This is about NBC's To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen. It's my first go at music production; I'm not a professional, nor am I that great a singer. I made this because I think it's funny, and the small internet community I'm involved in may think so too. Created this all from nothing in GarageBand using a mic and a Scarlett 2i2. This isn't for money; please don't sue/strike me.

Story (Parody Of "Royals" By Lorde)

LC and I have watched way too much Love Island. This is a song we wrote about the show, commenting on how overly dramatic the islanders are told to act, how disloyal and distractible the boys can be (looking at you, UK), and how banal, vapid, and lame their love confession poems are during their final date/prom/nonsense montage. Nothing you see anymore is real, and the way this show pretends to be meaningful is laughable. Or maybe the producers know it's cheesy and hammy and unbelievable. Either way, it's an easy target, and I think we've hit a bullseye with this. 

While this song is an original (my first feature-length one at that!), you'll hear thematic nods to the Broadway soundtracks to The Wedding Singer, High Fidelity, and Legally Blonde the Musical. Very influence. Much love. Pls don't sue me. 

Photo: Taken by me when we visited the love island of Jamaica last summer. 

The Band
-Vocals: Me and LC
-E. Guitar: Me
-Bass Guitar: Me
-Synth/Piano: Me
-Drums: GarageBand (and me where needed)
-Orchestra: GarageBand stock instruments
-Orchestration: Me
-Production: Me

The BIGGEST and most special thanks to LC for her witty writing and precise vocal contributions. I owe her a boba tea and some ice cream for this. ❤️

Tyrannosaurus Wreck (Feat. LC)

"These no-good weeds in my garden!" 
This was a big song! I think these music projects are getting better. The key this time was to really try to perfect the vocal performance (which is why it took 400-500 takes to get it just right; really puts it into perspective how I compare to Idina Menzel (spoiler: I can't)).
Speaking of which, I tried to articulate and mix the best I could, but the very last line gets lost. Since I can't belt for 16 bars, the last line is "I'm out of breath." I just couldn't hold a high B for that long while doing it justice.  
That said, I did reeeeeally try to nail the vocal performance the best I could. There were only a few tiny spots that needed some soothing from Melodyne. This track definitely sounds less warbley than my first two goes at this. 

Other interesting bits: the chant section is "Glyphosate, diquat dibromide, N-phosphonomethyl Glycine." These are main ingredients in weed killers.
The Weeds: Geum Urbanum, Prunella Vulgaris, Brassica, Solanum Nigrum

I've had the whole soundtrack to Wicked stuck in my head since 2003; it's fun to do something creative with it.

I performed the main piano and guitar parts. Everything else is GarageBand's MIDI instruments. It took a month to transcribe the whole score note for note for each instrument, and even longer to get the note velocities to sound natural, not to mention automating in the crescendos. (The string vibratos may sound mechanical, but I did the best I could). I learned a lot from this exercise. All of these chords and transitions and voicings and just ughhh EVERYTHING about this whole show is a masterpiece. Credit Stephen Schwartz for everything; I'm more imitator than musician in that way. I don't even have a lawn of my own. Pls don't sue me. 

Album art was done in Excel and MS paint. I found the Ravenscroft font online for free.

No-Good Weeds

Just a collection of all the worst internet losers wrapped into one unlikeable, musing character. 

I wrote/performed the script and created the album art. 

Special thanks to an assortment of YouTube channels for the stock sound effects used: SFXAPLENTY, ProSounds, Free Sound effet, Sound Laboratory, BlueSpeedy, Sound Effect, & Soffectme. 

Back to music after this one!

A Day at the Mall (Vignette)

"These no-good weeds in my garden!" 
This was a big song! I think these music projects are getting better. The key this time was to really try to perfect the vocal performance (which is why it took 400-500 takes to get it just right; really puts it into perspective how I compare to Idina Menzel (spoiler: I can't)).
Speaking of which, I tried to articulate and mix the best I could, but the very last line gets lost. Since I can't belt for 16 bars, the last line is "I'm out of breath." I just couldn't hold a high B for that long while doing it justice.  
That said, I did reeeeeally try to nail the vocal performance the best I could. There were only a few tiny spots that needed some soothing from Melodyne. This track definitely sounds less warbley than my first two goes at this. 

Other interesting bits: the chant section is "Glyphosate, diquat dibromide, N-phosphonomethyl Glycine." These are main ingredients in weed killers.
The Weeds: Geum Urbanum, Prunella Vulgaris, Brassica, Solanum Nigrum

I've had the whole soundtrack to Wicked stuck in my head since 2003; it's fun to do something creative with it.

I performed the main piano and guitar parts. Everything else is GarageBand's MIDI instruments. It took a month to transcribe the whole score note for note for each instrument, and even longer to get the note velocities to sound natural, not to mention automating in the crescendos. (The string vibratos may sound mechanical, but I did the best I could). I learned a lot from this exercise. All of these chords and transitions and voicings and just ughhh EVERYTHING about this whole show is a masterpiece. Credit Stephen Schwartz for everything; I'm more imitator than musician in that way. I don't even have a lawn of my own. Pls don't sue me. 

Album art was done in Excel and MS paint. I found the Ravenscroft font online for free.

---------------------

Remastering note: I hope this sounds better than the original. Louder, less thin/tinny, bassier, and more dynamic range.

Notes 2.0: this sounds fine on my studio headphones. Little degrading in quality after uploading but not bad at all. Not so great on AirPods, though. Cymbals are reminiscent of that warbley, crunchy, iridescent background sound. Maybe I'm not good enough at this stuff yet to have tacked such a big project. I'll make it a point to come back and remaster (or maybe even remix) this whole thing when I'm wiser. Proud of it enough to share as-is, but I think there's lots to learn yet. Let me know your thoughts. Thx.

