Dayglow - How I Made "Something"

[Music] what's up hey everyone um let's check out something the first song on harmony house um this one's pretty loaded so let's go ahead and crank into it here we've got the project file the main idea for this song before i started making it was um kind of just like a modern take at like stick it to the man sort of music um i was listening to a lot of david byrne and like the talking heads and just like like um like devo and um that whole like new wave like uh technology but like making fun of technology it's an interesting balance because it's all like synth driven music but it's kind of like talking about how technology is like taking over the world this is just an interesting paradox that i was interested in and i mean definitely speaks to times like these um where we are spending most of our time on our devices but the whole song started out let's zoom in here okay the song started i i actually wrote the song too maybe in like 20 minutes um and this all the recording is pretty much the same as the day i recorded it so i just was sitting there just going crazy and recorded all this in like 20 minutes and just you know mixed it a lot since a lot more than 20 minutes of mixing but most of it was recorded that day which is pretty special and i wanted the song to be sorry i know i'm talking so much before i play anything um but i wanted the song to be like everything was pointing to the purpose of the song in the lyrics and so since it's about this fast-driven culture of materialism i wanted this song to be under two minutes so that was an intentional thing um we're at the end of the song just turns into this crazy wall of noise um and it's all under two minutes so that was intentional but anyways the song started out with this cowbell loop that i was playing um right here i was actually um recording this song in my uh old guitarist's like shed i had my studio set up in this like shed outside on his ranch really gracious to them to really gracious of his family to let me um use their space in order to set up my studio for a couple months um but in this recording it's terribly uh you know isolated because there's an air conditioner like right behind the microphone and i didn't think this would make the cut and it kind of makes it more fun but i mean that's a really noisy recording um but also who freaking cares uh rock and roll is here to stay yeah so did that and then just this drum loop oh oh where'd the cowbell go okay there we are yeah and it kind of has this like just drive constant like it doesn't have a start or an end it's just this groove that you like live inside of um just the claps on the you know the downbeats it just keeps going it feels very uh i don't know i don't even know how to describe it but very driven and so essentially throughout the song it just layers more and more nothing musically really changes you know it's a verse chorus hook verse chorus hook noise done but the chords or anything don't change it's actually just more things being built on top of each other so there's lots of other little layers like here we have a shaker just going you know you should always just add a shaker it's just nice a melotron sample that's like [Music] you know goes with the clap kind of feels like an alarm siren going on here's like a melotron violin i'm just playing the root note which is a c it sounds like a tea kettle or something and i'm just playing with the pitch wheel just a little bit and then at the end rise it up just making you feel anxious and then i have this crazy noise loop um that happens on a corgum s20 that i have right there and i just turned up the uh filters all the way and we're just playing with the resonance sweeps and stuff so it sounds like this music to top it off i have the classic dj air horn in here which was a pretty fun idea because i just thought it was dumb at first and it would be really funny just kind of making a statement like party culture like yeah um but i tuned it which took a while to figure out um down to a c on the last note so it kind of turns into a like a synth drone um [Music] yeah i can't remember if that was an accident or not at least at first um but um i don't know if people tuned their dj dj air horn sound effects um but i just freaking did yeah that's all the percussion elements i'll just keep looping it here because this is the pinnacle of the song i guess so here's all the layers we have just discussed all the craziness and the noise let's get all the drums [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah awesome okay so now more musical things the guitar just like adds this percussive like build up kind of thing [Music] just playing a c but open it up nice um and then we have the bass sound which is really fun this is a hard thing to uh finalize so we've got just it's super like pc music almost it's like [Music] it's just so like um digital dystopian yeah so the one of the samples it's layered four times so one of the samples is from a korg m1 plug-in that i have i'm afraid to open it because it kind of crashes pretty often um but it's just like a plug-in vst model of a uh core gem one which is like a famous digital synthesizer i think from the 90s i just love those cheesy like vocal um construction bass sounds is what i think of um of like i don't know like in those digital synths um i have a d50 up there which is you know a lot of sounds like that but nothing that i could find so i had to use a plug-in um then second it's layered with another m1 sample or a patch you know super similar but just adds more grit and dirt to it and it just kind of feels like a punch to the face which was oddly enough the goal and then i layered it with an actual base you know we're just sending this dude through decapitator thick mild crunch such a great preset just to start off with eq'd compressed but i mean i record all my bass di guitar as well you know just using plug-ins i just find it so much easier to have control and then i layered it with a guitar um an octave higher obviously um just to add more crunch texture all of them together [Music] now i've got little moments in here where i do like cowbell fills um but it was all just recorded in one take just spliced it up yeah that noise is just crazy and i couldn't fix it but you know it's kind of the charm of diy home recording it's what it's all about let's see we've got like an air horn at the beginning it's the very start of the album so i thought i'd add a little message um you know i was feeling generally pretty anxious at the time of making this and you know i wanted the song to feel anxious but i have i forget what i say here so i titled it welcome it says i'm glad you're