It’s Christmas night. The festivities are over, and you walk into a neighboring dimension to unwind. You find me sitting at a piano that plays forwards and backwards at the same time, playing a Christmas song that doesn’t exist in your world.
the reviews are in and the critics can’t figure this one out
For anyone curious what’s going on with Ridin’, it’s basically a culmination of all my studies and theorizing as a musician, a lot of which longtime followers will have already heard from me.
To summarize: My theory of music is that we identify good music as that which balances between meeting our expectations and defying them. Music which combines blandness with outlandishness. Because everyone’s musical experiences are different, so too are their expectations, and so too is their taste in music.
Ridin’ is a train wreck of stupidly simple and catchy components (simple tuneful melody, octave bassline, uncomplicated synth patches) combined with ridiculous things most people wouldn’t consider familiar musical tools (bass-boosted lead synth, the track completely falling apart at a certain point until it hits the catchy refrain again, sparsely arranged verses with frankly mediocre synth work). In other words, it’s hand-crafted to be amazing.
Of course, it’s never that simple in a craft with as many moving parts as music. Even things as simple as whether you’re more or less acquainted with these particular drum sounds than I am can impact whether you like my music, because I’m using them as a moderately familiar tool - if they’re new to you or you’re already tired of them, they may not fit the role I wanted them to play in the track. The same goes for every other component of the song, really. But this is a proof of concept, and I’m proud of it. I hope you all like it <3
hearing the john mulaney “do my friends hate me or do i just need to go to sleep” bit is the best thing to have happened for my mental health because every time i’m afraid my friends hate me it’s around the time i should be going the fuck to sleep
I read somewhere “if you feel like everyone hates you you need to sleep and if you feel like you hate everyone else you need to eat” and it was honestly world-shattering and I wish I’d heard it years ago!