I’d never heard of Erin before, but this is a great song, with a very impressive vocal performance. I’ve not done much in the way of remixing, but I have done many cover versions, so I decided to combine aspects of both. Working in Apple’s Logic Pro X as usual, I kept the song’s original structure and vocals, but completely replaced the backing track. Much of the marketing pitch for this event was about using Fadr’s “AI remix” tools, but I’m not really very interested in that.
I made two main edits to the vocals: picking the “god speed” line from later in the song and using it as the opening line, then overlaying the opening verse on top of the final one. The first verse is longer than the second, so there were some vocals left over to make a new ending. While the event provided stems, broken out into 18 tracks, these were not completely isolated. For example, the first half of the main vocal track is quite dry, but the second half has a ton of reverb on it, making it harder to reprocess. This was quite convenient though as the dry vocal made for a better ending. It’s very nice working with such good, real vocals, but they are much harder work to edit, and I can’t randomly change the lyrics and melody like I can with Synthesizer V!
I replaced each instrumental track in turn with my own version, and I found some good equivalents to the existing tracks, though some of the odder sounds like bow screeches were difficult to emulate, so I either left them or dropped them.
The keyboard part had some chord voicings I couldn’t figure out, so ended up using Excite Audio’s VISION 4X plugin (a very detailed audio spectrum analyser!) to figure out what notes and harmonics I needed by trial and error!
I replayed the electric guitar part, and really liked the recording, so I added more of it elsewhere in the track. Then I wanted a line that would hold everything together, for which I added a full-length acoustic guitar track using UJAM’s Amber2. Drums are played by Logic’s player with manual patterns, using the “Detroit Garage” kit with some modifications, notably a pitched-up snare, and a 40% “pull” on the feel. Bass and sub-bass tracks use Apple’s Alchemy synth. The electric and toy pianos, harp, and reverse synth hit are Logic sampler patches, a second electric piano uses Kontakt 8. Reverbs are all Logic Space Designer patches.
Overall it has come out sounding like something a college band would play at a student union gig, hence the choice of title.
This was a fun exercise. Some of the other remixes were rather more ambitious in rearranging, changing pace, or transforming it into other styles (like disco and breakbeat), but I’m pretty happy with what I produced.
No, this isn’t about me; no, this isn’t a cover of a similarly named Billy Idol track. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about what this is: a full-blooded, unapologetic dance track that’s not going to require you to understand some odd geeky concept, like several of my other songs do…
I feel lucky to have had this song included in the second album in “The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave” series, entitled “A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream (1)“.
The inspiration for this song, in my usual feel requirements, is something along the lines of one of Shingo Nakamura’s oeuvres. Lots of synths, bass with a bit of oomph, satisfying, but somewhat predicable, chord progressions, and some sweet but essentially meaningless lyrics. This is head-down, late-night boppy stuff, no thinking required.
As for the sounds, well, I’ve long owned GForce’s impOSCar virtual synth, having played with an original OSC Oscar synth in a music shop in Oxford back when it first appeared in the early 80s. However, I’d not really paid it much attention (yes, having too many synth plugins is a problem). GForce released version 3, a very nice upgrade that grabbed my attention. Its arpeggiator, filters, polyphony, built-in effects, and all-round gnarliness just needed to be unleashed in lavish quantities, so here we are.
impOSCar3 is responsible for the bass, two pads, and a twinkly arpeggiator. The strummy guitar is by UJAM’s Amber2 virtual guitarist that I also used on “Pair programming”.
Bass and Drums are played by Logic’s usual players, with some manual overrides. Vocals are by Synthesizer V, as usual, but using the basic “Mai” voice database, which I used on “AI Girlfriend” for its wonderful squeaky artificiality. I’ve toned that down by pitching it lower and pushing the gender and tension sliders around appropriately. The repeat of the chorus has the more believable Solaria II voice on the backing vocal.
I came up with the main chord progression while just noodling about, and then asked Claude to suggest some alternative sections. There’s not a great deal of variation, but no worries, we’re just out to make a bangin’ choon.
To keep things interesting, I learned all about Logic’s Remix FX. This plugin has some fairly basic controls for filtering, repeating, gating, bitcrushing that are individually outdone by other plugins, but they are all in one place, are very easy to use and to automate, making things very dynamic.
Remix FX in action during the ending, using a high-pass filter and bitcrushing effects.