here my name's so my name is my name is so my name is i'm glad you're here my name's sloane my name is day glo my name's slo my name's stayglow little thing i like to put in in my songs things that you just can't even hear but i know they're there and now i guess if you watch this video you know they're there welcome into my secret little world okay before we go into the vocals let's just check out this lead so this is actually what i'm calling the harmony house theme um so the general idea of harmony house was to talk about change and things that i'm going through and show that there are reoccurring themes no matter what season you're in um so throughout harmony house i have this melody that shows up pretty much in every song um it's like it's kind of like a tv theme song or something um that shows up in a bunch of different ways but obviously first song of the record is where it shows up but this is the first time that i actually wrote it so originally it just existed in this one song um but you know now it's in pretty much all of them but it just introduces the melody so that's a guitar stacked with a d50 patch [Music] um and then a jx 3p so a lot of people have been asking about the sound um people think it's like a recorder you know hot cross buns kind of thing um and it's actually my jx3p um which i will show you um it's one of my favorite oops um one of my favorite little patches on it [Music] but it's called song whistle [Music] anyways um just super fun quirky little sound it just immediately makes you feel like you're a cartoon bumblebee or something you know and that never hurts to feel like that so yeah it's a synth patch but all three of them stacked together i thought it sounded pretty great [Music] yeah it's just kind of this got this drive like opening sequence type sound to it which was definitely i was going for um because harmony house kind of just feels like my original idea approaching harmony house was to make it be like the soundtrack to a sitcom that just doesn't exist and um you know i was feeling kind of like i was on stage and i was like being watched that's like the ironic thing about sitcoms they're just supposed to be like normal lives and we like compare our lives to those and i kind of felt like that's what was starting to happen to me as i was just like living just my normal life but somehow it's like interesting now to other people um yeah it goes beyond making music which i never really understood um but it's crazy yeah so harmony house is kind of just like the idea of a sitcom that doesn't exist the whole entire soundtrack this is like the opening title sequence so it's awesome that people have been saying it sounds like a tv theme song or something because that was the goal so if anybody um making a tv show out there you know the next netflix original wants to get me a multi-million dollar contract take something you can have it anyways okay let's uh let's check out the vocals so we've got just a lead taking me vocal where is the place calling the cab a lot of tape saturation now that it's all because it's such a like direct driven song and i wanted it to feel like really dry i mean i still have like a delay there but i want to be dry up front hearing the message almost like through a megaphone um not as sharp as that but already [Music] but you get that kind of sound through heavy compression quick attack and uh saturating then call it a lady what'll it be a harmony nothing believe me it's you that takes the time tell me if what makes you someone is something then why can't i have mine some impact uh ad-libs which was me just kind of like jamming the day i was recording it and um it stayed take i have this titled strange man vocals just underneath copy and paste isn't it magic don't you want to have it it's making you feel more you know talking heads thomas dolby kind of deal compiled the content you're filming the myspace [Music] yeah i got jeff bezos in the studio okay so lyrics keep going oh yeah there's a group vocal shout here that's mine i love group vocals um let's see we've gotten here i think it's just me stacked a bunch of times and there's one of my friend peyton um which i can hear the most is his patents kind of like a british inflection there or something um [Music] yeah i just wanted to do like silly voices just pandem oh there's one of my mom i forgot about that here is my mom's that's mine kind of a whisper that's mine that's great that's her that's her favorite lyric of the song usually she'll kind of skip around the others and that's mine she gets you know so had to put her in the recording that's fine that's a crazy falsetto but anyway it's all together that's mine beautiful choir okay yeah the outro vocals pretty cool thing happens so i'm the lead vocal take the tape delay just start twisting it yeah and so i do another time [Music] um yeah just trying to make it feels very like once in a lifetime the talking heads video where he's just sweating and they're just like crazy energy is what i was going for and you know had to end the song with the ah as one does um but yeah that's all the tracks we've got so we can take a listen through the outro tell me [Applause] [Applause] [Music] yeah and i think i got it right oh actually it's much it's a couple seconds shorter than i thought but yeah the goal is under two minutes which you know tierra whack is doing the whole like one minute thing which is just insane i have no idea how that's just that's pretty incredible but everybody's got short attention spans these days um so let's see if you know everybody sits through a 20-minute video of me breaking down a two-minute song for those of you who have made it this far thank you for being here uh i love breaking these down again if y'all have any questions about specific things on the songs um just uh let me know but anyways thanks for watching thanks for listening to the album share it with uh all your friends let your pets listen to it see how they react uh maybe burn a cd give it to your neighbor um i don't know yeah just uh keep listening to day glow because i'm definitely biased in that message but i'm really glad that you guys are part of the team and um we're having fun but anyways everybody thanks for watching and i will see you on the next episode goodbye goodbye

Channel: Dayglow

Views: 33,966

Rating: 4.9911785 out of 5

Keywords: dayglow, day glow, dayglow band, day glow band, day glow music, dayglow music, fuzzybrain, indie pop, alternative, indie music, sloan struble, fuzzy brain, how i made, something, how i made something, something dayglow, something sloan, something sloan struble

Id: 23BxsWAO7Jo

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021