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This song started with only the intro part as just a random idea. It was then followed by the chord progression of G Cadd9 Em in the key of C. The feeling of the part was originally a bit sadder and the use of the C add9 chord was taken from 'Nutshell' by Alice in Chains, particularly their live MTV Unplugged performance.

The rest of the song more or less just flowed out naturally based on the starting idea. Going from strummed chords to plucked arpeggiated notes and back again with the dynamics between parts being important, and plenty of room left for a vocalist eventually.

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This idea started with the riff from E to G only, hence the working title of E to G. Quickly after the slide down to A and back up to G was made.
The song Follows the C Major Scale.
The first half of the song and the riff originally started with me trying to write a song similar to Queens of the Stone Age's "Long Slow Goodbye" with the focus on one chord being played out repeatedly, but the part evolved into the E to G that is heard in the final performance. The Second half of the song was based on an idea from the Blood Red Shoes track "Light it Up" in which they have a part that goes from a moving bass note to a lead part. Both from the intro and the middle of the song had a solo which shows off the technique. This is also heavily used by them in many of their tracks.

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This melody was written to fit these lyrics to give an idea of how it might go
Lyrics:
Depression Fades into the night
Where the darkness Creeps to put out the light
Where doubts can crawl into your brain
When all you want is to see the rain

Reflection: I like the lyrics and plan to use them in a song eventually. The melody idea sounds very rough but this was my first attempt to write a vocal melody using a keyboard and was a good learning experience

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Reflection: An example of working outside of 4/4 time. The 5/4 time signature gives this idea a feeling of being rushed it propels it forward. It was much easier then 6/8 time but ultimately I didn't like this particular idea enough to keep expanding it. I really like the idea of how it makes the song feel rushed though like Radiohead's song '15 step'.

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The peaceful bliss
Like a static drone
like a perfect kiss
to bring you home

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Reflection: I almost always work in 4/4 or 3/4 time so it was very challenging to even make this simple drum start. I had a hard time trying to develop this idea any further with melodic parts as I had a hard time keeping the beat without sounding robotic, and bland - much like this drum beat sounds.

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The original idea recorded

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This version adds a vocalsynth to the vocals, as well as drums and bass

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First I took the tempo from one of Taylor Swift's songs (this was changed later) the Key of C was chosen for its popularity in the genre and the I iv VI V Chord Progression was taken from Taylor Swift's song 'Blank Space' and I played these chords into Ableton

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How I wrote the Pastiche  - Deeper explanation

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How I wrote the Pastiche  - Deeper explanation

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I focused on the Electronic and synth heavy vibes of ‘Lover’ and the Melody writing of ‘1989’. For chord progression I borrowed the I vi IV V progression from Blank Space from 1989. I picked C Major as the key because that is the most popular key in pop music.

For the melody I really listened to a lot of the 1989 album and watched a YouTube video by Holistic Songwriting. There he talked about how she has really perfected the way to write effective one note melody songs. She also focuses a lot on the root note of the scale she is in. He broke songs off 1989 down into stats, for example her song “How you get the Girl” has a Root density of 95% and a One note melody density of 96%. “Welcome to New York” has a 77% root density and an 82% one note melody density. “Out of the Woods” has a 57% root density and a 81% one note melody density. ‘Blank Space’ has a 45% One note melody density and ‘Wildest Dreams’ has a 63% One Note Melody density.

Holistic Songwriting talks about how these are common qualities in a lot of songs and especially in pop songs. But can often be seen negatively in songs such as ‘Friday’ by Rebbeca Black. The difference he offers is the way she uses them and particularly their use before jumping high and then descending back down. He calls this ‘The Swift Line”. Where the One note melody takes up approximately 60% of the melody followed by a tail that consists of a high note followed by a descending line. Using his definition, every song off 1989 uses ‘The Swift Line’ to various degrees.

In the song I wrote this can be heard in the verses where the first few notes of the melody are the root note and are forming a one note melody. Followed by a higher note than descending. The main difference is the second half of the verse line is actually a little different note wise but is the same principle. I was going for a faster “Welcome to New York’ melody line feel. For the Chorus I followed the same principle but tried to lengthen it, I think it could use some more tweaking for what the actual singer would sing though and this would more form the backing vocals.

(Findeisen, 2019)

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From Just looking at this screen shot you can see how the Melody follows Taylor Swift's Style of:
1) focusing heavily on the root note (C)
2) The use of the repeated one note melody
3) the use of the 'Swift line' where the melody goes from very one note and conjunct to jumping up disjunctly and ends descending back down melodically.

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This song started out with just one main guitar part. Below is the earliest recording I have, but it was actually an idea for longer without being recorded. Something I would play a bit of differently every time until I found how I liked it.

