You just move your hand in that open tuning and just everything sounds beautiful. You just made this so easy for me. Alright, tuning challenge. Andrew gave me a guitar and a random tuning and I had to make a song with it. Now Andrew has to do it. Here's a random tuning. He doesn't know what it is. Let's go! Welcome to Sonic Boom! ♪♪ This is Andrew's guitar. This reminds me of Yvette Young. And so I'm going to put it in the open tune that she uses. ♪♪ It's gorgeous. Gorgeous. I just selfishly want to hear an Andrew Huang song with it, so. ♪ Start the clock ♪ ♪♪ ♪ 90 minutes ♪ So the tuning Rob gave me is F A C G C E ♪♪ Well you gave me a really pretty tuning. Yeah, I don't want to tell you how I use it. No, no, yeah. I got to figure out some stuff on my own. And you just go for it. It's so funny how I immediately feel like I'm listening to you play guitar. This is the secret. You just put your guitar in this tuning. My fingers landed there and it sounded cool, but... Let's explore this a bit. ♪♪ There's like a major shape... ♪♪ a minor shape... ♪♪ and if I want to go to a different bass note. ♪♪ Those chords are beautiful. Yeah, ugh. ♪♪ Ugh...ugh... ♪♪ I like starting, yeah. ♪♪ And then you just keep rocking here for a little bit. ♪♪ Yeah, okay. ♪♪ Whatever that chord is... ♪♪ - Beautiful.
- Yeah, it's like, oh, so many nice suspensions in these. So those are going to be my two chords for the intro where I do that plucky pattern. And then we'll eventually get to... ♪♪ Did you grow up in Champaign, Illinois? ♪♪ Sure sounds like you did. Maybe I was stolen away from my real family. You were born in the American football house and left on a porch in Toronto. ♪♪ Oh, this shape is beautiful, okay-- I'm feeling it, like very-- You just move your hand and that open tuning and just everything sounds beautiful. Yeah, well you just made this so easy for me. So I'm going to do four of the first chord, four of the second chord, and then maybe that twice? Okay. And then when do you feel me coming in? I think we come in together, you just do like a [soft cymbal noise] sprinkles of cymbals and build it up a little. Okay. ♪♪ I'm hearing a syncopated thing where it's like... ♪♪ Okay. All right. Let's do it then. - Take it from the top?
- Yeah. My voice keeps cracking because the video before this was yelling about scarves. ♪ Give me a scarf! ♪ Let's get that click going. One, two, three... ♪♪ ♪ [wordless vocals] ♪ ♪♪ Dude, I love that. I love what you were doing with your voice. I'm in love. The stuff you're doing on the drums too is great. I love just keeping it varied where it's not like a super strict pattern. You know what? I'm going to say... let's try and write a C part now. Okay. It's got to go heavier. Maybe you do like... ♪ [wordless vocals] ♪ Oh, what?! ♪ [wordless vocals] ♪ Yeah. Just a few 12s in here. Yeah, yeah. ♪♪ And then the same... ♪♪ Yeah. Okay. Let's just go ABC, ABC. See how that feels. Yeah. ABC, ABCeeeeee. - And we're out.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's try that. Okay. That's the form: ABC, ABCeeeeee Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can just jam on C until we feel like it should end. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to make it a super long one. - Because of the time--
- We only have one hour and 12 minutes. But we can just jam it out. ♪♪ Last one. ♪♪ Okay. I love that. I think... - I think we nailed that.
- Yeah, I think so too. I'm going to go into the booth and help them if they need any help on the structure. - I love this song!
