Critique is welcome on this tune since it's supposed to be a part of an album release at some point. Actually, if anyone is interested in helping me out with mastering stuff down the line, that would be massively appreciated. I really want to try getting the production right.
This is a tune I originally wrote and submitted to weeklybeats back in 2022 (Originally called Pick a side!), but I always felt like it needed some extra oomp and pizazz in some way. And since I've been sitting on the idea of releasing a digital fusion record for a minute now, I figured why not knock out these songs one at a time for my weeklybeats? Kind of gives me a nice mental break from feeling like I got to work on something brand new every week. I still *am* writing new stuff, but I've been all about taking it slow lately. So I kind of have this processing where I'm trying to work on multiple things at a time so I can still productively say I finished something every week. I'm pretty happy with how this one sounds now, as it doesn't feel as pointlessly repetitive as it once did. I still got quite a few more to work on, but I'm going to try avoiding uploading them *unless* they had a significant overhaul. I think that keeps things in the spirit of what we're trying to do here.
Oh, and if anyone knows any labels that I could reach out to for this kind of digital fusion stuff, let me know. I tried Ubiktune and C-jeff praised the songs I showed him but he said the label was closing down (RIP to a legendary label). Then I tried Infloresce Records at his suggestion but I never heard back from em. After the release of my other album, I really don't want to go the self-promo route.
‹ Compositional Notes
Super long and detail notes section. Might be cool for those who are interested in this stuff, but again, this can be pretty useful for me in the future if I wanted to come back and read details.
DISCLAIMER: I have no formal education with music theory, I just watch Adam Neely videos.
The reason for the name was kind of a joke to myself because, when I originally wrote the tune, I found the back and forth between a straight 6/8 feel into these triplet breaks with notes outside of C major sounded erratic and probably disrupts the listener's sense of rhythm and key. So in the back of my mind I felt this self-criticism of "Either play in a consistent time signature, or stay in C major. PICK A LANE, DUDE". But fuck it, I'm gonna zig-zag.
Anyways, structurally, this song has two main sections that I'll just refer to as A and B. The first half of the song (0:00 - 1:14) has A -> B with some small developments like a melody being introduced after some repetition and a bass line that evolves in complexity, then a 3 bar transition (1:14 - 1:22) signals an intended ramp up in intensity, where we then return back to the A -> B structure but distortion on the synths and re-written drum parts to drive more energy. During this second half I also brought in some guitars for some necessary chugs and lead lines to layer over new synth melodies.
Section A
There's a lot of switch ups in the time signatures on this track. Section A is probably the most complex part and I don't know, from a theorist's perspective, which way to write it would be more broadly accepted. Here's some sheet music to make it easier to describe what i'm talking about.
The first two rows show bars 21 and 24 as being notated in 2/8 and 2/4 with all the notes within being triplets. The last two bars show an alternate way of writing it out using metric modulation where bars 27 and 30 switch to a dotted quarter note feel. Personally, I count it with metric modulation because that just feels right to me, so I'd probably write it out that way.
If irrational time signatures were more widely accepted, my preferred way to describe it would be calling those bars 3/6 and 3/3 respectively, but that would probably piss off some theorists, lol.
Section B
It just alternates between 4/4 and 7/8. This is a pretty classic approach from Metallica who frequently chopped or added an eighth note on their riffs. They're probably the main reason I do that so much, because honestly, I actually never really think of time signatures until after the fact. I try to avoid doing it too much because I don't want the music to feel fiddled with, as if I'm *trying* to make it weird for the sake of it. I actually find it way cooler to write something that sounds like it would be odd-time but it's actually 4/4 (Drumbender is a pro at this).
Transition/Key
This song C major, but when the metric modulation occurs I'm playing notes from Eb diminished so I *think* I'm borrowing from C minor? That same chord gets used in Section B. Then, because I didn't want to song just to be A -> B -> A -> B, I wanted to wedge some kind of transition between them and THAT’S why I have so many notes this week about this song, lol. I started writing everything out in guitar pro to analyze what was happening and how I might develop the tune. At first, I started making the transition overly complicated and too short and realized that maybe hammering away on some chords for an extended length of time would better guide the listener’s ear back to section A. Plus it added some stability away from the shifting time signatures.
I wish I could describe how I chose these chords for the transition, but it was a lot of guess work and I don’t know why it works other than the fact that it leans into dark chord tones before gradually brightening towards that opening F note in section A. Here are the chords, the ones wrapped in parenthesis are the chords before and after the transition.
(Eb°) → B♭m7 → Gmaj7 → G9 → (Cmaj7sus4/F..?)
also in all my mild music theory understanding i wish i could download ala Keanu_Matrix sight reading skilz. "woahhh i know 6/8!"