQ’s and pans across the 4 layers to make it interesting in stereo.

They all sit in the mid to mid high bands.

some layers offset slightly in both eq and pan. they all play the same part on the same synth, but i do this to fluff it up sonically.

The full spread, most of the height comes from the vox layering.

The intro sword clash sound:

This small item is noteworthy.

My son has this Frozen pirate sword that we got at disney on ice:

Ive been thinking about doing more found sound type things on tracks in general. This sword was low on batteries and when you push the button, the lights are a little dim and the sound that plays has a slightly slowed playback. I recorded this into my SM7B and used it for the intro.

Excited about this sound I shared it with some friends on discord.

Murr came back with 3 of these SUPER CRAZY reverbed out sounds that he made out of that recording. I use the original and murr’s creations as layers in the track.

I will probably use these again on another track they are awesome. thanks Murr!

New Stuff

This is the first track of mine to use Little Alterboy, its a formant, distortion, vocal effects doo-dad VST. I’m exploring the sounds it can get and have variations of them set on each of the many vocal layers.

Lyrics:

I don’t wanna be noticed
I don’t wanna have to show this
but I do

why’d i have to go there
go ahead and post it
close that loop

is anybody out there
is anybody out there
that feels like i do

is anybody out there
is anybody out there
that needs to close a loop

Current Status: I think its done and will be publishing soon.

About the track:

I started this while messing around with the idea of building a track around super a sub bass pulsing to form a ‘chug’ . The idea takes a sublab bass which are these HUGE trap style 808 bass sounds and puts a reason rack Pump on it to compress it very heavily to a beat:

The subbass pump looks like this

It allows for the very first part of the note to hit, then cuts and ramps back up to a peak slightly off the grid. It has a pretty cool (at least I think) sonic profile of this whomp whomp whomp feel that i then paired up with a played electric bass line:

The effect chain on the electric bass that pairs with the sub bass pulse. This is a mix of things, a reason bass amp then going into guitar rig 5 for a distortion preset, a pump that is a less dramatic sway , and slightly different than the sub layer. Lastly, im using that stereo imager to force the whole thing mono actually , guitar rig was spreading it out a bit.

One other production thing I wanted to play around with more in general was super saturated ‘ohhhhhh ahhhhs’ used as backing layers. Ive heard this done on a number of popular tracks and love the sound of it. I want to do it more and play around with ways of achieving it. It is used on the last 1/3 portion of the track wit the washed out ahhhhh ahhhh vocal part.

golly what a stack that is. this one does have a few things bypassed however its not as a bad as it looks’. there is a 2nd layer of it with some of these other parts enabled however.

About the lyrics:

Baby,
take a little bath get clean
Fall and bump your head on the
corner of a vanity

heart attack
give your dad a heart attack
give your dad a heart attack
give your dad a heart attack

Child see
you gotta wait to cross the street
you got ahead , away of me
I cought you by the shirt, barely

heart attack
you give your dad a heart attack
you give your dad a heart attack
you give your dad a heart attack

I had the backing instrumental concept first, I thought of the hook ‘give your dad a heart attack’ first just in ad libbing stuff over the music. I thought it was kind of funny, a little edgy but kind of silly in tone. and I could maybe turn it into an ‘ok’ overall concept with some verse lyrics.

The verse describe 2 actual ‘oh shit’ dad moments I have had as a father. A baby tumbling over in the bath and hitting their head. My son fell standing in the bath once and bumped his head (he was fine) but It was startling. Another time catching him by the back of his shirt as he ran towards a street. The concept is about ‘oh shit’ dad moments, giving the dad a ‘heart attack’ moment (not a literal give your dad a heart attack). I hope that lands one way or another with listeners.

Notable Samples

The snare sounds were a suggestion and provided by Striped Mccoy

I had shown an early version in a DM that I was playing around with.

These are used throughout and really add a lot to the overall sound and vibe.