- Yeah. You got to get those parts in the right place. Yeah. Yes. We got to assemble this. I think we did three different parts. There's two parts at 120 and one part at 125. Yep. That's it. We just put those three together. Oh, wow. Look at those kick drums. They're right on the grid. Heeey! ♪♪ Maybe I'll just... ♪♪ do love piano. Guitar does the arpeggio and then I just like sprinkle... ♪♪ ♪ [wordless vocals] ♪ It looks like he's on piano. Hey, Andrew... ♪♪ I'm gonna do piano on it, and I know that's maybe not typical for the genre-- - Well, that's--
- I think it'll fill it out in a cool way. Yeah. So here's what I think at this point, my gut is to start doing all my knee jerk response for this genre because I know it so well, but I want to see where you go with it and not have any part in it. So right now I started like, here's the lyrics, here's the melody I want, here's where I want it to be, here's where I want the piano to be. But I think it's just hands off. I just want to see what you do with it. I so appreciate that. Yeah, I grew up with this stuff all the time and I'm not going to be able to separate it. I know a little bit about mathy rock and like... I've listened to just a couple records in that scene and then I'm just going to spill a bunch of other stuff on it. Yeah, no, that's what I want you to do. And so I think at this point... I don't know if I'm going to do anything else on the song. Okay. I guess I'm just taking the day off. I mean, if that's what you're feeling, I have a lot of ideas for all these parts, so I'll throw them down. As a music fan, I want to see where you take it because I can't take it anywhere other places that I've already been to. Let's do it. I'll track this piano. Actually, maybe I'll come in the room and I'll listen through the whole form? Yeah, come in. Yeah, yeah. "Why don't we just play it all the way through perfectly before we even wrote it?" "Editing would be so much easier." Yeah. Did I say that out loud? I got a great idea: We'll write this song four bars at a time out of order. You know what? I might pull some old notes out to get the lyrics going. Ooohhhh. ♪ [wordless singing] ♪ I have a melody that doesn't fit with the pause, and I'm like, do I want to really accent though? ♪♪ ♪ [partial words] ♪ Yeah, okay. That form is what I want. I'm going to put a pin in the lyrics, do a piano take. Oh, god. 34 minutes. All right. Time for a word from our sponsors. ♪♪ Hey, everybody. We're just going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor today: BandLab who make a free DAW that you can use on your mobile or it even works in web browsers on desktops. It comes with a lot of free virtual instruments and royalty free sounds. They just introduced auto pitch vocal effects. Yeah. So I made this beat earlier... Today?? And I thought maybe this would be a fun one to get Rob to vocalize on and we'll put you through a bunch of these effects. Well, what's in the app? Like, give me give me some words. Oh, yeah. So there's a bass guitar, retro pick bass. I saw the word 'yacht' and 'retro'. I like both, but 'yacht', I can say like, give me a shot on my retro yacht. ♪ Give me a shot on my retro yacht ♪ Okay. We're just going to record directly into the phone mic. So whenever you're ready to go. ♪ Give me a shot on my retro yacht ♪ Whatever. Hey! You're the producer. Make it sound good. There's there's a few different styles of auto pitch: Modern rap effect... with this robot effect? ♪ Give me a shot on my retro yacht ♪ Check this out. There's a harmonizing one. Okay. Yes. ♪ Give me a shot on my retro yacht ♪ ♪ Clear skies ♪ ♪ Blue seas ♪ ♪ I feel the breeze, I'm on a yacht ♪ ♪♪ ♪ That's what I got ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Palm trees ♪ ♪ Seasick ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Gotta find a bucket real quick, I'm on a yacht ♪ ♪♪ Awesome! That's just us messing around with BandLab really quick. You can produce full tracks in this, And they've got all kinds of great effects. And let's get back to our Sonic Boom episode. ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, I forgot... Forgot about the C section. So I guess we need another punch. Where was it? ♪ [wordless vocals] ♪ Okay. Oh, 28 minutes! ♪♪ Ohhh! ♪♪ I'm going to get the bass ready so we can just go. I'm going to tune it. ♪♪ All right, woo hoo! - Set it up for you, buddy.
- Dude. Yesss. And then we got bass and then and then it's vocals. - And lyrics, yeah.
