Why Does My Eye Feel Weird Right Now?
By horatiuromantic on December 4, 2022 3:20 pm
Might be my best song so far! I worked hard on it, hope you enjoy thoroughly!
Added a video to share with my grandma before the deadline lol
› Why is it my best song, you ask?
‹ Why is it my best song, you ask?
Solid lyrics? Check.
Good classic chords with a little twist? Check.
Decent singing from the heart? Check.
Cheezy as fuck? Check.
Sick piano solo(s)? Check.
Sick acoustic guitar? Check. Not doubled and side-panned, but could have been an option, but I went with piano on the right and guitar on the left.
Lush sexy strings? Check.
HORNS??? Check, and first time doing orchestral horns.
Sick bass line? Check.
3/4 tempo to keep it uncommon? Check.
Decent mix/master without weird homebrew effects? Check. It also sounds pretty listenable on ipad or phone, without the bass, but definitely worth listening on good speakers. For sure it could have been better, but considering it's all home studio and digital instruments except guitar and voice, it's good enough. Staffpad did all the heavy lifting on strings, horns and drums tho.
Great melody? Meh, this is the part I struggled with the most - it does have a totally legit natural melody that fits my voice and goes with the chords, but I felt like it doesn't actually have a great melody - if you just hum the melody it's kind of like a basic sea shanty/drunken song of sorts. It doesn't range more than a fifth, unless you count the seventh formed by the non-tonal kinda mumble at the beginning of some words. Maybe that's a good thing tho, idk? I made up for it with some lines in the horns and strings, but man, it was tough.
Sick drums? Che-eeeahhh not really, but decent considering it's the thing I always have the most issues with. They are written note for note in Staffpad after some failed attempts with finger drumming. Then some effects made them a bit beefier than they really are, so overall, CHECK.
Instruments used: Audiokit iOS House Piano with a little Magic Dice, guitar, GarageBand bass, the rest is Staffpad Berlin First Chair Strings, Berlin Brass horns, trumpet, trombone and bass trombone, and the staffpad jazz drumkit. Recorded in GarageBand on ipad, then moved to logic on mac for the final mix and master. No FL soundgoodizer, but I considered it.
› Story of the song (maybe listen first, then read)
‹ Story of the song (maybe listen first, then read)
This song stems from some of my struggles this year and includes some kind of message of advice I managed to figure out and learn as a result. Disclaimer: I am living a pretty comfortable life, can't complain - my struggles are of a first world persuasion and I can't say I know anything about struggles. Anyway, I started composing the lyrics by literally sitting defeated on the floor, feeling like there's something wrong with my eye (it's fine), while rethinking the meaning of life, and feeling like maybe I can't come up with anything good anymore, at least not in the frantic rhythm of weeklybeats and work and life and stuff, and just wanting the year to be over.
Slowly I managed to write a few lines that were sounding funny, and I tried putting some chords together, when I came up with the general rhythm and feel of the tune, and that nice bass/melodic progression at the end of the "chorus" parts where it goes down the scale all the way to D. I thought great, this will be a guitar and vocal piece. I tried churning out the rest of the lyrics, but had a hard time finding a repeatable chorus line or central message of the song. I ended up with different lyrics for each of the three choruses and the final lyrics seem more like a poem than a song, but so be it.
Now that I had the lyrics down, I tried recording a version but felt it lacked dynamics and it was pretty boring to just hear the guitar strum down that bassline without anything going on on top. So I decided to try and incorporate piano, or a melodica solo on top - sounded a bit like Bob Dylan but not in a good way. I liked the sound of an overcompressed electric piano with sparse chords at the beginning, and thought I could start the piece that way, but I couldn't get the tempo right and I didn't want to use a click track because I thought it sounded too robotic.
