🛑 Song over-modulates at full volume. Download project file and play 50% volume for fullest experience! 🛑

af-uh-ter 8 years of hobbyist composing, i've noticed a running theme for me: i rarely know what i've written until after i've written it. i don't know what i sound like. this means music will always ever be a hobby as opposed to something that can be produced on demand. i'm happy to have that.

personally i hear a lot influence from contemporary prog rock, first-wave ska, and ancient irish folk. i noticed this in my fourth year of composition education (on a song mootboxle said was "so good"). song composition is a lot like meditation: exist in a room and allow thoughts to enter and cross the room through the front and back door; acknowledging the thoughts, but not serving them tea.

because pitch-shifting very low crushes tones, "Roy. Jel. / Dy. Honey" contains a rhythmic intermix of smooth and crunchy bass lines from a couple of different instrument tones. snare drums similarly are layers to create timbres that marry each section and don't draw too much attention to the fact that it's a sample. Notes catch themselves by adding "ghost notes" with a zero velocity after voices with longer delays to give the song snappier notation variation (based on a fearofdark comment saying one song was too mushy-sounding).

the experiment is to make a song sound like it was performed as opposed to programmed. it's an endless kind of chase. I want each new section to feel breathlessly earned, but still have a back-beat and melodic leitmotifs to aid in the orientation of a listener over time (based on a comment by keffie about whether "all my songs were through-composed").

i don't produce songs as often as i used to because i got married last year, so i tried to "make it count." there's a secret section at the end!

overall i'm glad i wrote this before i died. i'm not "dying" but i mean, you know, in the royal sense of dying.

👑 Royal Jelly / Dying Honey 🐝

in Stereo.

http://battleofthebits.org/arena/Entry/Royal+Jelly+_+Dying+Honey/36302/

💞

what an adventure of a piece... I feel similar to how you describe the composition process, the listening experience feels almost meditative too. fresh but familiar tonal and percussion motifs stopping by for just enough time to say hi and intermingling... before parting ways again.