Darkness, Darling

Standby Firefly

Kupo recorded more riffs for me. Yay for new samples!! It transformed and transformed until it turned into Standby Firefly.

This whole song has been a lesson on audio producing. At first there were plenty of problems with the guitar recordings due to lacking equipment and the right software to process it. After we've settled on a decent process it was trying to get the right tempo down for a 4/4 bar loop. I think we've come up with a pretty good working pattern where Kupo sends me a rough guitar riff so I can begin building a composition around it. Then, Kupo goes does a new clean recording with several takes for me to pick and choose which one matches the best. The process is working out so far, and I hope to see more of this collaboration on a future concept album we have in mind.

The other problem with producing Standby Firefly was running into frequency limits. The primary instruments of the song all share similar low frequency sounds: the deep bass guitar recording, the "dark piano" melody, and the drum loop. It caused many notes to get muffled in a sort of static. I investigated this further until I realized that I had to use EQ to try and separate the instruments into their own frequency ranges as much as possible so the sound doesn't ever get overblown. The big drawback is that now the song is a lot quieter than our first iterations, and it's also quieter than the other songs in general.

Which leads me to another thing. I think I may have stumbled upon some body of knowledge that audio producers know but I'm simply ignorant of. That, I should probably go back to all the songs and re-adjust all the EQ for all instruments until they no longer constantly "peak" and overblow the sound, thereby matching the volume to this song a bit closer.

More to come.

Blue Rose Allure

So my buddy Kupo in Marina del Rey posted some guitar riffs for me to sample. His chords inspired me to do the rest of it, ending up in Blue Rose Allure.

This is one of those relaxing songs that feel slightly out of place in this dark moody album. Although, I think I managed to capture some slight nuance of Darkness, Darling into it. The melody is nostalgic and tries to pull you back to some warm forgotten past. I'm very satisfied with how it turned out, on my very first try with this song.

Darkness, Darling is about 2/3 finished I think. I'm shooting for somewhere between twelve to fifteen songs, and there are nine now. This will be about forty to fifty minutes of music.

Shotgus and Lace

The name was kind of a toss up. I made Shotguns and Lace half-asleep, sort of in beta-stage of consciousness. It went through several iterations, originally having Kaer Trouz lyrics in it again, taken out, put back in, and finally taken out again.

I'll probably do another pass to this song to add more instrumentals above the singing for the last third of the song.

The Bumbling Conductor

This one is so silly that I'm not sure it belongs in this collection, but I'll add it anyway for now.

I'm also not sure if I can make it any longer than it is, it's just a plain ol' silly song.

Airship Dandelion Rendezvous

Here we go. Just wrapped this one up, Airship Dandelion Rendezvous. It started off trying to accomplish a bit of what Pill Six did in terms of simple compositions. This song is much lighter than the others, similar to Greenways. I've been trying to make less moody music; hopefully it won't go against the feel of the rest of this collection. Darkness, Darling is meant to be dark, but I need a few songs in there to counterbalance everything.

There's currently a few songs I'm very unsatisfied. Cat Wraps needs a lot of work, and parts of Shadow Lover is sloppy. I've also got a few new songs coming up, so stay tuned~~.