There is a lot of automation in this song: filter sweeps, pans, levels, reverb sends, plus all the swirly goodness that the Remix FX plugin provides. This is squarely in the genre of BT’s “Movement in Still Life”, which has production values I can only aspire to, but it’s all just for fun. Now go boogie, by yourself or otherwise!
It doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m dancing by myself. I’m happy when I’m dancing, I don’t need your help. My night-times are for dancing; you can’t take that away. Dancing is for everyone, but you don’t have to stay.
Sorry to mislead you, but this page is not about pair programming. Well it is, but it’s mainly about a song about pair programming. Or is it a love song? Who can tell.
Pair programming is an approach where two developers sit side by side, sharing a keyboard and mouse, and work together on the same task/problem together, critiquing, explaining, understanding, and supporting each other’s work, taking it in turns to “drive”. It’s a good environment for mentoring, onboarding new developers, and working on difficult bugs. Obviously there’s close personal interaction in such a situation, so I thought I’d explore the romantic possibilities in a song!
While this song is entitled “Pair Programming”, there isn’t any direct reference to the activity of that name. It might use some terminology familiar to those used to it, but I’ve deliberately used double meanings and ambiguity to leave things hanging. Hopefully it will still make sense to someone that has no idea what pair programming is, and takes the sentiments at face value! I’m not going to list them all, but hopefully some of the puns will elicit a few groans. My favourite line is “we could share a set of keys”, which could refer to the humble shared keyboard, but more intriguingly the prospect of moving in together. There is a minor break of the “4th wall” when our protagonists refer to “striking up a little nerd duet”.
The final line, repeated a few times, refers to “writing love letters to the people that we’re going to be”. This is a reference to a nice programming maxim – write clean, understandable code as a love letter to your future self, that you will thank yourself for when you revisit it to refactor or revise it, possibly many years later. Here though, they could easily be talking about each other.
I’ve said before that I often start out with how I want a song to feel, rather than any particular genre, instrumentation, or content; this one is no different. In terms of influences, this song owes a lot to “You + me”, by Public Service Broadcasting, from the lovely “Every Valley” album. It’s just a beautiful, simple duet, and from a production perspective I love the initial dry mix with that clean guitar that slowly builds into full orchestral backing. I don’t understand a word of Welsh though 🤷♂️.
Vocals are, again, courtesy of Synthesizer V, newly upgraded to version 2.0, using the Solaria and NOA Hex voice databases. It’s possibly the most complex set of vocals I’ve written, from both a lyrical and harmonic perspective. Building those harmonies was quite tricky. I also made much better use of the UJAM Amber2 virtual guitarist plugin I bought for “I’ve only met you once”, using more of its pattern library. I decided to go to town a bit for the orchestral backing, so in addition to Logic’s lush Studio Strings, we also have a wind ensemble (bassoon, clarinet, oboe, cor anglais, and flute), and some extra clarinets.
Bass and drums are, comme d’hab, using Logic’s built-in Bass and Drum kit libraries, played by Logic’s excellent players.
The overall mix is really quite simple (there are only 9 tracks), but I used a lot of automation, particularly on the reverb sends on the voices; dry voices have a certain raw appeal, but they really come to life with a little ambiance, and I wanted to capture that transition, which you can hear in the first verse.
Anyway, this duet is sung by a pair of developers who are clearly into each other, and I wish them all the luck in the world.
[M verse] I love flying solo I’ve made the whole world I can see I might be going in the wrong direction, but I’m enjoying being free. I could use another point of view to put my feet back on the ground. Somebody to take my hand guide me back in to land
[F verse] I see the words fall from your lips in ideas that flowed from fingertips. You’ve got my attention now, we just need to work out how you’re finishing my sentences, reading between the lines. Together we’ll make something beautiful.
[Chorus] We’re writing love letters to the people that we’re going to be. I was hoping that perhaps one day we could share a set of keys. With you by my side we’d be a force taking turns to take the lead. We're building something beautiful all it takes is you and me.
[Verse] I’m staying up reading your every last letter wondering if I could have said it any better. Your echoes filling the gaps I’ve left, striking up a little nerd duet. I love the way you question every choice I think I've made. Not afraid to challenge, reconsider, rearrange. When I’m sitting side by side with you one and one is sometimes more than two.
[Chorus] We’re writing love letters to the people that we’re going to be. I was hoping that perhaps one day we could share a set of keys. With you by my side we’d be a force taking turns to take the lead. We're building something beautiful all it takes is you and me.
