"CYE&HTM" Feb Breakdown

All about my February solo release

As you probably don’t know, I put out a solo release on bandcamp yesterday! I’ll put the link at the bottom of the blog.

I wanted to write about it a little bit so that you have an opportunity to understand it and perhaps get you in the intended headspace of consumption for said release.

At the beginning of February I deleted everything on my desktop, laptop, and external hard drives. I have been writing songs since I was twelve and recording myself since I was sixteen. I started on a little four channel tascam. I soon learned how to use garageband and then when I was eighteen I bought logic pro. Needless to say, I had a seemingly endless vault of tunes. some garbage, some great, but most of the songs were just okay.

I was tired of being stuck with “potential” songs hanging over me. I didn’t know if I should use them or not. Another couple days go by and I forget about them completely. It was just not a good system for creative output.

As I said, in February, I deleted them all. BYE BYE HAHAHA. Some of my friends got mad at me and I get it but I just don’t really care. There’s nothing I could have done then that I can’t do now so I’ll just do it better.

The new system works like this:

If I have a song idea, I try and see it out to completion right then and there.

If the song is REALLY good, I’ll take it to GIRL and we can move it to the next stage of production.

If the song is too weird or not good enough, it will enter the movie.

THE MOVIE: A collection of songs that create pathways in your mind connecting you to the place where the music lives.

I think that any song, no matter how good or bad, when actively listened to, is a pathway directly from your ears into another world.

Really really really, as musicians, all we are doing is playing with vibrations. These vibrations move in frequencies and make our bodies feel something. Our mind processes these completely non visual frequencies and somehow assimilates them to concepts, emotions, sceneries, even scents. STANK FACE!! Funky funky…

I’m letting go of all intention other than the intention of letting the song I’m writing write itself.

I realized halfway through making “CYE&HTM” that I’m just putting together a whole bunch of different movie scenes. That’s where the title came from. It’s a really heady concept but you get it.

To help people get it more, I left listening instructions in the description.

1. Ganja and/or Goomies (Optional but HIGHLY recommended for optimal listening experience)
2. Enter a dark room
3. Proper headphones with left and right ears on proper sides
4. Close your eyes
5. Get taken somewhere

I think that this is the best way to fully immerse yourself in the concept and experience.

Now that you understand why the fuck I put these weird ass tunes out, let’s talk about some of them!

Feb.6 24

This was the first song I made with a completely wiped computer. I usually start with drums first when writing a song and then usually figure everything out instrument by instrument. It’s kind of sick and kind of annoying at the same time. Sometimes I’ll hear everything in my head first but this was not one of those cases. I just went for it. I recorded this at about 7am. I was just mad excited to start fresh.

Feb.12 24

This is when things really started heating up. This was the ninth recorded song of the month and I was really getting in a groove. I have a midi keyboard at my house that I record all of my piano stuff with. I had downloaded a whole bunch of new synthesizer plugins from the internet and went crazy with the little sounds on here. I like playing with the synths and making them sound all glitched out and shit. I also went kind of crazy with the panning on this song. I’m trying to understand the concept of space in a recording.

Feb.22 24 2

This was the second recording I did on the day of the 22nd. I had already gotten my piano jimmies out with the first song I recorded that day. I’ve been super into syncopated piano as well as chamber music lately so I thought I’d try and write something syncopated and dramatic. I of course so not have the talent to record this in one take so I took it section by section and it took me about an hour to nail them all. I recorded one piano track with a grand piano setting and that audio is placed in the center of the mix. I ran another through a shitty tape player and that should be completely in one ear. in the other I ran it through a tape emulator that sounds a little better. Throughout the song I have a pulsing glitch synth panning from ear to ear to make it feel a little more anxious and suspenseful throughout the song. I think the harsher sounding elements with the beautiful written parts makes it feel a little like a dream to me. Like you get it but something is off unno. I like that.

Feb.29 24

I knew that this would be the last song of the release so I wanted to really do something heady. Unfortunately, working with so many tracks made it hiss like a mf from recording and bouncing shit using tape. Be that as it may, in the headphones it just sounds like rain which made me feel happy. I started with just major 7 chord vocal harmonies, went into a little ballad and so on and so forth. This song is like five songs. really just random. I think of it like a movie with a lot of cut scenes. Think Tarantino. I get really inspired by people like Harry Nilsson or Daniel Johnston. I feel like they’re really trying to tell you something. I wanted to try and just say exactly what I was feeling in the moment of recording this song and I think that’s what I did. I was narrating a moment. Maybe a feeling.

Anyways, that’s just a little look at how I did it and what my intentions were. I hope you take the time to listen to it in full. Of course the proper way. I got really experimental with this one so I hope it helps you visualize some amazing things. I really just want the listener to be taken somewhere.

Here’s a link to the full thing! Free to download.

Peace & Love