I'm slightly late in commemorating it, but today marks ten years since I released Various Murky Basements. Various Murky Basements was my first EP, something I put together as a teenager at the end of a rather dark tunnel, hardly brilliant, something some would probably describe as not great in the first place, but something that puts me right back in the spot I made it in on the rare occasion I go and listen to it, and that's a fuzzy thing.

I already described in more detail than anyone really needs the process of making it, so I won't bother here. As I sober up slightly, I'll instead give you ten things I've taken from it in the ten years between being 16 and putting it out and 26 and listening to it back. Some of these are about the creative process/details of the end result, and some are about the mindset and what you as the person making it will take with you post-release.

Trust the process, because it's not gonna turn out how you imagine

What escapes me as the intent fades and what sits on my site and my hard drives is all that's left is that aphrodisiac as a project wasn't meant to be fuzzy glitchy computer music. I really wanted to be in a band, but I had no friends and no ability to play instruments. I never even bothered trying out for the school jazz band.

At 15 and 16, I had a procession of noisy 80s through 2000s indie rock albums like Ride's Nowhere, Blur's self-titled album, Silversun Pickups' Pikul, and Big Black's Lungs (among their other EPs) on constant repeat in my headphones. I really wanted to be in a band like Big Black. Computer-augmented, but distinctly human, and distinctly angry like I felt at the time. Various Murky Basements was just my way of approximating that through what meager software I had in the hopes I could get people I went to school with on board with what I heard in my head to help me make said human music. That didn't happen, obviously.

Even in the context of the music itself, I remember wanting to balance the human element against the computerized element. I wanted live drums, and big, booming drums, to sit against the drum machine. I could play drums, but I didn't have the kit, didn't have the mics, and didn't have the money or know-how to seek those things out. Various Murky Basements came out instead from what I could make with what I did have, and failure as much as it was to launch, what it became was its own flavor of lovely to me.

It was maybe okay that it wasn't the 2010s recreation of Big Black's "Pigeon Kill" I had in my head. Through the process, it became my own thing.

You can get fairly far playing random keys on a keyboard

I was sitting in the lounge with Caby recently when, probably more due to her own anxiety about making music than anything, she imparted on me that her experiments with it hadn't even produced so much as a cool sounding loop or bassline. She just didn't know how to, you see.

I came back and played her "Caleb", later "Kaden" on In Free Fall when put to prengle's lovely voicemail. "Caleb" was the first song I'd ever written, named for someone's OC I'd seen online and found slightly compelling. I didn't, and wouldn't for years later, know any scales. No scales, no chords, no progressions. I tried to learn a bit from my piano and guitar classes in high school, but mostly remembered the order of steps to make a major or minor scale, like "whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half", and then dinked around from there. There was no brilliant flash of innate skill in it, only my confidence in pretending I could write a melody.

"Caleb"'s bassline is chromatic. That means there is no scale as we think of it, only half-steps, you simply play any of the black and white keys on a keyboard as you think they sound cool. This is how I'd figure out any random melody on Various Murky Basements. Play random keys and see what happens. It sounds like slightly odd music when you do it like that, but surprise, it works.

Your anxiety about a thing is the only thing keeping you from doing it. Your lack of knowledge is not a barrier, because ideas and inexperience can be the most charming thing ever.

Two different instruments can do two different things at once

An arranging tip: two instruments can play different things and sound great together. I wasn't terribly confident in my ability to do so back then, so all of the melodic instruments in my songs would work as a single voice. One of the things that makes a song sound varied, though, is that the melodies counter each other in interesting ways. You have a lead doing a complex melody, and a pad doing a simple melody to fill space. Your bassline supports a solo. Your higher melodies support a complex bassline.

So long as they don't clash, contrasting elements in a piece, music or otherwise, are what gives us as pattern-seeking monkeys emotional release. Comedy works through tonal juxtaposition. Music is satisfying because one line explores the simple confines of another. Quiet becomes loud. Without contrast, life is boring.

Vary it up, even just a bit

My old songs are repetitive. There's just no way around that. I got lazy and figured I could loop one thing four times and have a whole verse out of it. Technically true, but not the greatest way to fill out three minutes, especially when you're trying to think in terms of "riffs" a la a real guitar performance.

I've since realized that you can get very far by doing said four loops, but simply changing up the last quarter note or so, or replacing the last bar in a four-bar phrase with a fill of some kind, or duplicating and morphing a one-bar loop into a two-bar phrase that then gets looped itself. Anything to reduce the stiff repetition of one measure of song looped however many times. It's just as true in other mediums—other people will notice you using the mirror tool in a drawing, no matter how much time you think you're saving doing it.

A little bit of intelligently-arranged work can go a long way in reducing the feeling that you just lazily slapped something together. Work smarter, not harder.

Your favorite bits are the ones no one will ever notice

On Various Murky Basements, and in everything I've ever made past that, all the things I think about are things no one else will ever notice. In the bridge of "Mind Left for Seattle", the bass comes back in on the and of 2, after the smack of the snare. I think that's neat. I like the trippiness of the hi-hats on "Floaroma", later "Ventolin" on In Free Fall, switching ears every sixteenth note. "Lauren", named for a friend who I wasn't in love with but found it funny to name a song after a girl in a loveless context, is "You're a Wizard Harry" buried under an ocean of Audacity plugin reverb, like I'd spend so much time crafting as a teenager because I was after weird sounds and not songs. Only I can hear the words still.

