#i ended up with a bunch of leftover versions for some of the lyrics that i ended up not using

[rushinintolove]

[sun-undone]

New canon obx details from the Pogue Life Scrapbook Hardcover (part 2)

(part 1)

Kiara

During Kie's Kook Year, she performed at a "Rock the OBX" festival, but when she started singing a lyrically modified version of "Get Up Stand Up" that called out the kooks, she got booed offstage and her mom was PISSED. Sarah mentions that Rose had called Kie a bad influence and that she didn't want her around Tannyhill anymore, but Sarah was just super proud to have Kie as a friend in that moment

Kie's summer playlist (i see that Rudy namedrop, go ahead and break that fourth wall with the jiara agenda):

The rest of the pogues' summer playlist, plus a really cute pic of Maddie Bailey cause let's be honest that is all her (and more breaking the fourth wall with the inclusion of Hot Stuff?? v cute):

MORE FIC MATERIAL: During her Kook Year, Kie got really into witchcraft with Sarah, and they both tried to cast spells to make their crushes like them back.....Jarah B and Jiara hello???? They also apparently made a voodoo doll of some bitch from their algebra class and snuck into the cemetery to have a seance for Kie's dead pet hermit crab, Kingston. This is literal gold idc what anyone says

Kie assigns astrological signs to each of the pogues!!! Sarah is a Sagittarius, John B is a Leo, Kie is an Aquarius, Pope is a Virgo, and JJ is an Aries (astrology bitches how are we feeling about these placements) Also unclear whether these are supposed to line up with their birthdays

Anna dropped out of college to start the Wreck with Mike

One time, the pogues showed up to the Wreck high out of their minds after a crazy Saturday night and ended up eating every leftover in the kitchen

When Kie was helping out in the kitchen one day, she accidentally dumped a bowl of pimento cheese into a batch of shrimp and grits. Not wanting to piss off her dad, she just served the shrimp and grits as is, and a bunch of customers started complimenting the "spicy shrimp and grits". After coming clean about what had happened, Mike added it to the menu. (super important jiara note: according to 1x03, JJ's order at the Wreck is beer and shrimp and grits. just saying.)

Apparently Midsummers took place on Friday, July 19th, 2019 and this timeline makes me want to claw out my frontal lobe

Entries from Kie's diary documenting the beginning of her Kook Year (why is the first week of school for the Kook Academy in October?? does that actually happen in rich schools or did Kie maybe not transfer immediately??? weird weird idk):

Pope

Denmark Tanny seems to have been a lot like Pope, which is a cool detail. He worked as a cook on the Royal Merchant and wrote in his diary about keeping a level, logical head despite his shipmates getting drunk and generally being wild

The Pogues' top 3 favorite movies and snacks:

Kie - The Outsiders, Heathers, and The Big Lebowski; Buncha Crunch, chili lime churros, and spiked agua fresca Pope - Jaws, The Goonies, and Weird Science; pizza, nachos, and veggies and dip (which Kie of all people makes fun of him for) John B - Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Stand By Me; hot dogs, Twinkies, and leftovers from the Wreck Sarah - The Breakfast Club, Romancing the Stone, and Dirty Dancing; Skinnypop, vodka soda hidden in a Nalgene bottle, and mint chocolate chip ice cream (why sarah why) JJ - C.H.U.D., They Live, and Up in Smoke; weed brownies, weed gummies, and beer

Heyward capitalized on the kooks' panic surrounding Hurricane Agatha and raised his delivery prices before the storm hit. Some things that the kooks considered "essential" in light of a hurricane were 10 bags of Skinnypop (assorted mix ONLY), 3 Bloody Mary mixes, 10 bottles of cocktail sauce, and 4 tins of Fancy Feast Gourmet cat food (organic ONLY)

Heyward always has a booth at the OBX Boardwalk Summer Festival, and during the summer when Kie and Sarah were mortal enemies, he happened to have a booth next to the Wreck's. When Sarah went to order something, Kie refused to serve her, saying that "traitors go hungry". Pope then told Sarah to spend her money at Heyward's instead, which pissed Kie off and made her tell the pogues that they were forbidden to talk to Sarah

While writing a physics paper about bottle rockets, Pope and the rest of the pogues set some off outside of Heywards and broke 3 windows

Pope has written practice college admission essays about the time he ran out of his scholarship interview to help his friends. I love this quote from one of the drafts: "Opportunities come and go, but there are precious few chances to be there for your friends when it really matters. In the end, I decided to be there for them." 🥹🥹

When Heyward was catering the Kildare County Sheriff's Department Annual Holiday Party, Pope witnessed Shoupe, very drunk on Moscow mules, slamming down oysters and singing a karaoke cover of "I Fought the Law"

When Heyward was catering the Vanderhorst Homeowners Association Annual Autumn Gala, a bunch of the kooks were super rude to Pope and Heyward and not tipping them, so Heyward left bags of empty shellfish and fish bones in their garbage cans, making the whole street reek for days

How each of the Pogues (minus John B apparently) would spend their shares of the money:

Pope: a submarine to research aquatic life, a new video camera, a mansion, a garage full of vintage cars, a vacation for his parents, a tutor to teach him Gullah, founding the Denmark and Cecilia Tanny Scholarship Foundation, and restoring the Freedman's Assembly Church

Kie: recording a double album in her mansion with a built-in studio, emancipation from her parents, a private chef, donating to a bunch of environmental charities to try to save every endangered species, and buying Kildare Island and kicking out the residents so the animals can take over again

Sarah: a wardrobe makeover for herself and John B, buying Tannyhill to kick out her family and give the keys to Pope, an international trip with Wheezie, and taking a private trip to space with the pogues

JJ: The Surf Trip (he says it's with all the pogues not just Kie, but i can absolutely ignore that), a surfboard for every day of the week, a new dirt bike, a marble statue of himself, an upgraded version of Topper's Malibu, a pet monkey, matching pogue jet skis, a $24K blunt, a private island, and private security to knock out any kooks that get too close to him

Pope likes collecting antique electronics because trying to repair them allows him to see the engineering on the inside. Aside from the retro 90's camcorder (RIP), he's collected a vintage iPod, a Gameboy (Tetris is his favorite game), and a Polaroid camera. He found the Gameboy when Kie dragged him to a thrift store on the mainland a few summers back

Sarah

Pre-canon times when Rafe has been a piece of shit: he stole money from Ward and blamed it on Sarah, he killed a spider for Sarah but then left the dead carcass on her pillow, he ripped apart Sarah's dollhouse and decapitated the dolls, during a game of hide-and-seek, he locked Sarah in the cellar for 3 hours and told Rose that she had ran away, he hid his weed in Wheezie's room, AND he creeped on Kie (very vague very ew) during sleepovers

Ward was going to give Sarah his old car, but Rafe went for a joyride with Kelce and totaled it, so Ward used the insurance payout to lease Sarah a brand new car instead

Wheezie DEFINITELY had a crush on Topper. Sarah recounts a time when Wheezie had hidden in her car to try to sneak into a movie night. When Sarah caught her, she let her stick around for the date, and she sat between Sarah and Topper, blushing the whole time (ew girl raise your standards)

Ward didn't let Sarah host parties at Tannyhill, but her kook friends often let her host at their houses when their parents were on vacation. Sarah Cameron parties quickly became legendary on Figure 8

Sarah volunteered at the Kildare Humane Society, and German shepard-golden retriever mixes are her favorite breed (isn't that what Milo is?? more breaking the fourth wall i see you). She's also volunteered at the Shady Acres Nursing Home, the Kildare County Youth Arts Center, and the South Creek Food Pantry

Sarah mentions how Scarlett's "sleepovers" were code for parties, and that they were always wild (i'm only mentioning this because i really wanna see Scarlett in season 3 if we're getting Kook Academy stuff)

JJ worked as a caddy at the golf club 2 summers before the show starts, and since management were dicks to him, he and John B snuck onto the course and drew dicks in the sand traps

Topper is apparently very obsessive about working out

Sarah and Kie made a friendship bracelet together (i have no other details besides that, trust me i wish i did)

There's more confirmation that Kie has a hidden dolphin tattoo, but no hints as to where it is

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 03/04/2021 (Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO”, Mimi Webb, Russ Millions & Tion Wayne)

So, we have a #1 debut, and that’s pretty much the only story here in the UK Top 75 as we get a filler week before Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Tjay run in and cause havoc. As for now, “Wellerman” is replaced at the top by Lil Nas X’s controversial “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)”, spending its first week at #1 after making pretty sudden gains assisted by the video and alternate versions – the mid-week projection had this at #15. Elsewhere, we just see the fall-out from Bieber. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

It’s a quiet week – only seven new entries, and none from Rod Wave, 24kGoldn or AJR as I had predicted. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some stuff to talk about within the chart, or particularly off of the chart, as we have a fair few drop-outs switching their places with returning entries. In particular, we have Justin Bieber’s “As I Am” featuring Khalid being swapped out for “Anyone” at #25, as well as drop-outs for “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence – slightly premature, I’d think – and all of Lana Del Rey’s songs from last week. We also “Anxious” by AJ Tracey, “Heat” by Paul Woodford and Amber Mark and “Toxic” by Digga D exit the chart, but the only real notable loss was “34+35” by Ariana Grande ending its 21-week run on the chart. Returning to the Top 75 in its place – which I cover – we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers of course at #73, as well as “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #72, “You’ve Done Enough” by Gorgon City and DRAMA at #70 (really hope this one becomes a hit) and “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew at #66. In terms of climbers and fallers, we do have some notable gains and losses. For songs travelling down the chart, we have “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G tanking a sharp drop in its third week to #18, “Streets” by Doja Cat shaking off the video gains at #22, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo continuing to collapse at #27, another sharp drop for HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” down to #34 probably due to ACR, which was probably the fate for “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #46. The same probably can’t be said for Drake’s losses, as “What’s Next” is at #40, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #41 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby stalls at #55. We also see falls for “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #50, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #51, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix on its way out at #57, “Headshot” by Lil Tjay featuring Polo G and Fivio Foreign down to #61 off the debut (although it’ll rebound thanks to the album as soon as the next week rolls around), “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #62, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake at #63 and “Day in the Life” by Central Cee at #69. Where it gets interesting are our gains, such as outside the top 40 with “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer which could very well get even higher next week thanks to the album. We also have “Track Star” by Mooski at #53 off of the debut and a couple of tracks entering the top 40 for the first time, those being “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon at #39 and Majestic’s remix of “Rasputin” by Boney M. at #38. Elsewhere in the top 40, we have “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #13 and two songs marking their first week in the top 10, those being “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #10, a song continuing to sour on me, and “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S, an EDM song at #8 that I initially mocked for its soulless repackaging but has honestly got me pretty hooked since. I’m excited to see how this one does. For now, however, let’s get on with our new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#64 – “Cloud 9” – Beach Bunny

