PROW Week 2

Summary
I came up with the idea for this piece after finding out that my friend blocked me on Instagram because she would watch the videos of me playing guitar and enjoying myself, which made her felt like even though she’s a musician as well, she isn’t living her best life as she’s studying a course that isn’t related to music at all.
I felt really bad, not because I was looking down on her or anything but because at one point of my life, I felt the exact same way and there wasn’t anyone around who could really help me cope with that feeling of wasting my youth. As a result, I decided to do something to at least let her know that we don’t always have to be moving forward in life to feel like life has meaning and there are still many things that we can appreciate and hold on to, as long as we take a moment to look at it carefully.

	
Differentiation factor
I believe what makes my piece stand out from the crowd is because in many songs that try to encourage people towards a positive emotion, they tend to have lyrics. For example, Bruno Mars would sing “You can count on me like one two three, I’ll be there.”, which I think is fine and it does bring out a happier and more positive mood. However, as someone who went through a very long state of extreme sadness, I want to hear something other than “I’ll be there.”. Sometimes things don’t really turn out that well and the presence of another person might not make things better. Sometimes the thing I need to hear is “It sucks but you just have to deal with it.”  Therefore, I decided not to have any form of lyrics or vocals so that whenever people listen to this piece, they can have several interpretations of the piece depending on how they feel that day to help them cope with their troubles and help invoke a sense of hope and optimism.

Delivery
	I decided to focus mainly on the major and dominant 7th intervals for the main riff as I feel that it resonates with me and the guitar in a very emotional and intimate way, making me feel things that other intervals don’t really make me feel. I didn’t really want the piece to progress too much because I wanted to highlight the point that we don’t always have to be moving forward to enjoy the things around us but I also didn’t want it to stay too stagnant, so I would open up the riff with a few more chords using stuff like basic chords, inversions and 9th chords as I feel like 9th chords has a very distinct melancholic feel to it.

 I also wanted to let my friend and other listeners know that we don’t have to be tied down in life and a lot of the barriers we face are mental and psychological, so I decided to record this piece without a click and I tried my best not to think about what to play and let my fingers do the talking for me because I feel like when a piece is heartfelt, the listener can feel it and the message I’m trying to convey will deliver much more efficiently.

Lastly, I chose to do a one-take, fingerstyle solo piece as I wanted to let people know that we don’t have to always rely on other people to feel grateful about life and the things we are given and experienced and that satisfaction could just as easily be achieved by ourselves.

Music by Aloysius Au
Arranged by Aloysius Au
Played by Aloysius Au
Recorded at home using DI

Stay Still (PROW Week 2)

It was a miracle when we first met
It was magical what we had
But then the sun came out to play
I could almost hear you say
We don’t need to worry baby when we can just dance the night away

And so we move along, again

I hear your voice at night in my head
And i could feel your love in my bed
And then i wake up feeling blue
And there ain’t a trace of you
I get up and get a coffee and then the cold hits me hard again

I wait for you to hold my hand

Music by Aloysius Au
Written by Aloysius Au
Recorded by Aloysius Au (DI and MIDI)
Produced by Aloysius Au
Mixed by Aloysius Au

Summary
I was first inspired with the idea for this song when I watch a video of a Dota 2 professional gamer, Kuroky tell his team "Don't give a fuck. The lesser fucks we give to our enemies, the better." right before winning the biggest Dota 2 tournament to date. I just found that so perfect and funny that a nonchalant attitude actually helped them win 10 million dollars. So this time I wanted to write a much more chill, upbeat, moving and grooving song, something you can just sit back and bop your head and basically just not give a fuck about anything to.

Differentiation Factor
I believe that my piece stands out because I put most of my efforts into playing around with the time factor, purposely cutting off riffs at different times at different parts of the song to get a loop-ish feeling and phrasing the music in a more unorthodox way.

Delivery
Words: Because I wanted a chill vibe, I didn’t want to write my lyrics in a way that would show that I’m trying too hard, so I deliberately took a more mindless and careless approach to writing it, even if it didn’t really make sense, because I feel like it adds to the “not giving a fuck” vibe. In general, the song is about feeling your best when you're spending time with someone and feeling emptier when they're not around, always waiting for the next chance when you can meet them again.

Melody: I also implemented the more careless and mindless attitude towards writing the melody but I do admit that I can do much much better in terms of making a more coherent melody that doesn’t sound as harmonically retarded as it does now, but I do still enjoy the product that I came up with.

