Sunday, October 30, 2022

Virtual Singer Jamboree! - New Album Released!

Virtual Singer Jamboree! Album
 It's been four years since Universal Healthcare Now! came out.

Now we have Virtual Singer Jamboree! released! Hooray! We seem to like to use exclamation points for our titles.

It's already out on Spotify (check out our Spotify tab for the embedded player) and is probably out on many other streaming sites already, too! We'll be putting it out on Bandcamp very soon.

It took us that long to get enough material that we felt would be worthy of release because honestly, we wrote a lot of crappola.




Here's the track list:

  1. Be Best
  2. Asian Parents Stories II
  3. Guan Guan
  4. Worst in You
  5. Dirt Spoon Girl
  6. I So Pale
  7. Forget About Me
  8. Number One Girl
  9. My Butt Hurts
  10. The Great Resignation
  11. Stay Alive
  12. Naptime in the Subway
  13. Kiara's Lonely Floating Vomit Pile
  14. White Baby Lover
  15. I'll Keep Mine
  16. Hey Stinky
We've released these as demos over the years on YouTube, but we've now finalized them and here they are in the final form. So get ready!

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Our Entries in Eclipsed Sounds's SOLARIA Original Song Contest

 

We entered two songs for Eclipsed Sounds's SOLARIA Crowdfunding Anniversary Original Song Contest! Have you heard them? Check out the videos below.

We don't really need the money (but sure, money would be nice) and we already have the SOLARIA license (but it would be nice to have another license so we can put it on our laptop), so "winning" the contest is not a big deal. What we would really like is to come in 5th place. Why? Because we'd get that merchandise we missed out on during the crowdfunding campaign. It was a blunder that we regret. Megumi just didn't think SOLARIA sounded all that good, and in her defense, the rough preview wasn't anything special. We just didn't really how rough and preliminary the voice sampling was at that point.

You're allowed to submit more than one song, so we ended up doing two. We probably should have taken more time in refining the lyrics because they're kind of clunky in spots.


Our Second Submission



Our First Submission


Saturday, April 30, 2022

Mei You Ru Guo by Fish Leong (cover song) -- but We Messed Up the Mix!

 

Hey guys, how have you been? We covered a song by Fish Leong, "Mei You Ru Guo." You may remember it if you have watched the Taiwanese drama, "My Queen." If you've never seen it, you should watch it, it's good!

We recorded the parts in two days and mixed it and posted it. Which leads me to the subject of today's post: Never do that!

Why? As it turned out, the mix levels were off. What sounded good that day turned out to be not so good. Why does this happen? Well, the problem with recording/mixing for an entire day is, after a while, your ears suffer from ear fatigue. Don't consider the song "finished" at the end of a long recording/mixing session. Put it aside. Come back to it after a day, or even two days. You want to listen to the mix with fresh ears.

The problem with our mix was that the lead vocals was too loud. Also, some of the other parts like the acoustic guitar and keyboards were too soft. It's funny how the levels sounded good to me at the end of the day, but the very next day, I realized that the levels were not correct. It's a rule I should always follow--always check the mix again the next day before you consider the mix to be finished--but I keep breaking this rule because I'm so impatient!

But don't be like me! Take your time! Let the mix "rest" and come back to it the next day.

Here is the song with the incorrect mix levels.


Mix levels need to be corrected


Can you hear it? So let that be a lesson for me. I don't have really good ears--I'm not one of those people who can really hear things like legendary mixers Bob Clearmountain or Chris Lord-Alge. I need to be pretty slow and methodical and not rush things, but it's hard for me because I'm impatient and just want to get things over with!

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Gearing Up For FAWM 2022!

 

FAWM 2022 is just around the corner, folks! This is a good way to practice getting into the routine of regular songwriting. Megumi, Yasuko, and I will be throwing ourselves into the ring, for sure!

You'll need to write a song every two days, so you can't get bogged down trying to make it "perfect." I'm planning to just construct simple songs--verse/chorus/verse/chorus. Nothing too complicated, not too many chord changes.

I know Megumi doesn't want to always have to set up her guitar to record a backing track, so she's planning on writing many of the songs just using the built-in virtual instruments (such as the piano) in the DAW. In fact, she downloaded a whole mess of pre-constructed midi chord files so she can just drag and drop the chord in. Drawing in the notes for the chords isn't hard, but it gets tedious so this will sure make things go faster.

You can download these chord files at:

https://pythonrepo.com/repo/ldrolez-free-midi-chords-python-audio

We've already started practicing writing songs! Synthesizer V Solaria will be singing our demos for us! Check out our first "pre-FAWM" song: