HOW WE BEGAN
This short EP was technically half a year in the making. It officially started in around April-May and was completed in the tail-end of July. It was then published on August 10th. But it took a while to get to this point. I picked up FL Studio around January-February and played around with it for a bit. Making some really bad crap initially just to get a feeling around the whole entire program.
In total, I think I completed around 3 tracks in the beginning. Most of everything else was me messing with the program, never to see themselves completed and never to see the light of day again. But 2 of those tracks actually ended up being completely remastered and became a part of this EP.
And, to be clear, it really doesn’t feel like I know what the hell I’m doing still, but I manage to throw things together and it sounds pretty good to me. I don’t think I’ll be talking about any truly intricate details behind the music.
CONCEPTUALIZATION
For most artists, EPs and Albums are a collection of tracks that feed into a bigger theme. Sometimes that’s not the case, and, well, it certainly wasn’t with this EP. I wasn’t quite sure how to write “targeted” music, music that strongly communicated some sort of feeling or idea. And to a degree, I still don’t. For that reason, I wanted to start of with a sort of “general” collection of just some songs I ended up finishing, bundled together into something nice.
One thing I did know how to do right away was fill out the auditory space with a LOT OF NOISE. So I decided to leverage that as my sort of intro EP before I tried doing something more intricate and planned (I have some ideas for the far future when I get there).
So there wasn’t much of a concept. I got the idea of making EPs and Albums very early on while learning FL Studio, so the point of when I decided to start working on it was a little unknown at the time. I could practice behind closed doors forever, or start putting something out now. And it turned out to be a mix of both. I was creating a song and down the line, I kinda liked it, it sorta sounded badass and something you’d hear at a confrontation or something. When the song was completed, I finally took that as my sign to start working on this project. This track ended up being the opening track to the EP, Unbound (not including the short bookend tracks).
This track also unlocked my love for bass guitars. Pretty sure it’s in every track. And might be in a lot more.
LEGACY
This track was one of the original songs I had made beforehand but then I decided to remaster it. When I talk about a remaster in this case, it’s not just fixing it up, it’s completely rebuilding it from the ground up. It reuses the chorus’ melody but completely adds onto it with different sounds and new melodies.
While I had most of the song planned out with a rough idea with what sounds I wanted to use, I had an experimental version of the track with a guitar being the lead in the chorus.
Y’know, upon listening to it again, I do really like this version (I did like it before, as well), but I couldn’t really find a way to fit it into the complete song as the rest of it was very electronic in style. Could I have found a way to make it work? Definitely. But I had an original vision and this was mainly an experiment.
Although, as a sort of reflection, the chorus in the song (mainly, but it shows up in other areas) sounded a bit off, as if it was too congested. It might have been the sounds I was using but I couldn’t really isolate the problem. Or maybe I’m just hearing things. I’m not too sure. I could be making a problem out of nothing.
RISERS
Risers was also a remastered track. This one was slightly tougher as it took me a long while to find suitable sounds for the body of the song. Most sounds, for lack of better explanation, made it sound really strange and off timing. There wasn’t an arcane process to finding the right sounds, I just flipped through as much as I could, tried to make my own adjustments, and eventually stumbled onto something I liked and then it took off from there.
This song used a Tape Stop effect on the synths and was the experiment for this track. I think it sounded pretty neat.
FREQUENCY
This track was an “experiment” of sorts. For this one I tried to keep it really simple and in terms of chords, I tried a technique of repeating the same chord or pair of chords over and over. The chorus uses a specific pair while outside of that it’s mostly the same chord or a different pair of chords.
BEYOND
Oh boy. This track was the problem child of the whole EP. I liked the chorus, but this was the second track made in the EP and I made some mistakes with how the track was set up. Significant changes were next to impossible without breaking the whole thing. This song had a bit of a problem in justifying its second chorus. In earlier versions, the second chorus had another instrument that filled the space more than the 1st chorus did. And it definitely did fill the space.
However, upon relistening to it a little later, I quite disliked how it ended up doing it. But I had very few solutions to adjusting the chorus in some meaningful way. I didn’t really find an answer to this problem and initially I just made it the same as the first chorus. But then it felt like it was repetitive with no meaningful substance to justify its existence. So, I then settled for a different instrument with some extra pickup notes at significant points. And that’s about it.
The verses used in the song are also significantly different than the earlier versions. I felt that my original version was too “boring” or “basic”. When I changed it, I did quite like how the verse sounded but, after I came back to it a while later, I found that it just sounded a little off compared to the rest of the track. It just didn’t gel together and make sense. Yes, the idea was “good” but it didn’t fit the song as a whole cause, to be honest, much of the song was really simplistic in nature and I should’ve honored that. But also, I could be just talking out of my ass and it felt weird because it was different than all the versions of the song I had heard. So there’s something to think about.