The week came to an end while I was also releasing my game, (museummonsters.de if you wanna try it) and I only had the halfass version with piano and guitar so I decided to scrap it and do another beat for WB and give this another shot next week. Yea, that's right, ban me. Please don't tho! I made my own rules that if I ever have a solid song I would not sacrifice it just to say I did it in one week, but extend it to maximum two, and I only used this rule for two or three songs so far... let's just say it makes up for the weeks where I did 10-minute songs.
Anyway, after I decided I can't finish last week I knew that I had to add strings. It sounded like the perfect space for them, to support the emotional vocals and then I knew I wanted to keep the guitar strumming while the orchestra is playing. I didn't plan for horns too, but once I had the strings I felt I could go an extra mile and I wanted to try horns for so long but never achieved a decent sound with them yet.
Looking back, I think it was the lack of a strong melody that made it hard to follow and sing along track by track, and also made it harder to orchestrate. I had to go back many times and re-record each part of the song, and it helped to do it during the day and not late at night. In the day I was more fresh and aware of what worked and what didn't, while at night I was just scrambling and fatigued and thinking it's all shit. Also during the day I could sing at full(ish) volume without worrying about the neighbors.
This week around tue/wed I started adding strings and thu/fri also horns, but struggled back and forth a lot. Also re-recorded voice and guitar and piano and bass quite a few times until then. Finally, yesterday I got the strings and horns in order, by rewriting shitty sounding lines until they were more and more coherent with the song and the main melody/motif (as basic as it is). I'm still not fully satisfied, but I think listening after a good night's sleep definitely improves the brain's ability to decide if it sounds shit or not, and shit it was not any longer.
Today I re-recorded vocals and guitar one by one, as before they were recorded together with 2 mics (with dubious results with a lot of spillover), and I used a click track that was tempo-matched to my freeform version using the amazing Staffpad tempo matching feature, a somewhat relaxing manual process. That feature was also the only way to add drums as my finger drumming could NOT match the tempo no matter how hard I tried. I then did the compressors, the plate reverb, the slight EQing and panning in logic, not really with any reference track in mind but I did try to listen to Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell for inspiration and cried again, as usual. Also to the first album by Romanian band Celelalte Cuvinte, which is a formidable masterpiece featuring awesome guitar, a high pitched male voice, good prog rock sections, poetry, flute (no orchestra but I vaguely remembered it sounded like it had an orchestra. weird eh). Cried some more. I don't cry that often usually but I guess it's a bit of a cry-time of year.
I just wanna add a quick thanks for reading the story of the song, and also there is some stuff behind this song that I'm not revealing but is hitting pretty deep, and I don't like to think so but I think it was necessary to go through that to be able to create this song. So if you're ever feeling down, think about the fact that whatever comes next which is great, will only be possible because of that time when you felt down. And go watch Mr. Lynch tell you to get off your ass!
› Lyrics
‹ Lyrics
Why does my eye feel weird right now?
I can't stand still for five minutes at a time
Whenever I'm quiet weird thoughts pop in my mind
Like I lost something that cannot be found
What do you do when you're feeling so lost
and you're supposed to be sort of a grown-up?
You talk to your friends,
to your family,
You go to therapy,
you write a song,
and you hope that the
world would just
blow up.
[...]
Everyone carries a burden sometime
That you probably know nothing about
We're all going round thinking our problems abound
Pretending for appearances that everything's fine.
Meanwhile Mr. Lynch says to get off your ass
And get something done and he's pretty much right
They say that addictions
are just ways to distract yourself
but isn't that
basically
everything we
do all the
time?
[...]
Why does my eye feel weird right now?
I haven't seen very clearly for a while
Sitting in my room is kind of my new style
and I really just wanna get out of it somehow.
Somedays it's easy and other days hard
Everyone knows that and no one knows why.
I wish I could tell you how to
live a better life. All I
know is I've been
happier
ever since I
learned how to
cry.
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thank you!
that’s awesome that you found it resonating with whatever you’re going through. I really think there’s some valid lessons in this song. I was not so aware of some of them until a while ago… that shit about everybody has a burden… fuck it’s a true one.
