lara (goodbye to a friend) BLUEPRINT this is not a prompt, this was not ai generated, this is my structured thoughts AFTER i made the music. programs i used: - beepbox 4.2.2 (made into a offline desktop app with tauri) - audacity (bitcrush plugin by Nyquist) that's it.. no fancy tools... no fl studio or whatever.. i just goof around [5 minutes] playing around with synths, effects [10 minutes] playing around with notes [18 minutes] found good notes + good instrument i played around with variations.. like if is TAN TAN TAN TAN repeatedly with same chord or.. something else. the notes are B3 D4, C4 B4, G3 B4, F#3 Bb4 separated with "," per sequence [24 minutes] i set the original "song" to 176 bpm, it was the right speed. the main instrument is an FM, with high-pass filter, no fadeout (between square wave and saw wave) with bitcrush, slight echo and a lot of reverb... [28 minutes] i decided the perfect pattern, not make a chord. just.. leave a gap for the note to echo, like 1 = the note 0 = silence (in this case, echo) 2 = other note 1 0 2 0 1 0 2 0... and play 3 times the note to start another sequence.. That sounds nice and cozy :3 [33 minutes] i was thinking about the theme of the song in the background, while ajusting some instrument settings... [35 minutes] i added new instrument, a "supersaw" (like a saw wave but E X P A N D E D) of course, with a bit of distortion and reverb. here is the notes (prolonged into the next sequence from the other instrument) B2, C3, F#2, G2. [48 minutes] at this time, i was just doing micro ajustments, nothing sounded.. RIGHT i remade the whole thing from scratch (the earlier info is still correct tho). [68 minutes / 1h8m] remade everything, put stuff in their place, now my mind accepted the imperfections. After the S U P E R S A W action, i decided to put a little silence to make a part 2, the first part.. peaceful, poetic.. whatever the second.. more agressive and agitated. now i have the theme.. it was marinating, now it's out. i remember.. my first relationship, romantic one, it was with a girl named "Lara". we were so close.. shared pizza, long walks in the park, of course we were like.. 7 but her mother didn't care, was always my mother watching out behind us. it was.. innocent, she kissed me, i kissed her.. until she didn't appear at school. she and her brother was abandoned for days in her house, while her mother got away from the country. leaving kids alone.. traumatized, dirty.. alone.. i didn't heard about her ever since. looked at the best picture we have of us, me hugging my arms in a weird way around her.. and her.. her blank stare to the camera [72 minutes / 1h12m] second part rythm.. is like the first.. but at the same time, not each sequence note is now a chord.. played at the same time, no silence gaps. the same sequence played 6 times, then the another played.. since it's like.. 4 sequences, i doubled and gave it to the next person (lol, just kidding) i made the 4 sequences repeat two times, like 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 and then an extra note, the first note of the first sequence, alone, for 2 seconds... then silence [84 hours / 1h24m] the S U P E R S A W thing cannot remain the same, it's supost to be intense. now instead of ONE NOTE per sequence, it's actually two at the same time, per sequence but this time is a little different B2 F#5, C3 B4, G2 G5, F#2 Bb5 It's sligly different from the earlier notes, but it's meant to cause impact, difference, E X P A N T I O N mueheheheh at this point the music is done in beepbox program, so i saved the .json for later and compressed the mp3 time for audacity! [91 hours / 1h31m] Audacity open applied some low-pass effects, not to severe, just enough to not damage my ears. at this point, the lyrics are marinating in my head... .. the track "sleep" from my music album "shush" has some really neat breakcore in the middle, i want the same for the second part. i got to a free sample website, picked a nice breakcore action thing and imported to audacity. got a low-pass filter (it was sharp as hell), bitcrushed a bit and made it repeat in the whole part 2. to not make it SUDDENT from part 1 to part 2.. i decided to apply a small fade-in. in the final part of the part 1, there was a fade in breakcore part and then.. silence (the between part 1 and part 2) [107 hours / 1h47m] TIME FOR LYRICS BABY! this was the most difficult part. I do know how to sing, but not make it sound GOOD on mic. Im a bit shy, so i distorted a little.. to make it more comfortable. Note block open, photo next to me, song playing in repeat.. and words.. just got out, trial and error, some lyrics didn't go to the rythm some didn't go the way i intended.. and since it's about her, i scrapped all parts about me, expect "i was a boy" - no questions... deeper than me i guess. just the feeling and the concept of her... after the the lyrics was "done", it flowed nicely... didn't have to add some weird voice glitches, weird cuts or extra bit crush.. felt right.. exported, decorated lyrics, made sure the project was recoverable.. and here we are. trying a new thing.. documenting a song... i am proud of this. i hope i do this well next time. enjoy. *total time: 2h19m* by zoeisrad. for album "MY BODY, MY SOFTWARE"