Put in the bits that only you would like, intentionally. They keep you interested and give you good feelings separate from the ways everyone else is going to look at the thing you're making.

Your favorite bits will get done in a weekend

Speaking of "Floaroma", it was the easiest song I'd ever written. It was in the can in the same weekend as I started it. Songwriting is as simple as writing a bit, writing a contrasting bit or two, and putting it together. Is it going to be a good song? I can't say, likely not. But it'll be a functional song. "Floaroma" was a functional song, and I do love the grindy synth texture on it a la the Turbosynth patches that Nine Inch Nails would wallpaper Broken and The Downward Spiral with.

Go with it when it's easy. That's a good sign. That means you're onto something very innocent and true and it'll likely stick with you for the rest of time as a result.

Capture that naivete in a bottle

Before a certain age, you're hungry and fixated on doing something. How you look isn't a concern. Lack of skills and resources is no obstacle. How it comes out is exciting and special. Despite knowing a lot better, the aesthetics of Various Murky Basements still ring very very true to what I like in music, especially my own, to this day.

While I'd never tell you to half-ass something because you once had lower standards than you do now, maybe it's best to make something you would've found too cool for school as a younger version of yourself sometimes. Your roots never go away. What you like at 14, you probably still like now. I know I do, and I know how excited that person would be knowing you're as talented as you are now. Even more so, sometimes it's nice to shut your brain off and make something viscerally pleasing, same as you did as a kid. Writing drunk and making it a thing regardless of age never stops being useful.

Feed the soul of your younger self. You're trying to tell yourself something, and you might be surprised at how true it feels, even if you think you've grown past it.

Do the exact same thing over again

I'm naturally driven towards doing something new every time. I think there's a part of me that's trained to feel like repeating myself is a failure. Thing is, repeating yourself is actually a sign of refinement and mastery, doubly so if you never actually managed it the first time.

In Free Fall was meant to be the first half of two releases, the old aphrodisiac recordings as it and then a new batch of new, much better songs as Isolated Together. As I detailed long ago in the "How a Fusion Drive Ate Our Gopher" post on Letters, I lost that second batch of songs, uncompressed renders and all, leaving In Free Fall to look like a weak attempt at reworking a few existing songs, as was told to me by family back when I put it out. Kind of a sad thing.

Since then, though, I've realized that not only was In Free Fall a nice way to examine the work I'd already done and make it better, sharper, more powerful, but even though the Isolated Together tracks were lost, I could still redo them and continue to make them better. What felt like my best work at 19 is certainly not my best work at 26, almost 27. I could do those ideas even more justice now, hard drive crash or not.

Don't be particular and precious about what you make. The stuff you finish and redo is a good chance to see how much better you've gotten. The stuff you lose along the way is a good chance to make it even better, or at least more efficient, than it would've been had you been able to finish it.

Actually putting it out there is the most exciting part of the process

The stories of the weeks after Various Murky Basements are honestly more special to me than the months leading up to it. I would burn the CD-Rs at home, print out the album artwork on cardstock in the photography room at the high school, and use the guillotine slicer to cut it to jewel case size. I got to listen to the fruits of my hard work (including the "man in a wolf costume" interlude, yes) during end-of-the-year journalism class with all my friends, some of whom walked out asking for copies of those CD-Rs I made. I submitted the EP to Internet music blogs and to MusicBrainz and to RouteNote, my music distributor to this day, to get it out on streaming. It was the first time I'd ever finished anything of my own and wanted to show people it.

Compare that to the previous year of sadness, self-doubt racking me for the first time, with friends I'd counted on for emotional support who were more interested in pitting me against the world and against my other friends, and it was a no brainer which part was the more lovely. Even without all that, though, the putting it out there is the other side of the hill. You see what it takes to get it in front of people, creativity turning into marketing. It suddenly puts what you've made in a whole new light. You take the criticism, but perhaps realize the warmth of other people's interest and enjoyment of your work. It goes from being a thing in your head to a thing out in the world, and no matter how it turns out, that's special.

Don't be afraid of life after release. Charge into it. Release as soon as people can see it. Make it real and realize what confidence that can give you, in case you never expected you'd ever reach the point of having finished anything, or finished anything that good.

What you make in the present will be your window into the past

I couldn't imagine 26 when I was 16 and finishing up Various Murky Basements. It's not that I thought I'd be dead or anything, but I didn't know where I'd be or what I'd be up to then. My time was taken up with a lot of music and a lot of awful people I considered friends. The thing Somnolescent would become, I couldn't imagine. I didn't know Wales was a thing yet, or Minnesota. They were just place names I heard in passing. Ontario, briefly.

The thing about time is that it only ever moves in one direction. You spend so much time working on a thing that you don't have the perspective to look over your head and imagine what it'll look like ten years after it's done. When that time comes, it'll be a little jar of infinitely sustained fireflies that will bring you back to fussing over little details and crafting the best thing you possibly could have with your money, skills, and connections. This happens in the present tense as well; no matter how old you are, what you're working on today will be your window back into where you were in 2026 come 2036, 2046, and beyond.

What you make now will be your way into appreciating your younger self soon enough, and that's wonderful and special. Appreciate it and nurture it for all its faults and for all you can't do yet. Given enough distance, it'll be adorable, and I'm cocky enough to say that's regardless of age.

Tagged under: aphrodisiac musicmaking