[Outro] We’re writing love letters to the people that we’re going to be.
Wherever you go, you meet people fleetingly — on trains and planes, chairlifts, airports, theme park queues, conferences, up mountains, etc — and the vast majority of the time, you never see those people again. Yet so often these encounters are good experiences, and not continuing them makes you feel like you’ve lost something. Obviously you can’t be BFFs with everyone, there’s just not enough time in the day, but occasionally it’s really worth chasing these opportunities, and staying in touch with people that you’ve had a good time with. This might seem obvious, but I wanted to write a song about the feeling of being so overwhelmed by meeting so many people you can feel a bit lost, but at the same time the joy of meeting someone that you really like and putting in some effort to keep the ball rolling.
Now I’m not talking about dating, just finding people that you get on with — but who knows where such relationships might go, and the distant aroma of chemistry is always there.
So, onto the song. Pretty much all of my songs start from an idea about how I want it to feel — instrumentation, genre, etc — before I get into any specifics. Now, living in France means I get exposed to French music, which some find horrifying, but it’s not all bad! I was driving to go skiing one morning when I heard “Parce qu’on ne sait jamais” (“Because you never know“) by Christophe Maé, dating from way back in 2007, but it’s a timeless formula of happy, laid-back vocals and damped, strummy acoustic guitar, all pitched slightly high, and I thought I’d like to try writing something like that. Another song that fits this description is Bruno Mars’ “The Lazy Song“. I like Bruno’s relatively high voice, but this makes it a hard target for me to try to emulate! Overall, it’s an upbeat, happy song that’s unashamedly “pop”.
My songs so far have featured either me (with built-in limitations!) or my trusty voice synthesiser on vocals using a female voice called Solaria, and this has led to a certain uniformity, so I wanted to invest in a different voice for SV, and after listening to lots of demos, I bought NOA Hex by Audiologie which isn’t as high-pitched as would have liked, but it’s not bad. I don’t think it’s as good as Solaria, which is far smoother, more delicate, and much more believable; it sounds like it’s been recorded with the singer too close to the mic, and it’s difficult to stop it sounding overdriven. The breath intake sounds are excessively noisy (like someone about to sneeze), and some of the pronunciations are very odd; “you” often coming out as some weird “yuuuueh”, and things involving “L” sounds sounding like someone struggling with a tongue-twister. I found a tip on the SV forums suggesting lowering the “tension” parameter, and that does really help make it sound less aggressive, and automating that parameter works really well, easier than automating its many voice modes. Most importantly, it sings much better than I do, so I have used it on other songs like “Setting sail, coming home” too which I actually redid after this song, but released it before.
For the main guitar part I wanted to have fast, clean strumming like Christophe’s song, but found that while I could hit the chords, I couldn’t get it smooth enough, especially when combining with the right level of damping. Luckily I found a great deal on Amber2 by UJam, a virtual acoustic guitarist plugin that can hit these fast strums very cleanly.
It took me a while to get to grips with this instrument, but it’s quite clever. You feed it the chords you want it to play (which can be generated by Logic’s keyboard player), shown in the lilac area on the right, and it plays the chord using various strumming and picking patterns selected by the keyswitch regions of the orange “phrase” keyboards on the left and centre. There are multiple sets of style phrases that can be switched into the central keyboard, which can be changed dynamically through Logic’s automation. Lastly, damping can be controlled dynamically via a MIDI modulation controller, though this is quite a coarse control – there are only about 3 damping levels. Amber2 really relies on using automations to make its output sound authentic, and it is quite impressively believable. It also has some built-in effects processing, control over mic vs pickup balance, and some overall voicing choices. Most of the song uses two instances of this plugin with similar, but not identical configs, panned left and right to give a nice big stereo sound. A third instance provides some quieter picked melodies. This plugin isn’t in any sense AI; it’s a huge sample library (7Gb) with some clever switching and layering abilities. UJam have milked this formula, and produce several similarly-styled plugins, such as Silk for nylon-string guitar and Sparkle for electric rhythm guitar.
Drums, bass, and a backing pad are provided by my go-to Logic players, which are really pretty good, using Logic’s built-in Bass instrument and RetroSyn for the pad, and Logic’s Studio Strings ensemble for additional pads, like at the end of the first verse.