Produced by Joe Reinhart

Beach Bunny is a power pop band who last year released their album Honeymoon on Mom+Pop and it’s basically a modern r/indieheads staple in that it’s an accessible, airy pop-rock record fronted by a woman. It’s not anything unique, really, or different if you look further into it but that’s fine because there’s a lot of vaguely “indie” or music snob releases pushed out every year that miss the charts entirely. It’s a different story, however, when a year later, it gets viral on TikTok and streams its way onto the chart. In that case, we have “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny, a pretty simple but sweet love song about a guy who just makes her feel a lot better about herself in times where she can’t pick herself up from the rut she’s in. Again, it’s a simple track but enhanced by the wonderful and unique vocal performance from front-woman Lili Trifilo and some pretty great production making sure no guitar lick is missed in this mix, especially in that chorus which is such an ethereal blend of the electric guitar dubs. I would argue that this actually should end at that second chorus even if it ends feeling abrupt as the transition to the final chorus feels a lot less cathartic than it does awkward, especially if the bridge is going to be a simplistic, quirky instrumental meander that doesn’t go far enough to be a guitar solo and hence feels kind of like a worthless addition. As is, this is a pretty great song still, just not the most fully realised once it loses that initial tight surf groove, though I’ll let it pass if we’re going to get rock this good on the charts again. I know this won’t really get more traction for Beach Bunny – or power pop for that matter – but more of this, please.

#52 – “You All Over Me” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) (Remix) (feat. DaBaby) (Part 2) (Radio Edit) – Taylor Swift featuring Maren Morris

Produced by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner

Sadly, this does not feature DaBaby and is not the remix, radio edit or sequel to any previously released song. Jokes aside, I guess brackets are the next big comeback for pop music, which goes hand-in-hands with remixes and re-releases, hence why Taylor Swift is dusting off this leaked Fearless-era cut for a new recording with country singer Maren Morris, who you probably know from her contributions to Zedd’s “The Middle”. Now whilst Swift is a great songwriter, I do often find myself frustrated by how she treads common ground all too frequently without establishing much different with how a song is structured or how it emotionally connects. This is true not just lyrically but especially sonically as of recent, as despite being written in 2008, it has too much in common with the less interesting cuts off of folklore for me to really care that much. That’s especially if Taylor’s going to undercut the clean acoustic guitars with flourishes of harmonica and crow sound effects, showing some genuine intrigue here before refusing to let any of that develop past a couple stray melodies or notes further back in the mix. I’m trying really hard to be compelled by these re-recordings and re-releases of her back catalogue as I do consider myself a fan, but it’s tough to pay attention when any new compositions we get sound like folklore leftovers with Maren Morris only put to use as decoration, much like HAIM on “no body, no crime” – and we already got an album full of folklore leftovers. I’m not a fan of this, sorry – I can see the appeal, and I do think this has enough of a country tinge to it to make it at least somewhat interesting – but this goes in one ear and immediately out of the other.

#48 – “Tonight” – Ghost Killer Track featuring OBOY and D-Block Europe

Produced by Ghost Killer Track and Kenzy

Screw the formalities and screw the analysis because D-Block Europe are back to add another D-Block to their EU collection – and since they’re Londoners, their only – and that’s Paris, and contrary to the British nature, we’ve let French rap chart in the top 50 out of the fact that they collaborated with two of the most comical rappers in British history. They’ve also linked up with producer Ghost Killer Track, also from France, as this is ostensibly his song even if he intends not to prove himself with this dull piano-based beat and oddly-mastered bass and percussion, which are really just DBE staples. Unfortunately, past the initial comedy of that first line in the chorus, neither Young Adz or Dirtbike LB deliver any stupid lyrics or funny inflections, instead just resorting to being as boring as they can in their constant flexing as possible. I guess the French guy here, OBOY, commands a higher energy in his verse if only through his comical “no, no, no” ad-libs, but he’s the only French speaker in an otherwise basic British trap song that I just cannot see the appeal in when we’ve had song after song from these guys for three years now. This won’t be the last we see of cookie-cutter UK rap this week though so brace yourselves for that.

#47 – “Last Time” – Becky Hill

Produced by LOSTBOY

It’s almost as if the charts are trying to send me off to sleep as here we have Becky Hill, a singer hedging the line between a non-presence and mildly annoying, which is arguably more frustrating than downright infuriating as her slightly smokier voice does not sound bad, just lacking in texture in every way, especially if the multi-tracking is going to be this minimal on a royalty-free deep-house beat produced by Getty Images with a pretty worthless drop, a generic and simple melody of piano stabs for major chords, and a whole bunch of reverb on the vocal take... but it still ends up feeling dry as there’s nothing here to quench that thirst for a tighter, bass-heavy house banger or even a more ethereal, dreamy trance track, deciding to stick to a healthy medium of boring and utter garbage. Yes, that was a singular sentence. I’m not awake enough to form a cohesive sentence less than 40 words long, and this new Becky Hill track is just worsening that if anything. Speaking of...

#21 – “Body” – Russ Millions and Tion Wayne

Produced by Gotcha Bxtch

Who’s Russ Millions? He’s Russ. No, not that Russ. British Russ – or Russ Splash, stylised as Russ splash on Spotify and nowhere else. This confusingly-named fellow appeared on the charts a couple times and possibly most famously with “Keisha & Becky”, a song also featuring Tion Wayne that is referenced on this very track. Sigh, I usually like Tion Wayne but even he can’t be bothered to delivery his usual brand of suave charm or sinister menace, instead opting for a more growling but ultimately completely monotone cadence that doesn’t flatter him or Russ, who one of my friends described as sounding like one of the aliens from Toy Story. This is a pretty by-the-numbers drill beat too, and it’s pretty safe to say that neither Russ or Tion Wayne here are going to bother with wordplay, even when they start pretty smoothly trading bars and Tion Wayne goes for a more unique chopper flow in the second verse. This is just not of any note. Once again, speaking of...

#17 – “Good Without” – Mimi Webb                        

Produced by Freedo

I assumed Mimi Webb debuted this high because of a talent show she won or something because I’d never heard her name but instead, she just happened to have a major label deal before her unreleased song just happened to go viral on TikTok and just happened to be supported by one of the women who just happened to be the biggest creator on the platform. Yeah, and this song just happened to be garbage, suffering from every possible millennial pop trope and then some, from the mix dressed rather too overtly in reverb, the ugly guitar pluck, a generic indie-girl voice that you swear you’ve heard before in one of those dreadful piano covers of popular songs they use in adverts, as well as this ballad being undercut by badly-programmed trap percussion. I can tell this label is trying to create somewhat of an Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon from this and I for one am terrified of the Poundland knock-offs to come. Screw this.

#1 – “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

At least Lil Nas X will bring some passion into this chart week? Well, not really, as when I hear this I recall that Pitchfork review of his EP, a much-maligned critique that featured the ever-so pretentious questioning if Lil Nas X really enjoyed making and listening to music. It reminds me because I think I now fully get it – at least when Lil Nas X was making slap-dash pop rock with Travis Barker or meme-worthy country rap with Billy Ray Cyrus for less than two minutes apiece, there was something invigorating in the execution or at least in concept. That 7 EP is still not a bad debut at all, but this new single “MONTERO”, a long-anticipated record that went from constantly-teased demo to Super Bowl commercial to Satanic-panicked videos of Lil Nas giving Satan a lap-dance to own the conservatives, has the same remote dreariness to it as “HOLIDAY” did late last year. The acoustic, Latin-flavoured guitar loop reminds me of his much better track “Rodeo” from that aforementioned EP that used its energy for similarly lighthearted subject matter but with some genuine energy, a Cardi B feature and a lot less subtle moombahton creeping in. With that said, I can’t say Lil Nas X didn’t try, as his vocal performance, whilst largely insufferable and strained, gives some energy to an otherwise aggravatingly stunted beat, and makes it a lot more infectious than it has any right to be. Content-wise, the song is essentially about a full circle where Lil Nas X becomes increasingly desperate for a man who starts off lonely and in a bad place, and the irony is that Lil Nas gets more explicitly sexual and crazed due to a combination of the LA life-style surrounding him and the fact that he’s simply, for lack of a better term, “down bad”, despite the fact that this guy doesn’t seem particularly desirable. Lil Nas knows this, though, and acknowledges it in the pre-chorus where he outright says that this guy is living the cocaine-addled celebrity life, but not living it right without Mr. Bullriding and Boobies in his life. I’m happy about the video and the outrage it seems to cause not just within conservative spaces but also amongst the hip-hop community, particularly Joyner Lucas, and I’m pretty happy with how out and proud Lil Nas X is about his sexuality, even if it leads to lines like “Shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin’”. I’m just really not a fan of this song past its content, which could really be interesting but falls flat with this plucking production that wastes time in barely two minutes with humming interludes. It’s not bad at all, just not for me.

