Death of the Crown Prince
By jegasus on December 29, 2024 6:51 am
# Lore
Wait, seriously? The Crown Prince died last night??? How???? Oh my goodness, everything was ready for his coronation next week!!! Send notifications to the Royal Mint to stop printing the new notes at once! Oh my word, we have so much paperwork to fix now...
# Everything Else
This is the last tune I'm making in 2024! This song is being used as my submission for week 52 of Weekly Beats 2024 as well as the 29th M8 Community Jam! The Jam's theme was "Paperwork" and the optional theme was to use stationary noises.
I originally started recorded a bunch of stationary sounds, like paper rustling, a clicky pen, and a pen scraping on paper as it writes. I got a beat started and everything, but wasn't feeling inspired at all and felt like it wasn't actually going anywhere. So I went back to a blank canvas and started from scratch. But this time, I tried something different: I just played around on my little Roland Aira S-1 until I found a nice little arpeggiating chord progression I liked and set that down as my song's backbone. I then did something I ABSOLUTELY LOVE doing, which was writing melodies that weave in and out of each other. This was my favorite part of the song, by far. I basically just improvised the first melody while listening to the arpeggiating chords, then I improvised the second one while relistening to the first one. I must admit, I'm super happy with the results here! The S-1 isn't awesome for actually playing the keys, but in a pinch, it does it gets the job done really well. And since I'm overseas visiting family, I would very much describe my current musical condition as "a pinch", hahahaha.... The end result doesn't really feel connected to paperwork at all, but hey, that happens sometimes. You aim for paperwork and end up with a vaguely royal chiptuny dirge. Let he who has never done so cast the first stone, right?
In the Weekly Beats discord group, there were also conversations about participating in a big multi artist collab, but I ended up not being able to carry that forward. I created a few stems that djippy is likely going to be able to use, but I wasn't able to harness the power of any of the contributions from other artists. Basically, I didn't really give myself time to mess around with other people's files on my DAW, and I don't yet know how to use the M8's full potential when just dealing with a bunch of other people's partial contributions. Maybe I'll go back and work on this sometime in January when I'm back at my PC, who knows...
Also, regarding Weekly Beats, I have to say, it has been such an amazing experience. I'm honestly relieved that we've reached the end, because the pace is REALLY hard to keep up with consistently, so it's awesome to know I'll finally get time to breathe after this week.
But also, holy shit, it has been such an amazing space to create some of the most fun stuff I've ever made. Granted, I've only begun my musical journey 2 years ago, but I would NEVER imagine I would be able to complete this feat, let alone while making so many songs that I'm legitimately proud of! Even though the music I make is mostly contained to chiptune adjacent stuff, sad epaino stuff or comedy raps, Weekly Beats has helped me explore some of the weirder corners of those genres. Not to mention the awesome interactions I've had with other musicians here.
Speaking about the other musicians on this platform, I gotta say, y'all are a ridiculously talented bunch, holy shit... And even though I'm not as skilled as HALF of you, I'm never made to feel out of place. Even though I'm just am amateur musican who likes making dumb little tunes on his M8, I absolutely feel like every other person on WB is my equal and peer, regardless of their skill level. That's especially true while reading people's comments on both my songs and everyone else's.
On that note, I also need to mention that I know we're supposed to make music simply for the fact that we want to make it. However, it is undeniable that, throughout the year, I craved going back to my week's submission page and seeing "Oh, look, someone who makes awesome music said something nice about the thing I made!" That feeling is a big part of what kept me going forward: sharing my weird little tunes with my musically oriented internet friends and wanting to hear what they had to say about it. I wish it was a smaller part of what kept me going, but I have to admit that my ego is just a bit too big.
WB has also been really cool because it exposed me to a bunch of different genres that I didn't know I enjoyed!!! Thank you for expanding my musical tastes!
I'm not sure if I'll try to actually go for the full 52 week streak ever again, but I'm definitely coming back to Weekly Beats in 2026. Maybe next time I'll take a more relaxed "I'll post when I post" approach. Having said so, I'm just so proud to have reached this incredible milestone and it only involved very mild cheating, hahahahaha....
It's been real, folks. Y'all kick serious ass. Thank you for sharing your wonderful talents and immensely kind words with me.
Later musical homies, I'll catch you on the flip side!!!
PEACE!!!!!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)
Keep going! and have the happiest of new years! Hope to see ya in '26!