- Pads on synths and everything. And you know, this song's so nice. And you know, this song's so nice if we want to go over an hour, like whatever. ♪♪ Okay. Wow. Wow. Wow. We got to write some lyrics in 17 minutes. Okay. Okay. Words. Words. Should we just lose the timer? I think at this point we are probably... Let's just lose the timer. I'm going to go in there and turn it off. 13:03. 13:04. 13:04. Getting rid of the timer. I just got to fill up a few more words. ♪ [vocalizing] ♪ Okay. I got it. Let's sing a song. I'm pretty into these lyrics that I came up with. I found two lines from a note that I started I don't know how many years ago. And I just tried to like spiral off them into this... This full song. Let's try it out. ♪ Lily of the valley ♪ ♪ Cloudburst ♪ ♪ [partial words] ♪ ♪ 'Cause we had ♪ ♪ To shed ♪ ♪ Our skins ♪ Whoa! It's that Wu-Tang song coming back to haunt you. ♪ Protect your neck! ♪ - Should have done it in backwards order.
- Yeah, if only we knew. ♪ To shed ♪ ♪ Our skins ♪ ♪ We saw the other sun ♪ We'll fly all these vocals around. And I'm gonna play a synth solo. ♪♪ You're not going to resolve it? You're not going to resolve it?? Okay! Andrew, that was amazing. For a split second through your playing, it was like: I just fell in love with Andrew. How are you feeling about like... How much of what I did was the typical thing versus just like kind of weird? Everything you played had the same goal, but you took a very different route to get there. If that makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. - So it all fit like--
- Like emotionally we're trying to do the same thing. Emotionally everything you did, but it was just a... It was just refreshing Kind of, you know? But here's the thing that's interesting about it: Is like it's really, really typical in that genre of music to have horns Like a trumpet? - Ohhh.
- And to do what... Like a very similar thing you did, but you used a synth. But like that line you did, And some of the expression that you did - Ohhhh.
- Is very, very similar. But instead of using a trumpet, you used a synth. I would not have gone to trumpet, but yeah, it would be the same role. Oh yeah. I'm so happy about you giving me a really cool tuning and not just like me giving you the weirdest thing that nobody would ever use. ♪♪ ♪ Horizon ♪ ♪ Shining like a diamond ♪ ♪♪ ♪ It's blinding ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I'm waking up anew ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Boundary ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Floating in a memory ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You found me ♪ ♪ Somewhere in the blue ♪ ♪♪ ♪ 'Cause we had ♪ ♪ To shed ♪ ♪ Our skins ♪ ♪♪ ♪ When we saw the other sun ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Ocean ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Now my eyes are open ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Starlight ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Now I see you there ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Shroud me ♪ ♪♪ ♪ In lily of the valley ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Cloudburst ♪ ♪ Tearing through the air ♪ ♪ 'Cause we had ♪ ♪ To shed ♪ ♪ Our skins ♪ ♪♪ ♪ When we saw the other sun ♪ ♪ ♪ 'Cause we had ♪ ♪ To shed ♪ ♪ Our skins ♪
♪ We saw the other sun ♪ ♪ We saw the other sun ♪ ♪♪ Great job! That was our song in almost 90 minutes using a random tuning I've never used before. It was mostly your song. I helped a little bit. You really helped though! The song is out wherever we put songs. Yeah, check the description. Thanks so much for watching Sonic Boom. We'll see you next time-- - We're going to between both of these cameras--
- Go make some music! This is a really fun edit. We're just really trying to make this tough on you guys. Okay. But we really appreciate you. Thanks so much for watching. Go make some music. - We'll see you soon.
- I'm behind a light right now. I'm a pro. - I'm a pro, I'm a pro.
- Whatever.
I think Rob belongs here. Dude loves Midwest emo, it's obviously a huge influence. Plus, a good fifth or so of TFOO songs are vaguely emo-sounding.