Conclusion

And that concludes our week, and wow, what a bad week this was for new arrivals. Admittedly, it’s a filler week so only “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” will probably last – or at least we can hope as even if I don’t like the song, I still have to give out an Honourable Mention to someone, and it may as well be Lil Nas X trying to put the effort in. Best of the Week easily goes to Beach Bunny for “Cloud 9”, far and away the only good song here, with Worst of the Week also going out pretty easily to Mimi Webb’s “Good Without”, which is the type of soulless, unmemorable garbage that makes pop music look uninspired, and as a person who writes about the charts constantly, it’s a misconception I don’t want proven or revisited. Dishonourable Mention is a toss-up but I guess I’ll give it to Russ Millions and Tion Wayne for that sprinkle of drill disappointment that is “Body”, and that’ll be it for this week. I predict some impact from Demi Lovato, Lil Tjay and especially Olivia Rodrigo next week, but for now, here’s our top 10:

Thank you for reading – sorry for the grouchiness on this one – and I’ll see you next week!

[dahniwitchoflight]

Hi Have Some Zelda

I need to talk about Wind Waker lore and I need to do it now, because I googled my idea and I didn’t find anyone else talking about the idea so I guess it needs to exist now

I don’t think it was the intention when the game was created that Zora turned into Rito, I think it became that due to wind wakers short development cycle and the fact they had to cut and smoosh together a bunch of stuff to release the game

I now it’s canon now, but in a different universe here is what could have been...

In canon, when Hyrule flooded, the Zora, an water dwelling race apparently couldn’t survive in slightly saltier water, so the deity that they worshiped in OoT times

Valoo....

Took pity on their plight and granted them wings, allowing the to survive in this water world. By flying above the water instead of in it. 

They also took with them the Pearl of the Goddess handed down through generations, the one belonging to Nayr- I mean, Din?

As well as the power of the Wate- I mean, Earth...Sage...

I have a few problems with this.

1) Why were the Zora worshiping a fire breathing sky Dragon and not Jabun, especially as Jabun exists in Wind Waker and IS the same Jabun as Jabu Jabu from OoT which the Zora there clearly worship?

2) Why was it easier to transform a fish into a bird instead of a freshwater fish into a saltwater fish?

3) I mean I know it’s never stated outright, but Zora are clearly associated with Nayru right? Not Din, Din was Goron, Farore was Korok. Nayru was Zora. 

4) A ZORA. As the EARTH SAGE. N...No!? Make whatever arguments you want for the bird, but a Zora was not the Earth Sage when this game was being pitched. 

Also, if the Rito and the Zora were meant to be of the same bloodline, why do the statues of the goddess Din, Farore and Nayru in Wind Waker have Feathered, Flowered and Finned ears respectively?

Din had a Rito for the Earth Sage

Farore had a Korok for the Wind Sage

Nayru had a Zora for the Water Sage

this is what I believe it was meant to be

But I’m not done yet

We still have the problem of “Why a Bird for the Earth sage?” When really it’s because the Rito are a Din sage and Din’s elements are Earth and Fire.

Now we get to the juicy bits

so If the Rito were an evolved species, under the blessing of their reptilian guardian, given wings to escape a drowning world AND they aren’t related to the Goron because Goron exist in WW (and they even were supposed to have their own cut Island with a steampipe hotspring aesthetic In WW so def nothing to do with Din’s Pearl or the Earth Sage)

Just who did they evolve from?

Judging by the judgy prejudice a lot of the Hylians seem to hold towards the Rito in WW, also something not explained by their Zora origins who were beloved by the royal family and its people and who had no history of betrayal like the Sheikah did once upon a time. 

their red hair, the tanner skin the males have, the connection to Din, the reptilian deity the fact that their lifestyle made them complete unsuited for an ocean world

I feel the Rito were originally intended to be the Transformed Gerudo people.

Because as of OoT, the Gerudo would be a people facing prejudice against what their King had become and right after OoT is where theyd be feeling that brunt the strongest

They did already have some birdlike traits, with their large eyes and long noses, and the red hair and yellow eyes is also seen in at least Rito females like Medli, not to mention Dragon Roost island is a hot volcanic place, so the people who live there need to at least be acclimated to higher temperatures, like those found in a desert. 

It’s not a perfect fit mind you, because obviously most of the Rito we see in game are Males, Gerudo didn’t have males besides Ganondorf, and the male Rito are actually more reminiscent of Sheikah, having red eyes and white hair

But you know who else isnt found in WW? The Sheikah.

You know how in order to continue their race the Gerudo’s were said to get Hylian boyfriends? You know what wasn’t happening after the events of OoT? Gerudo’s getting with Hylians as often, which means its more likely as time went on that the Gerudo preferred to seek out Sheikah, another race of humans who would understand at least what it meant for others to think of your kind as betrayers.

(not to mention that for any OoT Hylian, having a race be a mix of the Sheikah and Gerudo, they would undoubtably face more than some racial prejudice after the events of Ganondorf, Sheikah were already apparent betrayers, and Gerudo were outsiders.)

As for Valoo not existing in OoT times like Jabu and Deku

well, we never really see what the Gerudo’s snake deity looks like, it could have been a dragon, a BOTW type dragon even, long and eastern

that just became a winged western dragon just like how the gerudo became winged. 

So the story is basically after being rejected as Outsiders after the events of OoT, and Hyrule  being flooded, The Gerudo and their more than likely Sheikah families who were also outsiders/castaway families, prayed not upon Hylia, who had called forth the flood, but their own patron Reptile Deity Valoo and begged to be saved, Valoo with his powers gave all the Gerudo and their family a blessing of wings and they all became fully a new race of people, the Rito, neither Gerudo and Sheikah anymore, but a perfect blend of the two. 

Also, there was supposed to be a dungeon associated with Nayru’s Pearl, Jabun and the Greatfish isle, but it was cut due to time restraints. Link WAS supposed to be able to travel underneath the oceans surface in some way , at least using iron boots, maybe a rudimentary diving suit and able to jump back to the surface using warp points that look like fishermen’s hooks and the ocean was once at least a little transparent, but these ideas had to be scrapped as well

So the ocean had to change from being vibrant and full of life, to being dead and empty, it’s called devoid of living things and fish in the final, yet the Fishmen mapmakers exist and many people on many islands make their livings as Fishermen, reference that were perhaps missed when cuts were being made. We even see leftover caves in the background of sunken hyrule, still with collisions but no warps and references in the final cut still being made to how the Ice and Fire mini dungeons had cave entrances hidden somewhere in the sunken hyrule. 

Not to mention, the biggest hints of the Gerudo influence is in the Earth Dungeon itself, so reminiscent of both the Spirit and Shadow temple from OoT

and finally, it makes so much more sense for a Desert dwelling Gerudo to be an Earth sage instead of a Zora.

alright that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it, remember, I’m not talking about what canon ended up being, I’m talking about what could have been

Also did yall know that in the files of the game there’s an older version of the a crumbling Sage stone that has a different unique unused-in-the-series-so-far melody on it instead of the Earth God’s lyric? even though it pictures a harp?

And even using a time signature that Wind Waker never even uses

I wonder what It would have sounded like

Also because Harps are undoubtedly Water and Nayru, if Oracle of Ages is to be believed

I wonder what instrument Medli would have used instead? If the above was meant to be the Water God’s and Violin fits Makar and Kokiri so well as little leprechaun types

Well, the Gerudo had a penchant for Dancing, but that doesn’t really make a music of its own

It would make sense actually to go back to the title theme of the game, since the earth god’s lyric and the wind god’s aria seem to make up the two halves of the song, and try and see if a third instrument pops out

It does start off with a slow drum beat so maybe a gentle Drum?

Or heck, singing because it’s called a Lyric, which usually means words to sing, would be a nice throw back to another sweet red haired singing maiden

Maybe the dancing could incorporate a Tambourine type instrument too

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Cable Ties

Cable Ties, from Melbourne, formed in the mid-teens and has one self-titled and a clutch of singles and splits in its catalogue so far. A trio, the band is made up of guitarist/singer Jenny McKechnie, bassist Nick Brown and drummer Shauna Boyle. Band members are active advocates for women’s and LGBTQ rights. McKechnie co-founded Wet Lips, a Melbourne festival focused on inclusion of female, gay and non-binary musicians, and both she and Boyle volunteer for Girls Rock, an organization that promotes opportunity for women, trans and gender diverse musicians. Jennifer Kelly reviewed their second album recently for Dusted, observing that, “The easy thing would be to compare McKechnie’s vibrato-zinging vocals with those of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker or her verbal agility to Courtney Barnett, but the blunt force and agile violence of the music, brings to mind post-punk bands like the Wipers, Protomartyr and Eddy Current.” Shauna Boyle contributed this cooking-themed list.

Ten songs to listen to while cooking vegan mac and cheese on an iso-Saturday night

I was chatting to a group of my mates online and I posed the question, “what kind of list would you like to read about right now?” We’ve all been discussing the elaborate meals we’ve been cooking and the bizarre TV shows we’ve been bingeing on so this list feels like something everyone could get behind right now. This mac and cheese is famous in my house. These are some songs that I hope will help to evoke the feeling of one of my most cherished and comforting meals.

Orange Juice–“Rip It Up”

Put this song on first to get limbered up while you’re prepping your ingredients. This song never fails to prop up my mood – there’s something about the rubber-y bass line and Edwyn Collins’ earnest declaration of his favorite song (with a cute nod via the single note solo in Buzzcocks’ “Boredom”) that melts my heart every time.

Dave Edmunds–“Down Down Down”

I found this song on a playlist recently and it was a delightful treat surrounded by a bunch of familiar suggestions. Sometimes you just need a little upbeat dad-rock for your evening. There’s something about the weird key changes towards the end of the song that are so unexpected but intriguing.

