This is a liiiiittle bit of a cheeky cheat week, but there is a story!

So, I wrote the original base idea of this tune on guitar as a teenager in the 90s, along with some super sappy cringy teen poetry lyrics I wrote while trying to impress a girl (she never heard it, thankfully). I still actually have the original vocal version from an old cassette rip, and trust me, the world will NOT miss that. I did however retain the original title, if for no other reason than me knowing what song is what, plus a mild hint of self-indulgent nostalgia.

Some time in the early 2000s, harnessing the almighty power of General MIDI and using my very first DAW (a totally legit, not at all cracked copy of Cakewalk Pro), I created a 'piano' and 'strings' MIDI of the 'version so far', having dropped the vocals and added some new string melodies instead. Another stepping stone, but again, not a real version.

Around 2011/2012, I attended TAFE (tertiary education in Australia) and one of the modules involved tinkering around in Logic Pro, so I revisited this song as one of my projects. Riding the novelty of fancy instrument tracks, and being a bit of a tragic quasi-weeb, I substituted each part for suitable Japanese instruments. I liked how it turned out at the time, but in hindsight, I was definitely trying to make it something it wasn't for the sake of FAFO.

I hadn't thought about it in years, which is ironic considering the 'super stardom potential' teenage me though it had. As this week moved along, I really couldn't even see myself starting a song and I heavily considered bailing (even though I knew I'd be mad at myself if I did). Then out of nowhere, oh, that old song thingo! Maybe I could do a 'I have a slightly better idea of what I'm doing now' version!

So here we are; a version that feels a bit more complete. A revised build, some new bits, more cohesive instrument choices and overall polish balance. Because I knew nothing at the time, everything was at 100% velocity in the original MIDI file, so I went over some parts to make them a bit more dynamic and re-did other parts that needed it, particularly the ending piano part, because the original was definitely not piano-like, more like headbutting the keys at very rigid increments and clearly transcribed by a guitarist. To be fair though, it was around 25 years ago and done by hand on the grid (no MIDI keyboard) with practically no prior experience playing keys.

To be honest, after the amount of adding, fixing and re-doing required to make this sound half decent, it was far less of a cheat week than I thought it was going to be, so I ended up having to rush by the end. It has definitely lost the whimsical magic that teenage Jai felt when first writing the foundation, and although I still feel this version has a few small 'not quite how I'd like it' bits, it is significantly more refined than previous attempts, and with this version I feel like I can finally say 'yeah, that's about as good as it'll get, moving on...'.

Yikes... I actually got quite emotional writing that last sentence... Like I'm saying goodbye to young me. That hit a lot harder than I expected

Bonus fun fact: while sifting through the bits and pieces of this song accumulated over the years, I found a MIDI I titled 'rock version', and let's just say, this almost ended up with a whole different vibe! Who knows though, just maybe I could do a 'part 2' before the year is done

Tags: week 19 2026, View by:JaiClone