The Chords used make the song in the key of E Major. And it uses the open E string as a droning repeating Bass note. This idea was from Jamie Hince of The Kills, used on their songs like "Baby Says" where the guitar part follows the vocals with a lead part, while also using a repeated bass note to fill up the arrangement. My version came out a lot more upbeat sounding, but the idea feels very much the same, with the parts in between vocal parts having small fills that are very much influenced by Jamie Hince's Guitar playing both in "Baby says" as well as the rest of The Kills Discography.

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I added drums and cleaned up the guitar part to be more consistent

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Rough draft with mumble Vocals - Phone Recording

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Rough draft with mumble Vocals - Phone Recording

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This was a recording made on my phone with mostly made up in the moment lyrics while I played the guitar part, trying to decide the structure of the song as well as come with some words.

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I made a looped version just for writing lyrics, but it shows the progression from this version to the final versions chorus

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Lyric writing version 2 - The Chorus Breakthrough

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Lyric writing version 2 - The Chorus Breakthrough

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This version doesn't have a lead over it at all which helped with writing lyrics, but also added in the new 'chorus' part that would be on the final version. When this part was written it was the biggest breakthrough for this song going from a maybe, to definitely with lyrics finally flowing correctly as well.

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To me when I was writing the song I imagined this song was switching between verse and chorus rapidly. It is not until the end of the song that the chorus is truly split off from the verse.

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Overall I am happy with how the songs are shaping up, but not completely satisfied with the performance, It still feels really odd to only be performing to a camera, and technical problems had me constantly checking if both the audio and the video was still recording and where I was with time. I feel that I still would have been nervous but much more focused if I could have just performed without also worrying about everything being in one take and recording both audio and video. The cuts in the video only exist to keep the troubleshooting of tech problems from ruining the 10 mins needed for the video, but everything was recorded one after the other and the total recording time was under 12 mins.
The track 'Down' I feel came out well, it was a slightly messy performance but I am proud of the track.
The Taylor Swift Pastiche ran on a little too long, making it feel repetitive. But I had hoped to have a vocal track added, but was not able to get the singer in to record in time due to their own finals the last few weeks.  I feel the track would've been the right amount of time with vocals added.
The 'E to G' track was a shortened version but I think it still works pretty well.
"Love Song" came out rushed and I don't think works as well shortened, but this was due to being able to see I was close to being out of time while recording. I think the demo included shows how more how it should sound when finished.

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I Wrote down some ideas, based on what I came up with while playing the main part of the song. These were mostly all not used but helped to inform the creation of the final lyrics

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The song was originally written to sound like Taylor swift had wrote it, so I felt the best thing to do was to make it sound a little more like I wrote it, so I decided to add a guitar part. With this guitar part I wanted to add a little bit of an edge to the the song, make it feel a little more rock, but I also felt like this song needed a more subtle guitar part and for it to sit back in the mix and accentuate the synth heavy vibe the track already had. The tone and feeling of the part was heavily influenced by the guitar part in the track "Numbers" by Daughter. Going for that feeling of staying out of the way of the rest of the track but still adding to it.

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After re-writing the lyrics a few times, the song started to take shape, with most of the final lyrics shown here as well as an outline of what I was thinking for the arrangement of verse chorus outro etc...

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The first half of the song with the delay and reverb heavy guitar was inspired by the guitar in the track "Still" by Daughter. The idea was to fade in and out adding texture to the background before coming in for the ending chorus type section

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The Performance version is much shorter, cut to fit in the performance guidelines, then I would've intended, especially if it had a singer and more backing instruments.

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This track was also cut short to accommodate the 10 mins for the performance video. This song Would've been much longer more like 3 to 4 mins and focused more on dynamics between the different parts if I had more time. I also would prefer the chords to be played on an acoustic guitar with a lead played on an electric as heard in the demo attached in this Padlet.

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Demo Version with Acoustic Guitar and Electric Lead

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Demo Version with Acoustic Guitar and Electric Lead

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This demo rough draft version is much closer to my ideal version of how I think the song should go. I plan on further developing from this idea.

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These are the finalized lyrics for the performance. You can see I wrote down the idea of how the structure should go with verses. There are 4 lines of the chorus that only read through once.

Reflection: I am not completely satisfied with these, but after many many re-writes I am pretty happy with how it turned out, this marks the first song I have written and sang on all myself.

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Overall, the part could end up being used, but I feel it really needs an overhaul and didn't feel like it was strong enough to be finished next to other ideas that were being made at the same time.

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Attached is an early idea of what to do next after the main riff, but before the ending was written yet. I feel it might have a space in a longer arrangement of the song to break up the song in the middle before heading into the outro part played in the performance.

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This song is about fighting off depression and doubts. But every time you feel like you're going up, you feel like you're going down again. And that you know you're fighting your inner self, but you still feel helpless and have to keep fighting to get to a place where you feel free your own doubts.