How I Made Ones and Another with a Bass and I-Pad

Well there. We are approaching the 1 Year Anniversary of my first EP, "Ones and Another" releasing on YouTube. This first EP is very important to me, for not just being the first project I've made with actual instruments (or one instrument) but it was the project that proved to me that I can write good and interesting songs that I genuinely love. I will be talking about the process of how I made the songs from my first EP, and I will be giving some small fun facts about each song.

If you haven't already, check out Ones and Another here, I would appreciate it :)

Track 1 - Deep Moche

This track came about when I was just messing around with my bass. When I came up with the bassline, I found it to be simple, yet catchy, and I wanted to make that bassline into a song.

The bass recorded on the song had the top E string tuned up to F#, and all of the strings were purposefully tuned down to sound a little flat. I found that tuning it down made the melody sound more unique and cool instead of boring and generic.

The MIDI drums written for Deep Moche were actually inspired by Les Claypool, and his song "Whamola" I loved the simplistic and frenetic energy of the song, and I wanted to re-capture that vibe in Deep Moche without completely ripping it off.

The name itself just came out of nowhere really. The name is basically an offset of the band Depeche Mode. In fact, if you look up the song, you will get nothing but Depeche Mode, and then my song in there. I also just liked the way Deep Moche sounded and how it was spelt.

I didn't have (and still don't have) any distortion pedals to record the bass parts, but thankfully, I used Bandlab, which I still use to this day to make all of my music, and I used one of their free plug-in presets, "Metal Tone"

For the final part, when the "guitar" comes in, it was just the Bass take I recorded duplicated as a separate layer, using the same preset as the bass, and I added in a Pitch Shifter to make it sound like a guitar. At the time I didn't have a guitar just yet, so I wanted to be more creative in making a guitar riff.

Though the final version of the song is just an instrumental, I originally did have lyrics for it, but at that time I wasn't confident in my singing voice, and I found the lyrics I wrote for it to be weak and unfitting in what I wanted to write about.

Deep Moche is the first song that I love with all my heart, and it's one I'm still proud of for its kinetic energy and its power in simplicity.

Track 2 - Ariel

When I wrote this song, I was experimenting with layering the bass with other bass parts to make it sound like a six string guitar, and those experiments resulted in Ariel (as well as My Valentine, but we'll get to that in a bit)

Ariel was my attempt in trying out punk, with a short and simple structure, but fast paced and catchy melodies. As the song continued to be worked on, I realised I found that it was a bit too boring for my taste, so I decided to add in a Green Day inspired breakdown in the middle of it to make it interesting. This was the first instance of me being more experimental in structure, which I would later explore with future songs down the line like Synebys and Scorned Sun.

This song did have lyrics originally, but again, I wasn't confident in my singing abilities just yet. The lyrics I wrote were very straight forward, focusing on things like the beach and a mermaid, but it was when I was just trying to understand what I liked to write about, and I didn't feel like the lyrics I wrote for it really resonated with me. It did lead to the name of the song, which was a very on the nose reference to Ariel from the Little Mermaid.

The whole track uses the same preset for the all of the recorded tracks, "Major Grunge" which is a great plug-in that worked for the punk inspired simplicity of the track. The MIDI drums themselves were again inspired by punk drummers and they way they focus on controlled chaos in their drumming. One thing I always focus on when programming drums is if I can play the parts I'm writing, instead of a writing a 20 part multi layered solo that I can't play to save the life of me.

Ariel all in all is a decent attempt at punk, with catchy and straightforward melody, a decent breakdown, but is more significant, in my opinion, for laying the groundwork for experimenting with other genres of music in the future.

Track 3 - My Valentine

While Deep Moche is the first song I loved, My Valentine is the first song I adore with a flaming passion. This was the song that showcased what kind of musician I want to be, and what got me heavily into songwriting and structuring my songs in interesting and cool ways

One of the genres I wanted to explore for the EP was Shoe-gaze, as I loved the unabashed dream like loudness of the genre, and I always gravitated towards songs like "When the Sun Hits" and especially "sometimes" This song is a prime example of showcasing my love, even right down to the title being of the song being based from my favourite Shoe-gaze band "My Bloody Valentine"

The melody itself is very simple and straightforward, as I knew that in order to make something sound big, you gotta keep it simple. For the effects and presets used for this, I knew I didn't just want to stick to the same presets I used for the last two songs, so I decided to explore the numerous of free effects Bandlab offered, and the results was the effects you hear in My Valentine for the Bass and "Guitar" parts. The presets I made were a giants array of effects coming together to create the sounds for the "Guitar" and Bass parts you hear on the final track.

The main melody throughout the song was actually just my voice humming under a distortion effect. It was inspired by Kanye west's "Runaway" and how in the end of that song, his singing and humming was more effective than if a guitar came in to play the melody he sang.

The structure of My Valentine itself was a bit of a mess, but it was a good mess. I wanted the main driving force of the song to be the MIDI drums, so a few simple MIDI drum parts that were simple but powerful, that would build up to the climatic finish that makes you feel like you're floating in your bedroom

The "Guitar melodies" were separate recordings of me with the bass, again, using the Pitch Shifter effect and layering the recording to make it sound like a guitar is playing it.

My favourite part of the song is the sigh before it explodes into the final minute of the track. It was the first recording with my voice not distorted by an effect. I see this part as a sort of "breaking free" moment musically (insert Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens duetting here), as I go from simplistic instrumentals, to me actually singing my music and being proud of it.

The final version was actually pitched up on a separate app I used. I forget what it was called, but I used its pitch shifter to intentionally make it sound like it was pitched up, similar to songs like "The Day I Tried To Live". I always love exploring off kilter sounding notes, and it's something I want to keep exploring in my music in the future.

In short, My Valentine is still one of my favourite songs I've ever written, and I see it as one of the most important songs in my catalogue, as it's the breakout moment of me realising what kind of musician I want to be, and the music I want to make. The whole EP is sort of like that in a way.

Bonus - Deep Moche Music Video

The Music Video for Deep Moche was shot and edited in the span of 3 days. I knew I wanted to try in making my own music videos, so I wanted to keep the video simple, with just me playing my instruments with cool effects later down the line in CapCut.

The shots of me playing in the dark with strobe lights was actually unused shots for another music video I wanted to make but never did. It wasn't for one of my songs, but for Foo Fighters' masterpiece "The Teacher"

The whole video was shot on my I-Pad, the same place where this whole EP was made, and though there's no mind-blowing shots, I think it capture the song's vibe perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANck3iioXl0

Check Out The Music Video Here

Conclusion

Though Ones and Another is not the most mind blowing EP by any means, I still see it as a good foundation for what I would later create down the line. With songs like the fast paced and catchy Deep Moche, to the simple but effective punk vibes of Ariel, to the final climatic shoe-gaze bliss of My Valentine, Ones and Another is a good, simple, and important marker for me for moulding my style of songwriting. For me, is the story of me figuring out who I am as a songwriter, and understanding the kind of music I want to make, and for that, I am so happy this EP was made.