RVG–“Christian Neurosurgeon”

The most recent single from fellow Melbournians and a band that Cable Ties have always been huge fans of. This has an elegant simplicity to it that has literally drilled itself into my brain. The sound of the drill over the track might have something to do with it?

Pylon–“Cool”

By now hopefully you should hopefully have some progress with your cheese and it’s starting to get fun. This song is matched with my excitement levels as you start to imagine the meal ahead. A few jogs on the spot aligned with the verse riff will help it along.

Ty Segall–“Everyone’s A Winner”

Needless to say we’re all winners but this song will make you believe it. You deserve it! You’ve worked hard for this meal and it’s gonna be yours! I love a bit of grit in my guitar tones generally so this version of the Hot Chocolate hit is so satisfying.

The The–“Uncertain Smile”

Did you ever feel like a song can really give you that helping hand that you might need every now and again (ironically given the lyrical content is pretty dark)? If you ever needed a song to dance to in your kitchen, one of whimsy and sway, this is here for you any time you need.

The B52’s–“52 Girls”

Well you need to remember that you gotta celebrate the people in your life who make these meals special. Who made you your first mac and cheese? Was it one of these 52 girls? This song is also special to Cable Ties as it was covered by our amazing friends Georgi and Kim who play in a band called Shrimpwitch. Go listen to them!

Jen Cloher–“Strong Woman”

Jen Cloher is an artist who has been a supporter of Cable Ties from very early on in our career – so much so that she took us along on tour with her in Europe. Singing this on stage with Jen will forever be one of my favorite memories and hearing this song always reminds me of the joy and pride I felt up there. Much like my cooking.

Billy Idol–“Dancing With Myself”

You can’t expect to make a meal like this and not hear just a little bit of cheese? But look, we all secretly love this song and to be honest you are on your own so no-one cares. There are NO guilty pleasures.

Sheer Mag–“Expect The Bayonet”

You did it! You should be proud of yourself and your amazing skills. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise (or decides to steal your leftovers out of the fridge) then you know to steer clear. This song will always help me to turn off the negative talk and leave me with a feeling of resilience, tenacity and strength.

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- Steal this Album!

I’ve delayed long enough. Too long, actually. I gotta start pumping through music posts if I want to gover everything I want to cover, and even then, I still may not make it. This is mostly on account of committing to a bunch of things at the start of the year, and not realising my completely fake deadline was a bit realer than I would have thought, right near the end of it. So maybe if you’re someone who’s here for that specifically (which I think statistically is…nobody?), then you might be in luck- more half-formed music thoughts inbound!

Anyway let’s talk about System of a Down.

The One Thing on the To Do list where I was like…yeah, I feel like talking about that now, System are kind of a classic at this point as far as 00s alternative metal (I refuse to refer to them as nu-metal) goes, though I can’t think of any that got as big as they did, nor any that got as outwardly political as they did. Like, there was Rage Against the Machine, but by the turn of the millennium, they weren’t exactly at their peak.

The obvious choice would be to talk about Toxicity, but who the fuck goes for the obvious choice? I’m going to talk about Toxicity 2 instead. Er, Steal This Album!.

(I’m not going to keep putting the exclamation point in, because Word will yell at me for it!)

Toxicity is pretty unquestionably System’s biggest album, what with it going triple Platinum in the USA and Australia (and double in Canada and the UK (and single in New Zealand and Italy)) and having massive smash hits such as the title track, Aerials, and, oh, fucking Chop Suey on there. Even despite (or even possibly as a result of) releasing exactly a week before 9-11, an event that led to Chop Suey getting pulled from a lot of stations and making System’s aggressive politics unpopular in America’s horrific cultural zeitgeist, this album was undeniably massive.

And so it should be no surprise that, when a bunch of unfinished “leftover” tracks leaked the year following under the name Toxicity II, people were pretty excited about it. Shit spread everywhere fast- at least, as fast as things could spread in the age of Napster and Limewire. The band themselves were like, well, sure, whatever, would like to actually finish that album, though- and so Toxicity II became Steal This Album.

The image above is the official album art, but it’s a bit of a cheeky render done for the internet- the actual disc itself is designed that way, to look like a stolen/pirated bootleg- but there, um. Is no cover. It’s a clear plastic case. There are special edition versions of the CD with sharpied art by the members of the band, but those are…actually a lot less rare than I thought they were, fuck, maybe I should grab one of those. Serj or Shavo, if I had to choose.

Anyway lets listen to some fucking music.

Steal This Album opens with Chic ‘N’ Stu, a track that somehow manages to be an obscure (to an Aussie Gen-Z, at least) basketball reference, a critique of American consumerism, and an banger of a track despite also having what sounds like a shopping list in the lyrics. I’m not sure I could pick a better opening song from any System album- not to keep bringing up Toxicity (it’s inevitable!) but while Prison Song very blatantly introduces their sound and political stylings, it doesn’t also expose you to just how goddamn silly these songs can get at times- not to mention the quiet section in the bridge, where Serj actually gets to flex his more subtle vocal muscles for a bit.

As a fun aside, Chick ‘N’ Stu might be the first System of a Down song I ever actually heard. When I was younger (say, late 00s) I spent a fair bit of time on Newgrounds, but very specifically watching Mario flash parodies. And somebody used this song in one of them (mostly for the PIZZA PIZZA PIE bit), and it stuck in the back of my mind for years afterwards. The only reason I don’t know whether it was first or not is because I’m also fairly sure someone (maybe the same person) used Chop Suey in one of those too. I’m sure if I really tried I could find that animation…but I’m not sure how much cringe I want to expose myself to in the process.

Moving on to the album’s first single, Innervision. Actually, it’s the only single, despite not being the one song on the album with a music video (it’s because it was a promo single). It definitely fits as a single- I do think it’s one of the better songs on here. A lot of really interesting guitarwork, with Daron’s signature chugging style working its magic, and the two getting some proper vocal harmonics going for much of the track. It also manages to have a bit of a groove to it, something a lot of System tracks don’t usually go for. I do kind of wish the drums were doing a bit more- there’s this particular style John Dolamayan ends up playing a lot, that I don’t know how to describe, but it’s something I associate a lot with some of the band’s works. Like, it sounds like the drums from Chop Suey, but playing a bit of a different rhythm, if you get me. Anyway, despite that little snag, it’s a good track, would recommend.

We next hit Bubbles, a short little uptempo ditty with guest vocalist Arto Tunçboyacıyan contributing for the third time (he’s on Aerials and…Science, apparently), though if you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss it. Honestly, if you’re not paying attention, you might miss this whole track- it’s just shy of two minutes, after all, and it’s not quite as memorable as the songs surrounding it. But it’s a ride for those two minutes, so sure, thumbs up.

Ah, Boom!. Probably System’s least subtle track*, made much more obvious when the music video is literally filmed at a protest (with footage of several others) and with quotes from a bunch of people there (including some helping with the lyrics!). Honestly, it’s a pretty fun video! And I think the song still manages to hold up without it. It’s a bit unfortunate to have the song’s topic (that is to say, uh let’s not go to Iraq for war! Please!) be still relevant (if not more so) today, but that does make the utter righteous fury of the track ring even truer. There are a few times Serj goes for the spoken-word delivery, although this is more of a rant, and frankly I’m all here for it.

(god, I forgot about the animated bit, what the fuck)

*as a more general note, System tracks tend to flip between metaphor and subtlety versus blatant “lmao fuck this” on a song-by-song basis, so an unsubtle political rant isn’t exactly out of character. with that in mind, Boom! still stands out as really blatant for obvious reasons.

Basically, it sucks that the track is still basically completely true and necessary, but that does mean you can play Boom at anti-war protests still, so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not.

There’s a few songs on this album I definitely forgot about, and Nuguns was one of them for sure. It’s an Album Track, babyyyyy. This one does have a solo by a very unique sounding instrument- an oud, apparently, the plucky, folky tones of which contrast really well against the angry instruments it’s backed by.

A.D.D. (American Dream Denial )(that’s not what that stands for) is a song I mostly remember for the prechorus and chorus vocals- because, uh, they’re really sicknasty. They’re also really fucking hard to sing along to, because it’s basically a rhythmic, constant flow with no actual break before the tempo shift into the much more rapid chorus. Many times listening to this in the car I definitely risked a bit of danger trying to hold my breath long enough to pull it off, so fun tip, don’t do that. Listening to the song again with fresher ears, yeah, still sicknasty, fuck, noticed the drum thing again. Moving on.

Track 7 (oh there are like 16 on this album btw) is Mr. Jack, and relistening to this song reminded me of one notable fact- I haven’t listened to this album in a while, and I am significantly more radicalised than I was then. The song is about police brutality, and while a younger me thought screaming “Fuck you, pig” four times to end your song was A Bit Much, the me of today gets it. Hard not to, in Current Year. Said track is fairly low and grim for most of it, but with this appropriately menacing vibe as it trudges steadily towards completion. There is then, of course, the rapid buildup of the bridge, that opens in literal whispers before very suddenly transitioning to the howling finale, which is probably one of the sickest moments on the whole album. I mean, I don’t know if I can recommend this track to anyone who isn’t thoroughly based, but if that’s you, then you know what to look out for.

Next is I-E-A-I-A-I-O, and in case Boom and Mr. Jack were too subtle, then here’s a song where you can’t understand half the lyrics and the bridge is literally a code. Possibly. It’s speculation. I kind of wish the chorus had a bit more going on, because said incomprehensible gibberish (actually a mix of tongue-twisters and…Night Rider references?) is impressive and neat, and the bridge is delightfully deranged. By contrast, the chorus is big, swelling, and notably more sing-along-able, but it’s just a bit less interesting instrumentally and vocally than the rest. A shame, but still one of my preferred ones.