Arrangement: This was where I really got to exemplify the whole “phrasing the music in a more unorthodox way” thing because I opted for a noise intro into a moving beat, before transitioning into a soft verse. I also decided to not use any choruses or bridge, like all my other songs used to have and instead replace my choruses with musical breaks with subtle differences in the beats and buildups.

Recording techniques and Mix: Honestly I didn’t really do anything very special with these two because other than the fact that I already took risks and different approaches to everything else, I wanted to keep at least one thing constant and also because I’m not well-versed enough to do anything too crazy with these two aspects, which is why I took a more direct and tried-and-true method.

Kuroky-PROW Week 3

Hi DMAT lecturers, due to the 4000 character limit for a track description on SoundCloud, I have to put my lyrics somewhere else in order to fit everything in here. I hope you understand and I apologise for any inconvenience caused. Thank you

Lyrics are here:
https://fermipdx.blogspot.com/2018/07/prow-week-4.html

Summary
I wrote this song because I thought about how fortunate a lot of us are in the world and we never realise it and I wanted to write something related to that but not in a way that would come off cheesy or cringe, which is why I chose to do it in a satirical way because I felt like once the humour wears off, it gives the listener a chance to really reflect on the message I am trying to convey.

Differentiation Factor
I believe that my piece stands out because I chose to do my song about a very serious topic in a very sarcastic way, which, although it has been done before, I feel like it hasn't been done in this year's prow yet.

Delivery
Because I wanted people to understand only what I am saying, I decided to take the focus off of everything and putting it only on the words and the singing because thats my one and only main point that I'm trying to make, and just having the same 4 chords on loop. I didn't even do anything special to the vocal tracks because I wanted it to sound very much like I am speaking directly to the listener in real life, which means there wasn't any use of autotune, chorus, delay or compression because people don't speak with those things. The only form of mixing I did is the volume automation for non-vocal tracks.

Written by Aloysius Au and Adelline Yiow
Music by Aloysius Au (MIDI)
Sung by Aloysius Au

I'm Entitled-PROW Week 4

Summary
I first had an idea for this song when I was thinking back at my O levels and just remembering how much of a bitch the math paper was and how  I felt like I was trapped in a time loop, doing a paper that I can't understand at every turn of the page. To me, math just sounds like a bunch of foreign numbers and gibberish. Therefore, I had an idea to make a song describing my feelings about math using a system that would never end-the Pi and turning the never-ending numbers into my melody and have it sound like an absolute mess.

The title of the song is just a word play on Sesame Street because the character that taught numbers, Count Von Count was always my favourite. I replaced sesame with weed or poppy because sometimes I feel like I need to get high in order to understand math- the language of the intellectuals.

Differentiation Factor
I believe my piece stands out because not a lot of people in class have tried to take a seemingly non-musical thing and turn it into a piece of music and do it in a way that reflects how they feel.

Delivery
For this song, I opted not to have lyrics because there's no talking allowed when taking a test. I wanted the whole piece to be a journey depicting how I approach a math question. 

The piece starts out with an e piano playing the first 32 notes in Pi in a very messy way. This is to symbolise me reading the math question and not understanding anything. 

Afterwards, the drums come in along with the guitar. The drums depict my heart rate and the guitar (playing the numbers of Pi) is me trying to solve the question as time progresses.

Soon, the realisation that I didn't study enough sets in and my heart rate goes crazy(drum fill) and from then on my heartbeat is constantly fast and feels like its about to explode and each arpeggio, with the numbers becoming the chords, represents each kind of method I'm using to try and solve the question but to no avail.

Ultimately, I just give up and my heart rate goes back down but is in irregular beats now cuz I just spend the rest of the time in fear and planning out how to not die by the hands of my mother as I begin to doodle on the paper.
I also chose to have the guitar end on a note that's not diatonic to the chord to signify me not finishing the question and just ending it there.

This cycle then repeats itself for the next 4 years of secondary school until the bell rings for the end of the paper.

Music by Aloysius Au (Guitar and MIDI)
Recorded at home (Guitar and MIDI)

Poppy Blvd. - PROW Week 5

PROW Week 6

Summary
The idea of this piece revolves around a captain and his crew sailing out into the oceans in search of hidden treasures. Along the way, they encountered a leviathan and unfortunately died fighting it. However, they slowly come back to life at the same spot where they were killed and now they lurk in the deep waters as a ghost ship, killing anyone who encounters them.