I had a little trouble keeping the lyrics on topic; it’s just too easy to wander off in the direction of post-successful-first-date rather than staying in chatted-on-a-chairlift territory, but I figured a little romance can’t hurt. The verses are all about meeting the multitudes with a hint of trepidation, but the intro and chorus are celebrations of a single promising encounter, but hey, that is repeated, so there’s room for one more!
I wanted the second chorus to be a vocal monster, with a ton of harmonies sung by all those new friends, but with a hint of a duet lurking in there, and Synthesizer V delivers the goods, as usual.
The icing on the cake was a soulful harmonica solo and a few flourishes, played by Hector Ruano from far-off Venezuela via fiverr. I wasn’t quite aware of the limitations of a harmonica, but a typical harp supports a single key over just one octave. This obviously limits the range and melodic choices, but it makes up for it with a huge range of expression that Hector really pushed, with great results.
Having got together what I thought was my final mix, I listened to it in my car, and found the vocals too loud, and the guitar inaudible, so I fixed that.
I’ve ended up with a sweet, simple, happy song that I’m very pleased with. Hopefully the lovely people I’ve met that have acted as my muses will see themselves in it!
Rather than release the song myself, I chose to submit it to the “Bonks of Spring” BonkWave compilation, which meant that I had to sit on it for a few weeks…
After submitting, the person doing the mastering pinged me and suggested using “telephone” equalisation on the intro, and had done a rough version using mastering tools. I liked the idea, and it didn’t sound bad, but I thought it would work much better if done in the mix, so I did the EQ and added a vinyl emulation which added a few clicks and pops, some pitch drift and general grungy dustiness, but it really makes the full bandwidth instrumentation pop when it all kicks off.
If you’re not familiar with it, BonkWave is a non-genre genre, so all tracks are simultaneously both BonkWave and NotBonkWave, as an amusing poke at the ever-finer and increasingly less-distinguishable slices that constitute genres in modern music. In practice it tends to be associated with indie-minded, self-publishing musicians like myself, and has a bit of a slant towards various forms of electronica. If you’re wondering whether your track is BonkWave, be assured that it is. And isn’t.
There was a release party on the evening of June 13th for this album, and it was really nice to have been included. I felt this song was a bit out of place – it’s a very conventional pop song, lurking amongst swaths of swirly electronica, however, it was of course still #BonkWave, as well as #NotBonkWave, and someone kindly described it as a “palate cleanser”! Several in the party were a bit shocked to discover that the vocals were all synthetic. Maybe I’ll try something more “swirthy” next time…
Since I’ve published a few tracks that are distinctly not about developer stuff and didn’t really fit into my “Developer Music” album, I thought I’d start gathering my tracks in a new album I’ve called “People Music“. The only other change I made was to move my track “Uncomfortable” to the new album, as it fits better there.
[Intro/verse] I had a feeling when I first saw you that you were someone that I needed to fill a gap in me that I didn’t know was there. If you’d told me this would happen, I’d never have believed you
[Verse] First impressions count and I’m running out of numbers. Feeling anxious when making new friends. I’m not too good at this, the pressure that I’m under never knowing quite how it will end. So many names, so many faces, meeting up in so, so many places. It’s hard to tell who you’ll ever see again but every now and then you find someone special.
[Chorus] I’ve only met you once but that was all I needed to have my expectations all exceeded. I’ve only met you once; you’re what I’m looking for: a new friend for life, or maybe something more. I’ve only met you once, you might not feel the same, but from that first time we met, I just wanted to see you again. I’ve only met you once, but I’d like to make it twice. To feel this way is crazy when I’ve only met you once.
[Verse] Every little encounter could be the start of something new, but it’s so full of potential that I just don’t know what to do. The world’s so full of people, and only so much time. I can’t be friends with everyone, but you and me get along fine. Smiling faces, shaking hands, kissing hello and goodbye. It’s not the time for feeling shy, sometimes you just gotta try. Make new friends wherever you go, and you’ll never be on your own. A face in the crowd sticks in my mind; you’re the one that I wanted to know.
[Chorus] I’ve only met you once but that was all I needed to have my expectations all exceeded. I’ve only met you once; you’re what I’m looking for: a new friend for life, or maybe something more. I’ve only met you once, you might not feel the same, but from that first time we met, I just wanted to see you again. I’ve only met you once, but I’d like to make it twice. To feel this way is crazy when I’ve only met you once.