Track 9, 36. Named such as it’s the 36th song in album order (…wow those first albums were really long too, huh?), and also only 36 measures long. And 46 seconds, god damnit guys, you could have sped this up. It’s short, it’s silly, but also wouldn’t go for this outside of the album probably.

Pictures would be notable exclusively for that little “ba-ba-ba-bahhhh!”, along with Serj singing the word real like it’s being censored. That’s, kind of the only reason this one stands out, actually. It’s another mix of silly and serious that you’re probably used to at this point if you’re listening along, so it again ain’t much to talk on.

Highway Song has, despite still having many of System’s trappings, a much more chilled, in some ways mysterious vibe running through it- chords left to hang in the air for a bit, Serj’s vocals sounding confused and a little tortured. It somehow manages to come out of left field and fit completely at the same time, not to mention the…okay, it’s not a harpsichord, but I don’t know what else to call that instrument popping in at the end of the first solo. There is definitely a piano behind the bridge, though, and it’s really subtle and really good. Honestly, so is the solo, so is everything else, I think this is the once-per-album-review song I forgot about and really like now.

F**k The System is the next track, and that censorship is not mine. I’ve always felt the delivery on this track was kind of making fun of the person who would read a title like that and go like damn that song must be intense, because it’s really fucking funny. Like, sure, the chorus goes fuck the system! a bunch of times, but the verses are downright cartoonish in places. It’s probably for the best that this song is relatively short, because it could very easily get old- it doesn’t really develop much beyond its Bit, with the bridge having the twist of saying that you need to fuck the system (and like, a cowbell?), but when you have a song that doesn’t break 2:30ish, you can kinda just run with the one idea you do have.

So Ego Brain has a theremin on it. This most accurately compares to Aerials in sound, with this very Big Thoughts, eerie sort of verses (though Ego Brain honestly sounds a bit more folky) building up to this big, harmonic chorus. Honestly, while the prechorus is kind of whatever, the chorus on this track is really good- the bendy riff works really well with the meter and it gives this whole lurch to it that I enjoy.

Track 14 is Thetawaves and it feels a bit weird in the middle here, since it’s a much more standard-sounding track in the middle of a more experimental second half. I remember really liking this, but I honestly couldn’t tell you why? I think it’s something to do with the bridge- the section where it all just cuts out into this very staccato plucking (with a triangle for some reason) is really cute? I dunno. I do like the way it just ends mid-sentence, though it’s so suddenly that it might genuinely be a mistake that got left in, so.

Roulette gets us back to more of the weird stuff, except in this case, weird for System of a Down is actually just a very normal song. The lyrics are literal, the instrumentation is acoustic guitar on strings, the vocals are calm. It’s pretty emotional- it turns out you get a lot out of switching “I know” to “I don’t know” between lines in the chorus- and the solo- because even though it’s an acoustic track you still gotta have a solo- is this very wistful thing. Honestly, my only gripe with this song is how nasally Daron is singing, because I have no idea why he’s doing that. Like, I don’t think he does that in any other song, System or not? Ah well, it’s a Choice, might work better for other listeners.

Finally, we reach Streamline, the last song. It’s kind of between the last song and the rest of them in terms of lyrical complexity, but it’s a similarly simple emotional track- just with a mix of that acoustic instrumentation and the rumbling metallics. Honestly, this song would probably sound really weird were it not for Roulette before it- like that song is very deliberately a shock to the system (heh), especially if the cutoff is intentional, dragging you into this surprisingly personal mood, and Streamline feels like that but with ideas and elements from a whole bunch of tracks dragged in. despite not having much emotional or lyrical connection to the album, it does genuinely feel like a culmination- especially with how massive the final moments feel.

Also, it’s always fun when you have something like this- an album that ends on a literal goodbye.

Thus, Steal This Album concludes. It’s kind of interesting, because even though it wasn’t really originally intended to be an album (I think?), it does flow very well as one- and I’m not going to discount one of a band this big’s very few actual albums on the basis that it may not have been quite as intentional. Steal This Album is something I’ve always felt was overlooked a little bit- Hypnotize and Mesmerize were obviouisly an intended double album, and tonally/sonically the self-titled lines up with Toxicity, which leaves STA somewhat on its lonesome. It’s kind of stuck halfway between them, too- a bit of the experimentality of the later era, a bit of the sound and theming of the earlier, but with enough of everything System to be absolutely worth the listen regardless.

It’s the only album not to have a song in the Spotify top listened to, also. Come on, that’s just mean. I mean I love Toxicity, and I love the songs on it, but is ATWA really that much better than the best Steal This Album has to offer? Which statistically, is, I-E-A-I-A-I-O, apparently, okay, sure, whatever. Go listen to this album if you haven’t already- though these days, with the power of the internet, you at least won’t need to steal it to do so.

[whatsanalec]

Weeks 9&10

It’s been hectic and stressful to say the least, and a lot happened.

Firstly, concerning the “ ‘ “ idea: I made a portotype for each version (window and crowd). However, the only one I went forward with was the window one, because I feel like it’s more striking and intriguing as an image and concept, and because the crowd idea (seeing image) - although it took a while to draw - turned out to appear a lot more creepy than I imagined because of the eyes. Although I should have seen that coming, come to think of it.

For the Window prototype (first image) I used leftover painted card from last year for the background. For the end product it needs to be bright colour that communicates the feeling of desire.

For both prototypes, I used a photo of myself for the silhouette (which I had to photoshop because my jaw was still very swollen from getting my wisdom tooth removed at the time). This is my way of putting myself in the work, semi-literally. Since this concept is half-inspired by personal experience, it just makes sense for me.

Having decided to go ahead with the window idea, I set to work to get it done. I used another image for the background figure to avoid the same pixelation issue I had with the prototype.

This piece, initially inspired by the Imagine Dragons lyric, “I’m an apostrophe, I’m just a symbol to remind you that there’s more to see,” put you in the perspective of a person who, despite having someone directly in front of and facing them, decides to look through them and onto who’s behind. That person, however, is visually content without knowing or acknowledging you. And yet, you keep looking.

The top layer being plain white serves the purpose of blending into a white wall and emphasising the idea that you are looking straight through someone who is obviously right in front of you. Behind that, the black layer is to create stark contrast and amplify the white’s cutout, but invite you further into the centre of the piece.

The much more intricate application of the crimson and scarlet colours beneath are to communicate the feeling of desire and interest that you feel towards the figure in the back, who is maticulously detailed in contrast to the silhouette in front. This is to convey the idea that you, who is looking through someone that you see no detain in, look past them and onto someone whose body intrigues you so much more. The piece is sized so that the silhouette is life sized in order to make the concept more real to the viewer.

In other news, remember that floating MDF idea I had? Yeah I did that. This was very unlike anything I’ve done before and was very stressful because I was working on this and ‘ at the same time for over a week.

This started with me stealing (with permission) - bunch of lasercut rectangles from the digital making space, and the idea of “strangers,” which I came up with after a conversation with my friend about my social anxiety. After a slow back and forth with Ronnie about how to suspend them, I painted them all white on both sides and we constructed the... thing.

As I mentioned before, my first thought was to create some kind of crosshatch design - either out of assembled wood or lasercut MDF - and attach it to my studio board so that the pieces could be hung in seemingly random places, because that’s what I wanted. What Ronnie thought of was similar. We screwed a couple long, thin pieces of wood coming off the top of my studio board and I was left to play with it.

We were going to do the same thing with another piece of wood and then attach some pieces across the ones already there, parallel to the wall, but after some experimentation with hanging the MDF I realised that it would be much better if the wood parallel to the wall was completely movable. That way, I could move and swap them about freely to get what I want without the hassle of untying the thread and tying it back on in a different spot. And if I wanted to change the position of a single MDF piece, I could shimmy it over thanks to the slack on the knots, or I could loop the thread around the wood to make the MDF higher. Foolproof.

But this contraption isn’t the whole thing. To communicate the aforementioned idea of anxiety, I had the idea of projecting a video of an eye looking around restlessly, with audio of panicked breathing. Luckily, I have three things that made this possible on short notice: a phone capable of filming in 4K, a clip-on macro lens for said phone, and a willing friend.

My idea for this video was to make it very eerie and anxiety inducing. So when it came to editing it, I used Davinci Resolve to desaturate the colours and lower the temperature to make it seem cold and absolutely not uplifting. I then took it into Premiere Pro. There, I made an identical video track but reversed it and lowered the opacity to 33% so it looks like two eyes of the danger owner moving independently.

For the audio, I added a recording of my heavy breathing and upped the gain to make it loud but not deafeningly so. I also added a slowed down version of it for a creepy bass layer, and I also added a track of room time but made it louder to amplify the feeling of something being off.

So, I got a projector and a plinth, and it turned out pretty great. Without further ado:

Strangers is an installation with the purpose of portraying my experience with social anxiety and difficulty communicating with proper I don’t know well or aren’t comfortable around.

The projected video aims to induce the feelings of anxiety and panic, which are communicated through many aspects: i.e. the lack of vibrance, overlap of visuals and collection of audio. The use of colour gives anything but a feeling of happiness and makes the viewer feel on edge just by that alone. The overlap of video shows constant rapid movement, and along with the sound of panicked breathing, plus the sounds beneath that, the feeling of being overwhelmed is emphasised so much more.

The MDF pieces are suspended by transparent fishing wire to give the impression that they are floating. They are positioned in a way that appears random and they take up all three axes. These shapes represent uncertainty and/or people, and their positioning gives the idea that there is no escape from threes feelings of anxiety - you’re surrounded by them. They’re everywhere. These objects onstruct the projection and leave holes in it, furthering the relationship between the two elements of the installation and bringing the video forwards into the third dimension.

To see the video, click here: https://youtu.be/tAJWmACRYbY

Moving Image module

Editing this thing together was an experience but less tedious than I expected. I used Davinci Teeolve for the first time to colour correct and whatnot. It was a slow process because my laptop isn’t great but I got there. I tried to make it look like there was more sun, to give a warm feeling and emphasise the light-heartedness, but some locations are visually overcast so it was kind of difficult to make them seem sunnier while being realistic. In some cases I ended up just being able to boost the colour which will have to suffice.

