Is this an album or an EP? It has 8 tracks on it, but only stretches 11 minutes. Hmm, I’m not sure... Call it anything you want, I guess. I’m gonna refer to it as an album.
Everything on “wild” is made with Bosca Ceoil, a music-making tool made by Terry Cavanagh.
So a little backstory of the theme of “wild”. It was nearing the end of my school year and lots of stuff happened at the time. Our class had a debate team and some of my friends were moving schools. That’s why on the album, you can see tracks that have names that are kinda school-related, like “let’s debate about it” and “tainted monday”. I was gonna name the whole thing “second semester”, but I thought it sounded weird. In the end, after I finished making it, I decided to name it “wild” because unlike my previous album “wayback”, the tracks (such as “are you high or am i low?” or “catharsis”) didn’t fit any sort of theme.
The album cover also has a bit of backstory to it as well. After I made the track “rocky and vicky”, I wanted to upload it to Bandcamp as a single and I was thinking of what the cover art should be. My school gym had floors that were blue with white and yellow tape on top, so that’s where I got those colors from.
So I booted up FireAlpaca and started drawing.
I think it turned out really well! And a few weeks later, I finished making the tracks for “wild” and needed an album cover for it. So, I went back to the single cover art and started brainstorming. The idea was that the album cover was going to be an extended version of the “rocky and vicky” cover art, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle.
I made three album covers but couldn’t decide on which one. The third one looked the most promising, though. But I wanted to know what other people think is the best one. So first, I asked my good online friend Rin.
Afterwards, I asked some of my close friends in class. They also preferred the third one. And so, it’s settled! However, the cover art looked rather empty so I added a few details.
It’s a masterpiece!!! I think the added shapes made the cover art more wild! But something still felt off… Maybe it’s the colors? I hue-shifted the colors by a slight bit and…
Perfection.
Okay, let’s go to the tracks.
As I’ve mentioned before, our class had a debate team. They joined a debating event and it got pretty intense. Everyone was constantly on edge and that was what the intro track “speaker b” was about. I made the drums sound like a heart beating and made it beat faster as the track went on. After the climax, the instrumentals fade out at the end, kinda like how a debate ends.
The next track “let’s debate about it” was also about the debate (Shocking, I know). But in this track, the tone is a bit more playful and less serious than “speaker b”. It still sounds very intense, like a boss battle theme.
“weird (is what people call me)” was very fun to make. There were lots of instruments stacked on top of one another. I really liked how the melody came together at the end. At first, I named the track “weird”, but that title didn’t sound very creative so I added “(is what people call me)” so it’d be more interesting and also to poke a bit of fun at myself, haha.
“rocky and vicky” has a soft spot in my heart. It’s about my two classmates Rocky and Vicky who moved schools. Rocky was good at piano as well as Vicky with playing the guitar and drums. We don’t talk a lot, but I really miss them because seeing them play gave me a lot of motivation and inspiration for making music. The instruments I used when making it were guitar and piano, so it was like a homage of sorts.
I think the track turned out amazing! And I actually got Rocky to check out some of my music including “rocky and vicky”. It warms my heart to know that he enjoys it.
At one point while I was making the album, I felt really burnt out. “tainted monday” is a track that was made at that time. When I was listening to the track while making it, it never sounded quite right. So I kept trying to improve it by adding more layers of instruments, but nothing really stuck. Eventually, I just added a few drums and chords and called it a day. I was just so tired of listening to it over and over again making sure it sounds good. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have pushed myself so much into perfecting “tainted monday”. It’s probably why this track has a sadder tone than the other ones.
“are you high or am i low?” is one of the first tracks I made for “wild”. It was put together fairly quickly. I don’t know why but it just sounds so nostalgic to me…
“affectionate” is slow, but sweet. Really liked the synths and the strings! I’m honestly surprised that I didn’t use any drums here. I think it flows pretty well. There’s a little motif from another track of mine, “ruminate” near the end of “affectionate”. It’s not that obvious, but it’s there!
I had a scrapped track named “last seen” left over from my previous album “wayback”. The outro sounded really melancholy and I thought, “It’d be a waste to not use this.” And so I took the ending of “last seen” and stretched it into a full track. For the name, I chose “catharsis” because it fits the vibe really well and also fits as a closing track for “wild”.
There were a few tracks that didn’t make it on the album. They’re really short, mostly because I didn’t know how to extend them.
That’s all for “wild”!