No-Good Weeds (Remastered)

"Hey. So there's no easy way to say this. I had a lot of fun with you the other night, and we connect on a lot of levels. But I realized today there are some things missing for me, and I don't think I can equally reciprocate. I'm sorry. No hard feelings?"

"We have lots of weird tension when we’re together."

"You’ve always been a very kind, albeit misunderstood person."

"Things with you get complicated really fast."

"You were screwing up every other relationship I had with people and the only way I could actually have friends other than you is if you were gone. We are no good for each other."

-----

This is my send-off to all of my teens and 20s dating woes. If you and I have ever been involved, I'm sorry for anything that put you off, made you feel unsafe, or whatever it was that made you discontinue our time together. All I've ever wanted was advice on what I was doing wrong or an answer for why things couldn't continue. Sometimes I got responses, most of the time not. It took me way too long to learn that making dramatic, cryptic, lonely, Sad Boi statuses on Facebook weren't the best way of doing this, but I have realized lots of things from my own reflections (years too late).For some reason, we haven't normalized asking for prompt, honest feedback when relationships are over. I'm sure I was the weird one, unpredictable, too intense, or whatever other superlatives in all of my involvements, so it's impossible to not think my difficulties were completely of my own making, and I'm just sorry for not being more likable/tolerable/whatever. 

-----

Verse 1: to my casual dates, one-offs, crushes, and fizzles. Really could have used more feedback than I got, but thank you to those of you who did. 

Verse 2: to the girl at the gym I accidentally started a waving/conversation precedent with. 

Verse 3: you know who you are, and I hope this finds you.

-----

Everything is fine now. I hope this is cathartic for me and means something to any of you. 

Back to silly songs after this. This melody line took somewhere around 700 takes to get over a week and a half, and it's all my fault for making it all 16th notes and packed with so many oscillating chromatic movements.

-----

Music, lyrics, piano, bass were all written and performed by me. 
GarageBand helped with some drum parts, but I wrote the MIDI for most of this. 
Album art credit: Me, tripod, camera timer. 

- - - - -

Please leave any comments, especially if you have technical tweaks I could account for next time. SoundCloud has its own loudness, EQ, and stuff (basically my hard disc file sounds better than it does here), but I'm still pretty new at mixing and mastering, so please let me know!

Letters I Could Never Send

Cody sure is proud to be an American, but sometimes he wonders what life's like for "them folks across the pond." Trevor, from Stoningleightonhamshire, explains what growing up in England is like for the average, modern day Briton. This is the only country-meets-hiphop track you'll ever need.

- - - - - - - -

"hey this has no low end and the vocals sound too loud" - that'd be your headphones. I mixed and mastered this in GarageBand with flat EQ studio headphones, and it sounded great. I really wish I knew the secret to making music sound great on all outputs, so if you know what that is, please share. 

New original track. The prompt I gave myself was: "write a British rap using only things about England that Americans know from movies, memes, or general knowledge history." It's not meant to be taken seriously, nor am I trying to make it big in the rap game. I'm trying 2 make u laugh. 

Critiques are welcome, though, especially musically/compositionally. I used so many chords in this, and proudly so (high point is modulating from Gm to C# to A and then back to Gm when Trevor goes to Mallorca). I poured a lot of the little I know about music theory into this, so if you have an appreciative ear for what's been done, here's looking at you, kid. I did not want to drag-fill four bars for the whole song. I wrote the words first and then made chords around the stanza lengths: 4, 6, 7, 9, and 9.5. Just trying to make this interesting since it turned out to be so long.

On The Other Side (feat. Cody Lippencott & Trevor)

Oh, 2008. How I miss thee sometimes. A Colbert Christmas truly was the Greatest Gift of All as far as meaningful seasonal music goes. Any pro composer on YouTube says we have enough Christmas songs, that the concept has been done to death, and the covers of aging classics don't add anything. As for this song, though, I like the music and structure more than the sentiment, but that's okay. It's original and thoughtful. The augmented, minor 4, and major 7 chords are decorative plusses as well. I just really like this song, and it reminds me of watching Stephen's hilarious Christmas special several times over on the DVR 15 years ago. This was a fun little 7-day project start to finish, and I'm pleased w the result.

- - - - -
I did everything on this track except compose it. Credit to the actual musicians there. I think I'm finally starting to get somewhere with this whole sound engineering thing. I know enough to know I dont know anything, but I know more than I used to.

There Are Much Worse Things To Believe In (Cover)

Inspired by Type O Negative and the true, living reincarnation of the ever-mischievous Lucrezia Borgia, Ian of Eris (me) plays the role of Cyanide La Ru (the band), enumerating why one ought to tread lightly and carefully when traveling at night. You never know what (or who) is lurking in the shadows (or what the hidden morse code message in a kick drum line could spell out!). 

- - - - - 
I hesitate to call myself an engineer or composer, but this was a 3-month-long project of my own invention from idea to writing to recording to mixing and to mastering. I have learned a LOT since starting, especially in the last couple months with long-format lecture videos, but I know there's lots more to learn. Not sure if Soundcloud is going to degrade this or not, so go listen on YouTube if you want a better experience: https://youtu.be/EGXw8mNcj1c

Afraid of the Dark

I’m going to live forever. In the meantime, I’m learning about music production and sound engineering, so don’t expect platinum hits right away. Just tryna make it out tha hood.

Ian of Eris

Popular tracks