When it came to making all the cuts in Premiere, I divided a method for including all the locations without the film being a confusing mess: start with 3 locations and cut between them. 3 minutes in, take one out and introduce a new one in the former’s place. Repeat until all locations are introduced. I had to write this down in a way that visually represented it in a simple way my feeble little brain could understand:

This method was derived from Creature Comforts, which did near the same thing. The difference being that they had many more settings to cut between. After I developed the method, it was a matter of singling out the moray interesting parts/monuments with potential for the voiceover, and cutting them together. It came to about 11.5 minutes, which is respectable in my opinion, as long as we can keep the energy up during recording.

Speaking of which, I think the recording went well. We started with the traffic/weather track which was going well, considering we hadn’t had any practice, until Nathan forgot we weren’t doing voices yet. He realised after that track and we gained confidence through recording the others.

Being one take and in time with the video track, the audio was easy to implement. At first I lowered the sfx and ambiance tracks to give the speech one more prominence, but Nathan advised I boost all of them. This was alright, just meant I had to adjust the volume of some parts. Also, I only ended up using the direction track once, where the speech track peaked badly. If we did this again, I’d definitely speak more clearly during recording and be more cautious about packing the mic. But of course we couldn’t do a second take, because that would go against the whole point of doing a single take.

And that’s it done. I definitely believe we could have achieved something much more impressive if we went with my initial idea or something similar. But nevertheless, this was a fun process, especially the recording. At least I learned new software and hot more experience with editing. Link to the film: https://youtu.be/BoH4mZsXRac

Now all that’s left is assessment. Please have mercy.

[thisaintascenereviews]

Album Review by Bradley Christensen Dylan Scott – Self-titled (Deluxe Edition) Record Label: Curb Records Release Date: August 4 2017

I have a rather complicated relationship with country music, but if you’re thinking that I’m going to say I dislike it, you’re wrong, because I don’t. I was raised on country music, especially early 00s stuff, as my parents were very much into that kind of music (and still are), but the kind of country music I like is a bit different. I was very put off by country a few years ago, thanks to the “bro-country” movement that popped up, and I didn’t really want to listen to a lot of it. I did like some of it, or at the very least, thought some of those artists were decent, but I was gravitating towards the outliers and artists in the indie scene. Kacey Musgraves, Sturgill Simpson, Ashley Monroe, Nikki Lane, and Chris Stapleton were a few artists that I enjoyed, but the more that I got into the genre, the more that I found myself enjoying more artists that brought in more pop and R&B influences to the genre. Dan + Shay, Florida Georgia Line (they’re more hit or miss for me; definitely don’t like certain songs, mainly for their lyrics, but they’ve been getting better and better with each album, honestly), Kelsea Ballerini, and the one that got me more into country to begin with, Sam Hunt. I’ve seen a lot of people hate Sam Hunt, and I get it, because his style blends more hip-hop, R&B, and pop sounds to country, leaning towards those sounds more, so his “country” sound isn’t really there, but that’s kind of why I like it. He’s got a killer voice, firstly, but even aside from that, he knows how to write a catchy song, as well as one with a slick groove to it that always gets stuck in my head. I decided to listen to his 2014 debut LP, Montevallo, out of curiosity, because my mom got a copy, and I was surprised at how much I liked it. I love R&B music, though, so in a sense, I’m not totally surprised, but I was shocked at how much that album clicked with me. That was about a year ago, and since then, I’ve gotten into some more country artists in the same vein, but I’m still very new to this new crop of country artists.

Part of that, though, is that I’ve just been rather put off, too, because I’ve seen a lot of people dislike these artists. I always say that something is worth a listen, even if you might end up not liking it, but at least you gave it a shot. There are a handful of albums and artists that I’ve wanted to check out, especially stuff from the last year, such as the new Dustin Lynch, Kip Moore, Old Dominion, Brett Eldredge, Brett Young, and tons more albums, but the first album from this crop of artists that I wanted to talk about is the “new” Dylan Scott LP, a deluxe version of his self-titled LP. The deluxe version came out about a month prior to writing this, but the album itself came out last year. You might know Scott for the song, “My Girl,” and that’s why I wanted to check this out. I’ve heard that song a lot on the radio, and honestly, it’s a cute little song. I find it weird, though, how a lot of country songs nowadays try to be cool and reference rappers on their songs, because a lot of country’s target audience probably doesn’t listen to that kind of music. Anyway, the song itself is sweet, though, as it’s just about Scott appreciating his girlfriend, nothing wrong with that. I’ve seen the album itself at Walmart for awhile, and I thought, “You know what? I’ll pick it up,” when I was there the last time (about a week ago). I was mainly wanting to get the new Dustin Lynch LP, Current Mood, but I saw that album, too, so I thought it would be worth a listen. The album was a bit long, around 48 minutes, especially with 16 songs, but I was optimistic about it. I could be awfully surprised, and in a sense, I was rather surprised by this LP, because Dylan Scott’s self-titled LP (well, the deluxe version, anyway) is pretty good. Definitely not my favorite out of everything I’ve been into, and it’s the first that I decided to review, because this LP’s biggest issue is that it’s very hit and miss for me. This LP has peaks and valleys, and those are some of the most frustrating albums to talk about.

There are some things that I like consistently, though, and the biggest thing would be his voice. His voice isn’t anything outright amazing, and he’s no Sam Hunt, Mitchell Tenpenny (another artist that I plan on talking about soon enough), or Kip Moore, but he’s got a good range, and he can work a hook pretty well, honestly. The album starts off with “My Girl,” and this is where Scott’s at his best. The hook on this track is slick as hell, as well as just being a sweet little song that doesn’t have anything too deep or interesting, but its idea is really adorable, so I can get behind it. The song itself isn’t anything amazing, either, as it’s a pretty basic pop-country track, but I dig it. As the album goes on, it becomes more hit or miss, and it’s partly because the album follows the same repetitive formula throughout it. Sometimes the formula works really well, especially on songs like “My Girl,” “Hooked,” “Beer Buddies,” “Ball Cap,” and a bunch of others, but a lot of other songs are just “there.” They’re bland, uninteresting, or at the very least, “fine.” I wouldn’t quite describe it as filler, mind you, but at the same time, it’s clear that it’s just repetitive and formulaic. Songs like “Rules,” “Living Room,” “Lay It On Me,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and a handful of others aren’t bad, technically speaking, but they’re pretty uninteresting compared to everything else. Even the stuff I like on this LP isn’t quite amazing stuff, either, but it’s catchy, lighthearted, and fun, so it’s relatively harmless stuff. Dylan Scott, and a lot of these other guys, are leftovers from the “bro-country” scene, but they’re taking their brand of pop-country to more interesting and worthwhile places, versus being obnoxious, annoying, or terrible. In short, Dylan Scott’s deluxe version of his self-titled debut album is solid, and some of the new songs are great, but the album is rather hit or miss. Even then, however, the stuff I like isn’t anything necessarily amazing or unique, so the album doesn’t leave too much of an impression, other than there’s some potential here.

[ulyssessklein]

Creating a good lyric video for less than $10

How to make a lyric video for your song (without using Motion or After Effects)

Lyric video: a video that shows your song lyrics while the music plays. [Pretty self-explanatory.]

Not only are lyric videos a great and manageable way to keep your video content coming in between bigger projects that involve more complicated production, but I’ve found they can actually be a lot of fun to make.

Below I’m going to talk about how I created six different lyric videos along with info on some of the FREE tools I used.

A few things to keep in mind:

I’m not a video guy. Every time I make one of my own lyric videos it’s a process of trial and error. A pro could probably create something twice as good in half the time, but I enjoy playing around to find solutions on my own. Plus, video budget? (Pshaw).

You can make really cool lyric videos with programs like Motion and After Effects. I didn’t. For one, those programs cost money (see pshaw above). But diving into one of those programs would mean I have yet another learning curve to climb. I’m interested in exploring Motion at some point, but in between family, work, and everything else, I’d rather use what time is leftover to make music and bang out some videos, not hunker down in the lab for days on end. Maybe those programs are easier to use than I’m imagining, and I’m missing out (let me know in the comments), but for the sake of this article, let’s just refer back to the zero-budget appeal of making lyric videos WITHOUT Motion or After Effects.

That leaves you with free video editing software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Pros might scoff at these intro-level video production tools, but when you combine them with a few other tricks, plus some creativity, I think you can create compelling lyric videos with little more than what comes loaded on most desktops, tablets, or smartphones. [Full disclosure: I used Final Cut Pro X on some of the videos below, but I’d worked in iMovie for long enough before that to know most of the things I’m doing in FCPX can be done in iMovie.]

Beginner tips for making lyric videos

Open your movie-making software and set your new project’s aspect ratio to 16:9.

Import your song and any other media (like video clips, still images, logos, etc.) that you plan to use.

Move your first clip or background image to the project pane. If you plan to use one static background image the whole time, you can click and drag to adjust the duration that it appears so it’s long enough to display during your whole song.

Place your song into the project pane. If you want it to start playing right away, drag it all the way to the left. If you have a title page or some other introductory elements, you can leave a little room before the song starts.

Use “titles” to place the lyrics on the video at the appropriate time during the song, matching with the vocals.

Use a font size and style that’s readable (or that looks cool at the very least).

Position your titles on the video (again, by dragging) so they appear in a place that’s legible. For instance, if you’re using a still image of a sandy beach below a light gray sky, you don’t want white font to appear over that sky. Better to drag it down so it appears with starker contrast over the dark sand.

Make adjustments to the length of the titles (you can do this by clicking and dragging) to smooth out the transition from line to line.

Watch your whole video a few times through and make any needed fixes.

