For our final project, Anjali and I created a song called One Sided Love in Waveform with an infusion of SuperCollider-generated sounds. Anjali did the SuperCollider part so for more on that, see her blog post! I’ll be writing more about the production in Waveform, which I did more of for this project.
Before we started we decided we wanted a Bon Iver inspired song. As a starting point for the chord progression of the song, I used Bon Iver’s
“____45______” as a starting point. However, after many transformations, it’s no longer even recognizable to the original song. This chord progression is played on a twinkly, lead pad – an edit of the 4OSC’s preset called “The Works”. The song begins with just this pad, but the chord progression remains (with just one variation in the middle) throughout the song. This is our biggest deviation from Bon Iver. Even though the form is free-flowing and individual sections are hard to discern (throwback to Deathbreast), Bon Iver tends to end his songs in a very different place from where they started. This is not the case for One Sided Love.
Here’s the lead pad:
There’s also a cosmic, droning pad that supports the lead pad near the beginning of the song. I really craved some massive chords, with lots of notes at a time between the bass and the two pads. I went to the piano and played the chord progression from the lead pad, and stacked other notes that sounded good on top. Those became the notes for the cosmic pad.
For this section, I was inspired by Grimes’ song Violence. I love her use of dramatic, abrasive pads in this song to build intensity. If you listen around 2:00, you’ll hear an instrument start that I was attempting to emulate with my cosmic pad. It’s super loud and intense, and it’s satisfying to listen to it build up and then die away. To do this, I edited the 4OSC’s preset Geographic, which I think is by far the best preset in the 4OSC and highly recommend it to everyone.
I had fun with the automation on this instrument, too. From this screenshot the automation curve looks random, but it’s just a result of me moving around the dots until I liked how it sounded. I am automating the frequency and the result is that the instrument has lots of movement. I regret not automating the pan on this instrument as well. 
Here is the cosmic pad:
Anjali wrote the lyrics to this song. I will put them at the bottom of this post, but the lyrics are angsty. The song is not fully angry – it is about accepting the end of a relationship. But there is still some bitterness and angst even if it’s not full anger. This had a similar feeling for me as Troye Sivan’s album In A Dream. I attempted to produce the vocals in a similar way as his song Easy, and like a lot of his other music, the vocals are dreamy and sort of distant. Of course, I used reverb to do this.
Here’s a section of my vocals, although Anjali sings the second half of the song.
Anjali did part of the percussion for this song using the drum machine. I did the alternate percussion pattern, which comes in at the bridge. I used samples from my computer to make a swung, light percussion pattern. This served to break the repetition of the primary beat and differentiate the bridge from the rest of the song a little bit.
Bridge percussion:
For the bass, I used, yep you guessed it – the 4OSC. For a bass, it has a lot of high frequency sound, although I did some fun automation of the center frequency later in the song. There’s a track with a guitar hit from my sample library, which I actually used to determine the key of the song because I didn’t want to pitch shift the sample. Luckily, the key worked out okay for both Anjali’s and my range.
Though Anjali wrote the melody for this song, I changed the melody slightly on my verse to feel more natural. Working together was easier than expected. With the exception of the very first time Anjali sent me the zip file, it was a super easy process of collaboration. It took less than 60 seconds to import the new project at the beginning of a work session, and less than 60 seconds to compress and send the project back at the end of working. I think we did even work on this project and though we delegated some tasks to just one of us, we were both capable of doing any part of this project.
In conclusion, One Sided Love is an angsty song about leaving a relationship behind. It has a track from SuperCollider (see Anjali’s post), and draws production influence from Bon Iver, Grimes, and Troye Sivan. I wish I’d put more variation in the end of the song – this would have worked fine as a song with a length of 2:30 or 3:00 song, but our final version is 3:34. I also regret that my vocals are not a consistent volume. I probably moved towards and away from the mic while I was recording, which I’ll be careful not to do in the future.
Here is the final track and the lyrics are below! Note that the maximum file size for this blog is 50MB and the song happens to be ~56MB, so this is a resized version of the wav export.
VERSE 1:
When you were falling down, I was there for you, I was there for you
When you were at your lowest point, who was there to guide you back home?
And now, when I’m in the same place, falling down in this deep abyss
Are you gonna be there for me? Are you gonna be there for me?
BRIDGE:
Tired of this trick,
I’m just a doormat to you, I see it now
Tired of being a fool,
When you don’t care about me like that
Why-why-why
Couldn’t you just say that you don’t care about me like that
I’m tired of being a fool, thinking I could get you to love me back
CHORUS:
Instead of leading me on
You don’t return my frequency
All that I gave, there’s nothing to receive
Why do I keep going back when there’s nothing here for me?
I should just move on
From this one-sided love (one-sided love!)
One-sided love (one-sided love)
I’m moving on from this one-sided love
VERSE 2:
I see how you look at the others
I know you would never see me
In that same way
Just tell me what I’m doing wrong
Tell me what I’m doing wrong
What should I change for you? To put me at their level
Oh I don’t know I don’t care anymore
But why do you still make me feel this way?
Ethan, I loved this track for a variety of reasons. Not only is the chord progression (and pad patch for that matter) beautiful, but the percussion loop is refreshing and fits perfectly with the mood for which you’re going. It’s so hard for me to make interesting and new drums, yet it seems to come naturally to you and Anjali. I was also very impressed by your ability to identify aspects of your favorite artists’ songs and emulate them well. I listened to your attached links and was able to see where in your track you drew inspiration from Bon Iver, Grimes, etc.. You mentioned at the end of your post that you wish you had added more variation at the end of your track. I see where you’re coming from, but I actually like the song the way it is — the repetition plays into the angsty theme and evokes nostalgia in the listener. Good job to you and Anjali…can’t wait to hopefully hear more songs of yours in the future!