Materials (song demo)

I've been having a bit of a weird week. It's like all the pride stuff I was focused on sort of just ended, and with it my healthy sleep schedule. I've been turning back into a night owl and I do not like it!

Night owling tends to bring with it these periods of intense hyperfocus on creative projects for me. For the past two days, it's been the following (Void Femmes?) song:

So, what's going on here? I had this idea that I would try pinging my Polaris filter with a clock signal, and autotune the output while changing the cutoff value to get different pitches. It got me pretty much what I expected, but then the floor kind of fell out from under me.

Next thing I know it's 3am and this song has drums, Sub37 bass, acid synths, and guitars. I wrapped up by adding some temp vocals.

Something weird happened when I listened back today: the demo felt a bit overblown. It's missing a melody or central focus, and instead opts for Everything All The Time. I think I've realized that the reason it's not feeling quite right is because I ended up giving myself stakes when working on this. I was thinking about "what would be cool" and "what might get people to make a stank face," rather than just letting myself have fun.

I'm a bit frustrated with myself because this kind of thing goes against the basic principles of what I want to do with Void Femmes. I'm not supposed to be thinking about what the audience wants, but what I want in the moment I'm making the music. It's a project about listening to myself and letting myself have fun, and I think I need to rework this a bit to get back on track.

Right now, this song just sounds like the anxiety I'm holding all of the time, and it's kind of tiring (at least for me).

I'm pretty happy with some of the sound design choices, so it isn't all self-doubt! I think it's sometimes nice to share things that don't feel like the best thing I've done. It's important for me to remind myself that I'm ultimately out here making music because I like to and not because anyone expects anything of me.