Export your video file and upload it to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.

Some tricks to spice up your lyric videos

This is the lyric video for my single “Collapsing Star” — a long fade-out kind of song about devotion in the face of aging — so I thought the visuals should do exactly what the music and lyrics do: fade, shrink, collapse.

The creation of this video involved some really basic elements:

Still images of space that slowly evolve — I wanted there to be a extraterrestrial time-lapse effect, so I used some super hi-res photos from Unsplash, applied a very long cross-fade between each transition, and also used just an imperceptible touch of “Ken Burns” (an effect that creates some motion using a still image).

A shrinking sun — Scientifically speaking, I know stars don’t collapse in this way; they usually get big and bright before dwindling into white dwarfs or black holes. But I thought a slowly shrinking star would paint the lyrics in a haunting way, so I used Canva to create dozens of colored circles, each one small than the next. I then placed them on the timeline with overlap so that each one could (like the space images) fade into the next and depict shrinking. With the addition of some blur and some “stencil” effects, I was able to hint at dark sun spots and the rippling surface of a star, as well as the halo around a star.

The twinkle of space — Because I was using static images, I needed to add some other light effects that made for a kind of twinkle or oscillation in the background stars. The main one I relied on was the “sketch” effect in FCPX.

This is the lyric video to my song “Irretrievable Beauty.” To create it I followed all the basic steps mentioned above, but here are a few of the bonus elements I added for (hopefully) extra impact:

Additional text — No one ever said a lyric video should contain ONLY your lyrics. So I wrote a bunch of other text (a letter from the 22nd-Century) and placed my lyrics within it. Check out the video and what I’m describing will make more sense.

Color contrast of text — The actual lyrics of the song needed to be easily readable, so they’re all in black against a lighter background. The rest of the words are white, and it’s fine if they roll by without anyone being able to read them all. I intended to create the feeling of being flooded by text, so lots of it is supposed to wash over you.

Public domain image — I found a super hi-res image from 1905 to use for the background of the video (and my cover artwork too), and slowly zoomed in throughout the whole video.

Above is the lyric video for my song “1+1+1=3.” Some of the things I did to make this video:

Slow fade between different versions of the same photo — The background image for this video is the same as the cover artwork, a photo I took of arithmetic on a chalkboard. I then applied different filters to the photo to create three separate versions. While editing the video, I started by laying the three images out in a repeating pattern and then cross fading them all so it looks like there’s some kind of slow transformation happening.

More extra text — The additional text in this video is nowhere near as crazy as in “Irretrievable Beauty,” but I wanted to add a few bits here and there. You’ll spot ’em.

Directly reference the subject matter — The song is called “1+1+1=3.” Yes, it’s about love, but the math element was a fun visual reference point. Arithmetic on a chalkboard. Strange equations in the text. Etc. What’s the visual reference in your song?

Above is the lyric video for my song “Silently.” Some things I did to create this one:

Hyperlapse sunset — One afternoon when I was visiting Oregon, I ran up to the top of Mt. Tabor (an extinct volcano in the heart of Southeast Portland) and found a good spot to film the changing sky as dusk fell. I made sure to be out of the way of anyone who might walk in front of the camera and ruin the looooooong time-lapse shot. Hyperlapse is a free app from Instagram, and it makes it easy to shoot long videos and then speed them up at various rates. I think my 4-minute music video required about 45 minutes of footage.

Intro titles from Word Swag — If you read this blog frequently, you probably know I love Word Swag, a free app that lets you add cool fonts to images. I used Word Swag to create both the circle logo at the beginning with my name in it, and also the “Silently” title. You could use this app to create text for every single lyric, but that’d get time consuming so I just ended up using it for those two elements at the beginning. For this purpose, within Word Swag you’ll usually want to lay the font over a transparent background so you can fly it into whatever video you’re creating without disrupting the moving footage. [Note: I used Word Swag to create the intro text for all the lyric videos below.]

Sketch effect — I then added some built-in effects, including a color saturation effect and two doses of a sketch illustration effect, to make the video look grainy and lo-fi. Like I said above, this wasn’t premeditated. Just playing around with effects to see what looked promising. On that note…

Earthquake wobble effect — I used the earthquake effect because I thought it kind of made the text look like it was on a transparent slide overlay that was out of focus for a second.

Alternating pacing of lyric appearances — Sometimes the lyrics appear and disappear with the vocal. Sometimes certain lines linger. I just went by feel, and payed more attention to how the titles looked laid out across the screen than anything particularly musical.

Alternating the color of the text — This is another obvious way to add some variation if you feel like your lyric video is too much of the same thing: change the colors of the lyrics!

Here’s a video for a song called “Morning Edition” which I posted right before the election in 2016. The recording is actually just a super lo-fi Garageband demo, but I only had two weeks until election day, and I figured if I’m going to make some kind of statement, there’s no time to wait to get my band into a proper studio. So, a few notes about this lyric video:

A lyric video can still have live action — I’ve never really liked the distinction between “music video” and “lyric video,” as if one is more legit and exciting than the other. As someone who listens to lyrics just as much as the music, I love good lyric videos, and I think there can be an interesting hybrid between these two approaches. For “Morning Edition” I lip-synced to my song, 10 seconds at a time, while using the Face-Swap tool in Snapchat to graft a certain someone’s mug onto mine. Then I edited all those takes together and applied a sharp contrast filter to blend the background of the Snapchat clips with the large black borders on both sides of the clips.

Did I say the lyrics have to be legible? — Well sure, it’s good to have legible lyrics, but I don’t think they need to be HUGE if that means you’re ruining the aesthetic of the video. For this one I figured I’d keep the text in a thin minimalist font at the top of the screen, out of the way of my face, and anyone who really wanted to read along could watch the video in full-screen mode.

Here’s the lyric video for my song “Veterans Day.” By complete accident — again, lots of playing around with built-in options — it ended up with a kind of Zen art aesthetic. Here’s how:

Stock video — I looked through tons of stock video sites to find an affordable, hi-res clip that could be used as the background for the whole video. I ended up buying (for less than $10) a short video of milk being poured into a clear glass of water with a black background. But 6 seconds of video wasn’t going to cut it for a 5 minute song, so I…

Slowed the clip WAY down — I stretched the clip as long as it could go and still only had about 2.5 minutes’ worth. So then I…

Reversed the clip — By duplicating the clip I had 2.5 minutes of forward motion, and 2.5 minutes of backwards motion. So the result is like a palindrome, or like that famous bass solo on “Call Me Al.” Halfway through, the whole thing turns around and the milk goes back into the bottle by the end. Another accident that I ended up enjoying.

Color inversion — I used the built-in tools to invert the colors so the white milk became like black ink, and the black background turned to a light gray.

B&W — I then took that video and turned it to black and white, which ended up darkening the whole thing in a nice way.

Scrolling text — One of the built-in title options on many video software programs allows you to scroll text vertically, like the end credits of a film. I used this effect separately for each verse and chorus of the song. Then I did another layer of scrolling text with just a bunch of randomly spaced letters and symbols, with a high transparency on the font so it appears as a graphic element, and I think it gives the whole video a kind a translucent papery feel.

Here’s a few things you might be able to learn from the lyric video to my song “Premiere:”

Still photos are your friend — Check out royalty-free photo sites such as Unsplash. I made the entire video for “Premiere” using photos I found on that site. The one risk you run is that other artists use the same photos in their work, but you can always tweak the images so they’re barely recognizable as I did with the milk video in “Veterans Day.”

Don’t be afraid of Ken Burns — He has a built-in video effect named after him for a reason; that technique of zooming in and out on still photos can be really effective for creating mood. Dynamics! Don’t go crazy or anything with the motion, but a little Ken Burns here and there can make flat photos come to life.

Mix and match fonts — I used a bunch of different kinds of fonts on “Premiere,” giving each section of the song its own feel.

Apply effects and transitions to the titles (text) too — Don’t forget that many of the same effects you can use on pictures and video will work to give your lyrics an interesting look as well.

Don’t publish your video until you’ve proofread it a dozen times! — If you watched my lyric video for “Premiere” you might’ve found a typo. Whoops. I didn’t catch it until it’d been posted for over a week, and by then… oh well. Staring at text while you’re editing gets tiring. Your brain tricks you. While you’re in the process of creating, you might not catch something that seems glaringly incorrect later on. So get some bandmates and friends to watch the video a few times to make sure you don’t have any spelling or grammar issues on your lyrics (I mean, besides the usual grammar or syntactical issues that ALL lyrics have). Another way to limit errors is to…

Write your lyrics out in Word and then paste them into your titles — When you type your lyrics in Word first, you get the benefit of the program’s spellcheck system. Some of the popular video editing software doesn’t have spellcheck, so paste those lyrics in after you’ve vetted them in the external doc.

Okay, those are some of the tricks I’ve used to make my lyric videos more interesting than just white font on a black background, all without paying for extra software or expensive stock footage and images. Hopefully they’re helpful as you create your next video.

Do you have any advice to add? I’d love to hear it. Holler in the comments below and be sure to post a link to your best lyric videos on YouTube!

The post Creating a good lyric video for less than $10 appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

[ulyssessklein]

Creating a good lyric video for less than $10

How to make a lyric video for your song (without using Motion or After Effects)

Lyric video: a video that shows your song lyrics while the music plays. [Pretty self-explanatory.]

Not only are lyric videos a great and manageable way to keep your video content coming in between bigger projects that involve more complicated production, but I’ve found they can actually be a lot of fun to make.

Below I’m going to talk about how I created six different lyric videos along with info on some of the FREE tools I used.

A few things to keep in mind:

I’m not a video guy. Every time I make one of my own lyric videos it’s a process of trial and error. A pro could probably create something twice as good in half the time, but I enjoy playing around to find solutions on my own. Plus, video budget? (Pshaw).