Overall, I’m actually not very happy with this track. I would say it’s fine, but not something I’d go crazy over. It had some problems that were just really rough to fix because of how I had set up the track beforehand, especially with automation clips. I didn’t want to spend the effort of redoing the track cause I still didn’t know what I would actually do to solve the problems in my mind with the track. I deemed it a lost cause and tried to polish it as much as I could for final release and that’s where we are now.
SKYGLASS
This track is my favorite out of the whole EP. It was probably obvious considering the EP shares the same title.
Skyglass, believe it or not, was actually built relatively fast. I had this idea in my head. A little tune. But I came up with it right as I was going to bed. I had already shut my computer off for the night. And I’ve had many instances where I think of an idea and was like “oh yeah sure I’ll definitely remember it”. 99% of the time that is not the case. And for Skyglass, it seems I learned my lesson. I hopped out of bed and switched my computer back on and put it together, selected some sounds and built the chorus.
In the final version, the chorus has some additional flair with some instruments kicking in on significant parts (for lack of a better explanation, I’m not a musician).
After getting the chorus roughly together, it was sort of smooth the rest of the way. I guess this was one of those projects where the next thing you do kinda comes naturally to you.
The sounds for the verse were selected to contrast the glitchy, more sharp chorus. In a way, it almost feels relaxing.
To fill out the space in the verses and in other areas, I used a really nice and epic pad paired with some… cool sound… soundscape… thing… I dunno. It just sounded good.
To give the chorus some further definition, I added some horns to accentuate the remaining parts of the chorus that the other epic instruments did not.
Then it was time to arrange it all and add some automation. The usual shtick. The arrangement went from
- Intro
- PreChorus -> Chorus 1
- Verse 1
- PreChorus -> Chorus 2
- Verse 2
- PreChorus -> Chorus 3
- Verse 3
- Final PreChorus -> Final Chorus
- Outro
The verses in this track are built on a bit of a formula where it starts by repeating the same melodic content as the chorus and lead into its own unique melody for that section. For the case of Verse 3, it was a combination of different chorus melodies. For the final pre-chorus, it was the melodic content from the prior 2 verses. From that point onward is a sort of recap of the song, where it goes through the key parts, the original chorus and the melodic content of the first two verses.
There isn’t really a whole lot to say about this track, to be honest. It was actually really smooth, it all came together and I liked what I was going for.
AND WHAT’S NEXT?
I don’t have very many plans at the moment. Though, what I’m thinking is after a little chunk of break to let this EP simmer, I want to tackle on something more laidback, ambient, chill… Something along the lines of synthwave to start? Who knows. Though when I get further and further into this journey, I know there’s one project in music that I want to make that would be very personal to me. Maybe it’ll come to light, maybe it’ll take a while, or maybe I’ll change my mind. Who knows?
SPARKIES
But what’s a creative project without your inspirations?
THE SPARK AND FLAME
There are 3 key figures that have inspired me and continue to inspire me on this musical journey.
Let’s start with the biggest one: Venus Theory.
At first I discovered him through your usual audio software searching, like along the lines of “best free plugins”.
I try not to do searches like that anymore. I’ve accrued a bit of a collection of good enough stuff that I should learn in and out (which I admit, I haven’t yet, at least at the time of writing), and I don’t need anything extra. Though truth be told, I know that if I find something shiny, I’ll “accidentally” push the purchase button.
Though now, his primary focus (which he’s always been focusing on), is creator mindset and mental health. He’s sorta like the person who talks about the unspoken things that creators deal with. On his side, he also likes to focus on cinematic music. And he’s a great sound designer, which is something I would like to approach some day as well!
Next up is my inspiration with video games as well as music, and that’s Warframe!
I think Warframe has a phenomenal sound design team and a general good philosophy towards how they approach developing the game. Of course, they’re not perfect, but I think their ideals are something to really strive towards, especially with how the video game industry is nowadays.
Don’t tell anybody, but one day I would like to try and get on the team, too :)
And last, but definitely not least, is In The Mix. He’s an audio mastering engineer focused on mainly FL Studio on his YouTube channel.
He has great explanations and introductory videos to music production with FL Studio. He does a fantastic job of explaining things without extra fluff, and I find that he has been exceptionally helpful with common production topics, mixing, and mastering.
THE SMOKE
While the 3 above were my main inspirations, there are plenty of artists that deserve the same amount of credit. These are creators in the same space and genre that I heavily enjoy. And there are/will be more, I am only selecting a handful. Without further ado…
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Hopefully this has marked a start of a new creative journey. I really enjoyed putting this EP together. The process was super fun and overall I’m happy with how it came out. Even though now, after letting it sit for a bit, I’m not that attached to it (besides the finale track), I still think this is an incredibly huge milestone in my creative path. It’s the start of my musical project. And it’s out there now. I don’t particularly “care” (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) about the traction my music gets. It’s pretty much for me, and it’s something cool to do.