In Actuality
Posted on August 25, 2023
Backstory
This song feels fairly simplistic. The main idea in it is the melody, which came into my head when I was walking around a Whole Foods looking for a freezer pizza.
Reflection
I like how the bass does the high note of the “7th” chord at the end of each measure. There’s a horn behind the 808 that lingers for a bit longer than the 808 and feels a bit emptying (the horn doesn’t hit on every 808, but when it does, it turns up the distortion a bit and peaks out the melody synth. which I enjoy.).
Speaking of distortion and “peaking out the melody synth”, I guess this song is sort of doing the same thing as Printed Hyperlink, where the bass stack is tearing up the song above it. It’s a lot more subtle (relatively) in In Actuality, though.
Cover
The album cover is a photo from the National Forest out on Highway 2 in Washington, somewhere out past Skykomish. I also used this photo as the cover for my short story “A Forest’s Roth“. Still not a huge fan of how I worded the ending of that short story.
Lyrics
Actually, this song kind of almost (not really) had lyrics. When I first made the beat and melody, before I did anything with the huge beat mixup at the end, I wrote this set:
- alls a sudden alls i feel’s i’m stuck in actuality
- i’m stuck in some reality i’m lacking abnormality
- i’m off track, outta whack, focussin on what I lack
- focusing on making stacks, i don’t care just take it back
I was in a pretty rough state of mind at the time! Was probably doing the dishes.
Anyway, hope you like it!