You can make really cool lyric videos with programs like Motion and After Effects. I didn’t. For one, those programs cost money (see pshaw above). But diving into one of those programs would mean I have yet another learning curve to climb. I’m interested in exploring Motion at some point, but in between family, work, and everything else, I’d rather use what time is leftover to make music and bang out some videos, not hunker down in the lab for days on end. Maybe those programs are easier to use than I’m imagining, and I’m missing out (let me know in the comments), but for the sake of this article, let’s just refer back to the zero-budget appeal of making lyric videos WITHOUT Motion or After Effects.

That leaves you with free video editing software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Pros might scoff at these intro-level video production tools, but when you combine them with a few other tricks, plus some creativity, I think you can create compelling lyric videos with little more than what comes loaded on most desktops, tablets, or smartphones. [Full disclosure: I used Final Cut Pro X on three out of the four videos below, but I’d worked in iMovie for long enough before that to know most of the things I’m doing in FCPX can be done in iMovie.]

Beginner tips for making lyric videos

Open your movie-making software and set your new project’s aspect ratio to 16:9.

Import your song and any other media (like video clips, still images, logos, etc.) that you plan to use.

Move your first clip or background image to the project pane. If you plan to use one static background image the whole time, you can click and drag to adjust the duration that it appears so it’s long enough to display during your whole song.

Place your song into the project pane. If you want it to start playing right away, drag it all the way to the left. If you have a title page or some other introductory elements, you can leave a little room before the song starts.

Use “titles” to place the lyrics on the video at the appropriate time during the song, matching with the vocals.

Use a font size and style that’s readable (or that looks cool at the very least).

Position your titles on the video (again, by dragging) so they appear in a place that’s legible. For instance, if you’re using a still image of a sandy beach below a light gray sky, you don’t want white font to appear over that sky. Better to drag it down so it appears with starker contrast over the dark sand.

Make adjustments to the length of the titles (you can do this by clicking and dragging) to smooth out the transition from line to line.

Watch your whole video a few times through and make any needed fixes.

Export your video file and upload it to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.

Some tricks to spice up your lyric videos

This is the lyric video to my song “Irretrievable Beauty.” To create it I followed all the basic steps mentioned above, but here are a few of the bonus elements I added for (hopefully) extra impact:

Additional text — No one ever said a lyric video should contain ONLY your lyrics. So I wrote a bunch of other text (a letter from the 22nd-Century) and placed my lyrics within it. Check out the video and what I’m describing will make more sense.

Color contrast of text — The actual lyrics of the song needed to be easily readable, so they’re all in black against a lighter background. The rest of the words are white, and it’s fine if they roll by without anyone being able to read them all. I intended to create the feeling of being flooded by text, so lots of it is supposed to wash over you.

Public domain image — I found a super hi-res image from 1905 to use for the background of the video (and my cover artwork too), and slowly zoomed in throughout the whole video.

Above is the lyric video for my song “1+1+1=3.” Some of the things I did to make this video:

Slow fade between different versions of the same photo — The background image for this video is the same as the cover artwork, a photo I took of arithmetic on a chalkboard. I then applied different filters to the photo to create three separate versions. While editing the video, I started by laying the three images out in a repeating pattern and then cross fading them all so it looks like there’s some kind of slow transformation happening.

More extra text — The additional text in this video is nowhere near as crazy as in “Irretrievable Beauty,” but I wanted to add a few bits here and there. You’ll spot ’em.

Directly reference the subject matter — The song is called “1+1+1=3.” Yes, it’s about love, but the math element was a fun visual reference point. Arithmetic on a chalkboard. Strange equations in the text. Etc. What’s the visual reference in your song?

Above is the lyric video for my song “Silently.” Some things I did to create this one:

Hyperlapse sunset — One afternoon when I was visiting Oregon, I ran up to the top of Mt. Tabor (an extinct volcano in the heart of Southeast Portland) and found a good spot to film the changing sky as dusk fell. I made sure to be out of the way of anyone who might walk in front of the camera and ruin the looooooong time-lapse shot. Hyperlapse is a free app from Instagram, and it makes it easy to shoot long videos and then speed them up at various rates. I think my 4-minute music video required about 45 minutes of footage.

Intro titles from Word Swag — If you read this blog frequently, you probably know I love Word Swag, a free app that lets you add cool fonts to images. I used Word Swag to create both the circle logo at the beginning with my name in it, and also the “Silently” title. You could use this app to create text for every single lyric, but that’d get time consuming so I just ended up using it for those two elements at the beginning. For this purpose, within Word Swag you’ll usually want to lay the font over a transparent background so you can fly it into whatever video you’re creating without disrupting the moving footage. [Note: I used Word Swag to create the intro text for all the lyric videos below.]

Sketch effect — I then added some built-in effects, including a color saturation effect and two doses of a sketch illustration effect, to make the video look grainy and lo-fi. Like I said above, this wasn’t premeditated. Just playing around with effects to see what looked promising. On that note…

Earthquake wobble effect — I used the earthquake effect because I thought it kind of made the text look like it was on a transparent slide overlay that was out of focus for a second.

Alternating pacing of lyric appearances — Sometimes the lyrics appear and disappear with the vocal. Sometimes certain lines linger. I just went by feel, and payed more attention to how the titles looked laid out across the screen than anything particularly musical.

Alternating the color of the text — This is another obvious way to add some variation if you feel like your lyric video is too much of the same thing: change the colors of the lyrics!

Here’s a video for a song called “Morning Edition” which I posted right before the election in 2016. The recording is actually just a super lo-fi Garageband demo, but I only had two weeks until election day, and I figured if I’m going to make some kind of statement, there’s no time to wait to get my band into a proper studio. So, a few notes about this lyric video:

A lyric video can still have live action — I’ve never really liked the distinction between “music video” and “lyric video,” as if one is more legit and exciting than the other. As someone who listens to lyrics just as much as the music, I love good lyric videos, and I think there can be an interesting hybrid between these two approaches. For “Morning Edition” I lip-synced to my song, 10 seconds at a time, while using the Face-Swap tool in Snapchat to graft a certain someone’s mug onto mine. Then I edited all those takes together and applied a sharp contrast filter to blend the background of the Snapchat clips with the large black borders on both sides of the clips.

Did I say the lyrics have to be legible? — Well sure, it’s good to have legible lyrics, but I don’t think they need to be HUGE if that means you’re ruining the aesthetic of the video. For this one I figured I’d keep the text in a thin minimalist font at the top of the screen, out of the way of my face, and anyone who really wanted to read along could watch the video in full-screen mode.

Here’s the lyric video for my song “Veterans Day.” By complete accident — again, lots of playing around with built-in options — it ended up with a kind of Zen art aesthetic. Here’s how:

Stock video — I looked through tons of stock video sites to find an affordable, hi-res clip that could be used as the background for the whole video. I ended up buying (for less than $10) a short video of milk being poured into a clear glass of water with a black background. But 6 seconds of video wasn’t going to cut it for a 5 minute song, so I…

Slowed the clip WAY down — I stretched the clip as long as it could go and still only had about 2.5 minutes’ worth. So then I…

Reversed the clip — By duplicating the clip I had 2.5 minutes of forward motion, and 2.5 minutes of backwards motion. So the result is like a palindrome, or like that famous bass solo on “Call Me Al.” Halfway through, the whole thing turns around and the milk goes back into the bottle by the end. Another accident that I ended up enjoying.

Color inversion — I used the built-in tools to invert the colors so the white milk became like black ink, and the black background turned to a light gray.

B&W — I then took that video and turned it to black and white, which ended up darkening the whole thing in a nice way.

Scrolling text — One of the built-in title options on many video software programs allows you to scroll text vertically, like the end credits of a film. I used this effect separately for each verse and chorus of the song. Then I did another layer of scrolling text with just a bunch of randomly spaced letters and symbols, with a high transparency on the font so it appears as a graphic element, and I think it gives the whole video a kind a translucent papery feel.

Here’s a few things you might be able to learn from the lyric video to my song “Premiere:”

Still photos are your friend — Check out royalty-free photo sites such as Unsplash. I made the entire video for “Premiere” using photos I found on that site. The one risk you run is that other artists use the same photos in their work, but you can always tweak the images so they’re barely recognizable as I did with the milk video in “Veterans Day.”

Don’t be afraid of Ken Burns — He has a built-in video effect named after him for a reason; that technique of zooming in and out on still photos can be really effective for creating mood. Dynamics! Don’t go crazy or anything with the motion, but a little Ken Burns here and there can make flat photos come to life.

Mix and match fonts — I used a bunch of different kinds of fonts on “Premiere,” giving each section of the song its own feel.

Apply effects and transitions to the titles (text) too — Don’t forget that many of the same effects you can use on pictures and video will work to give your lyrics an interesting look as well.

Don’t publish your video until you’ve proofread it a dozen times! — If you watched my lyric video for “Premiere” you might’ve found a typo. Whoops. I didn’t catch it until it’d been posted for over a week, and by then… oh well. Staring at text while you’re editing gets tiring. Your brain tricks you. While you’re in the process of creating, you might not catch something that seems glaringly incorrect later on. So get some bandmates and friends to watch the video a few times to make sure you don’t have any spelling or grammar issues on your lyrics (I mean, besides the usual grammar or syntactical issues that ALL lyrics have). Another way to limit errors is to…

Write your lyrics out in Word and then paste them into your titles — When you type your lyrics in Word first, you get the benefit of the program’s spellcheck system. Some of the popular video editing software doesn’t have spellcheck, so paste those lyrics in after you’ve vetted them in the external doc.

Okay, those are some of the tricks I’ve used to make my lyric videos more interesting than just white font on a black background, all without paying for extra software or expensive stock footage and images. Hopefully they’re helpful as you create your next video.

Do you have any advice to add? I’d love to hear it. Holler in the comments below and be sure to post a link to your best lyric videos on YouTube!

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