Differentiation factor
What makes this piece different is how I use different instruments and sounds to portray the people, monster and environment and help the listener visualize what is going on, all while keeping the story as coherent as possible.

Delivery
I opted not to have any lyrics in this piece because I don’t know how to write a song like this without it turning out to be like a power metal song. Therefore, I chose to make this more of an orchestral piece because I feel like it fits the theme and epicness of the topic. 

I phrased the music so that the story would flow like this
-Ship sets out
-They fight through the waves and find the treasure
-Leviathan crawls out of the waters
-They arm themselves to fight the leviathan
-A huge fight breaks out
-The leviathan kills the entire crew and goes back into hiding to protect the treasure
-Time passes and the crew starts coming back to life 
-They now patrol the waters as a ghost ship

I used a piano that was building up as an intro because I wanted to give the piece an adventurous feel. I also used the arpeggios to symbolize the waves and the crew fighting through it. 

I decided to use happy and mythical-y sounding arpeggios because I feel like searching for treasure would feel like that. 

The brass instruments were used to signify the leviathan coming out the water and the lead guitar playing the same melody is to signify the humans squaring up to the leviathan.

The electric guitar then takes a more aggressive turn and plays more diminished sounding arpeggios to signify the leviathan fighting them in the waters. I decided to keep the arpeggios as it represents the waves and the choir represents the crew fighting.

The choir dies down suddenly to signify that the crew was killed by the leviathan. The two drawn out chords is the leviathan letting out a triumphant roar before going back into hiding.

The electric guitar that’s drowned in reverb is to signify the crew coming back to life but not as humans. I also added drone sounds to add to the overall creepy vibe that would come from the dead rising from their graves. Other instruments playing the same melody line is used to represent that they have come back at full force and I chose to have the song end on the drone because it represents that they are still out there hiding.

Music by Aloysius Au and Robbie Say
Played by Aloysius Au (DI and MIDI at home)
Produced by Aloysius Au

You and what navy, Kunkka? - PROW Week 6

Summary
I first came up with the idea for this song after losing someone very close to me whom I really cared for. I was extremely devastated when this person left and I found it really hard to deal with it because it felt like I wasn't whole anymore. A few weeks down the road, I was watching a video when the guy basically said "Don't run into love, just take it slow. Take some of that time to learn to love yourself because if you don't, no one else will." Coming from a family that speaks less than 10 sentences a day and has never heard my dad call my mom by her name for the first 14 years of my life, loving myself was a very hard concept for me to wrap my head around. In fact, I outright rejected this idea of self love because I didn't feel like it existed or more accurately, I thought I didn't deserve it.
After finally accepting the fact that it is an integral part of character building, I came to realise that self-love doesn't mean you have to brag about it or stroke your own ego. It just means that no matter where you go, you can feel comfortable in your own skin and you can be happy by yourself. That was very important to me-"happy by yourself." Not needing much else to fill that void in your heart for you.

Differentiation Factor
I did this song simply in the way that made me feel the happiest. This song was me trying to come up with the most melodic piece I could with the skills I have. I would think about how to make it better but I would never frown or worry while doing this song and this isn't something that everyone can say that they've done before. I didn't give a damn not because I was so frustrated that I chose not to but because no matter how this piece came out, I was gonna be happy with it.


Delivery
I wanted this piece to sound sweet and lovely and happy but not in a way that commands you to feel that way. Therefore, certain parts of the song would speed up or slow down because to me, being happy with yourself meant that I could take things as fast or slow as I want in my own world. 
I chose to do this piece in E major because I felt like this key has a very sweet and reminiscent feel to it and also because it allows me to use the open strings on the guitar as my bass notes so that my fingers are free to do more things.
Because I chose to focus on "not needing much to be happy", I did this piece in a finger style solo format with no lyrics because just playing guitar made me feel the happiest and most comfortable. That's why I opted for no lyrics.
At the end of the piece, I felt like it was missing certain harmonisation at  some points of the song, I added a pad that played one E note throughout the whole piece, further driving home the point that you can be by yourself and still be ok with it.

Music by Aloysius Au
Recorded by Aloysius Au (DI at home)

Found My Navy- PROW Week 7

POD Song 2 CA3 Submission

POD Song 1 CA3 Submission

POD Song 3 CA3 Submission

POD Song 4 CA3 Submission

Guitarist
Sessionist
Studying in DMAT
I play in a band called Woes
https://woesmusic.bandcamp.com
Email me at fermipdx7@gmail.com for business enquiries.
Thank you!

Aloysius Au

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