Twenty Twenty – About How I made this song.

I made a song. This is how I made it.

I was in quarantine. Outside was mostly only sand. I had seen it before. I woke up one day and opened Logic Pro X on my computer and felt like making something. Actually I wanted to try to make a trap beat and checked some clip on Youtube on how to do that. But as always it turned out to be something completely different. But a fusion of something inspired by that. My work.

After setting the tempo to 140 bpm I was choosing three different kicks which sounded the most fully and put them right on top of each other. Then I picked three different claps that sounded alright and placed them out a bit randomly and then the same with the hi-hats. The hi-hats I inserted one on every single beet and added the other two around it randomly. Four bars the same, then another four bars exactly the same. On the third set of four bars I changed it around a little bit, just to get some variation and on the fourth set of four bars, I did it the same way as on the first two. Then I extended this pattern multiple times. There is a lot of sounds to choose from in Logic and it is hard to know which ones you want to use. All the options makes you confused.

Then I picked four random chords and used them as a melody on a loop over and over, as I was looking through what instruments to use. The chord patterns I wasn’t particularly picky with. I have learned that it sometimes doesn’t become that much better just because you keep on changing things around to infinity. If it’s alright, just stick with it. As soon as I find an instrument or a sound which I like, and add it to the tune. The tune turns a lot darker. It is like I only like dark and sad sounds. I attract darkness when it comes to music making. Which is not something that I like, but it is fact. So I pretty soon skipped my plan on making a trap beat and just let it shape to whatever it wanted to. That’s the way to let creativity flow. It’s the way it has to be. You can’t force it.

So for example. I find one sound which I like, but it is not what I am looking to use right now. So I add it to the time line of the track in the program, with the chords for the melody playing it. But since I am not actually looking to use that sound right now, I put it further forward in the tune so I can use it later. Same thing happens over and over again and again and again… And all of a sudden I have about ten different instrument which I like and which sounds really cool, dark and sad. But it is not what I am looking to use right now. This is unsustainable. I can’t just keep on adding. But I can’t help myself. I spread them out over the time line of the track and let one instrument relieve another. Sometimes I let them play simultaneously on top of each other. Sometimes three on top of each other, sometimes four. But then I had to hold off a bit. It was starting to sound like mashed potato… So I called it a base line and moved on to the next melody.

I took the base line melody and cut it up into small key hits and added other surrounding key hits a little here and there around the base chord progression. This could be the “lead”. I placed it out on the time line and started to look through the sounds for a good synthesizer. I ended up picking about three of them. Then I took the base line chord progression again and started to look for some pads and soundscapes to have in the background. I picked about four of them. It all just became darker and darker as I was working with it. And I was not at all happy with this piece of music. I was actually thinking of just trash it all. Then I realized that I could add some distorted voice to it. It would fit to the dark sound. So I needed a few words that I could “sing”. What should it be about?

Well I am in quarantine right now for the goddamn corona virus. “Isolation” is a pretty dark subject. I wanted to keep it as simple as I could and started to think about what it is we are doing. We have to isolate ourselves to prevent the virus from spreading. And we are doing it for each other. The prevent others from being sick. We isolate ourselves out of care. It is love. And in the long run it might be necessary for the survival of humanity. But the lock downs can also be a threat for civilization itself if it goes on for too long in too big parts of the world at the same time. For these kind of threats we are all equal. The virus doesn’t make any diffenrence on what kind of person you are. In front of the virus we are all the same. This situation is a spiritual awakening for us, if we can learn something. The virus don’t care about what passport you are holding, where you are from or how much money you have. We need to realize that we are all a part of some sort of oneness even just within humanity. If you keep on doing everything you can just to save yourself from this, you are going to end up hurting yourself. We need to stop this from spreading and we need to do it together as a speices. And however we do it we are going to have to suffer. I started to write something down on a scrap piece of paper. I didn’t quite grasp it. I started to feel a pressure over my chest. It developed to pain. I started to feel really sad and sat down on the floor to meditate. After half an hour I rised up again grabbed a pen and wrote:

Then I played the track and recorded my own voice saying these words over it. I then edited my own voice with distortion and limiter to make it sound in a way that I couldn’t recognize my own voice. Then I made the volume go up and down all the time so it would be even harder to hear.

This is about how I made the track. I will write a better story about the song itself next time.

Anyways. Here is how the song sounds.