WasabiNoise – Making Music and Youtube videos

Since I started making music I've always wanted to add vocals to my songs and never felt the courage to do it. I've been doing some exercises and improving week by week to the point I wish I would rerecord the vocals on my debut song you can listen to here. I guess it will be fun to go back and listen to it as I release more songs.

I knew one thing. I wanted to use my voice. I don't want to use any AI at any point. The only thing I'm ok with in terms of the music I listen and I like is the use of an LLM (ChatGPT) as a dictionary tool where you check for terms, idioms, and ways to express the same thing. The reason in my case being that I'm not English native, so it takes me a long time to make sure things are said and written in the right way. On the other hand, the song that I written actually has an idiom mistake and I realized it too late.

Part of me didn't want to fix any idioms/grammar issues, it's a mark that will be forever there reminding me that I tried doing things the right way, the way that I feel is right for me, and that's by doing it all myself without the help of any AI. Because in my experience AI doesn't help you, it makes you average, and if you want to express yourself, it's best to let yourself go and present yourself to the world the way you are. Especially if you treat music as an art but I get some people don't think that way, that's fine with me, I'm not trying to pick a battle, but some things are art, and others are not.

About the song

I started with arpeggios as I often do. Then I added my always trusty LinnDrum samples for a synthwave vibe combined with a gate reverb.

I even added my electric guitar, which I haven't played in a while. I had to research some VSTs and ended up choosing "McRocklin Suite" (not sponsored) to get that tone that I like from dreamkid's songs.

The scariest part was the vocals so I spent most of the time there, trying different chains. I only show the final one on the video, with lots of Arturia plugins and Valhalla plugins. As I keep using this chain and tweaking it I will feel more confident to make a full video about it. I'm using a Shure SM7B and it's widely used, so it may be of interest to other people, I didn't go gentle with the EQ especially on the high end because it sounded very muffled otherwise. In any case, I'm recording new songs and I can't wait to share how the chain evolves.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and more:

https://www.submithub.com/link/wasabinoise-wasting-time

Who cares?

I had a lot of fun making this song and discovering my voice. I could've been tempted to use AI for vocals and I didn't, I chose not to. And ok, I get it, millions of people did this for many many years, who cares? Well, I'm not going to pretend that this project is of any interest to others. I wanted to make this for me, to challenge myself, and get out of my comfort zone and I achieved this goal. And now I'm feeling more confident than ever to keep singing and making music that has a bit of me, with my voice.

I hope I can inspire other people to do the same, but that is your choice to make. I encourage you to do it! To make art, make music, use your voice,.. Even if that means feeling vulnerable and exposed, because that's the only way to make music that means something, even if it only means something to you.

With all the fun I had I also went ahead and recorded the whole music video in my tiny home studio, it's not the best music video ever, it lacks story, but it was fun to make!

Good luck with your journey! And have fun!

Music video