Hiya!!

So I was undecided before, but I think for now, I’ll allot Wednesdays for something a bit special: I’ll use it as an opportunity to look back in the tracks I’ve produced so far, and break down their histories, as well as my opinions on them, positive or negative!

After all—this kind of objective retrospect is how we really learn improve ourselves creatively, isn’t it?

Personally, I keep a ranking of my own songs from best to worst updated every now and then, so I’ll be discussing 51 tracks total, starting from the bottom of the litter, all the way to the ones I think we’ll enjoy the most-!

A quick disclaimer though—I’m in no way any kind of professional musical critic! I think there’s no such thing as objective perspectives anyways, but, as long as I don’t carried away, my musings on these past tracks will largely just reflect some of my personal and technical opinions on them-!

So without further rambling, here we’ll begin at the very, very bottom… ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ

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The third album I ever worked on for my YouTube channel marked a bit of a shift in my sound at the time!

The German Electronica band Kraftwerk has long been one of my core influences, but I’d spent the previous two albums mostly trying to work out what I was even doing- so now that I was a bit better, I thought, “what if I tried embodying one of the groups that I looked up to?”

This line of thought started what would become my third concept album, Day of the Dead, and from the Kraftwerk-influence came two songs, Atop the Outermost Peaks and The Winterbourne, that, luckily for us, fared far better than our topic today~!

One thing I wanna tell you first though: the theme of Day of the Dead itself was something of a reoccurring trope in my works, specifically, environmental destruction, and for the people who don’t think that’s a problem, they’ve clearly never lived in a country loved by earthquakes and floods *\(^o^)/*

That aside, my vision for the album basically split it into three thirds: a calm, first section depicting the beauty of nature, a second, melancholic section depicting it in peril, and a third, discordant and dramatic division depicting nature’s downright desecration.

Searing Debut is a song that I wanted to insert into that last section—but it’s about here that I made my first mistake with this song: I had literally no direction-!

I mentioned in this post before that I usually keep a certain image in mind when composing my songs, and this time I was so eager to keep going that I really didn’t bother with that…

I just sat down one afternoon, pulled out the digital instruments, and played away… so here’s the end result, for both of us to probably laugh at~ (=^▽^)σ

So… I personally really don’t recommend listening to this—but it’s your choice of course, so if you feel like it, then you can do whatever you please with this track for a bit-!

For me though, the first problem comes up right in the runtime: nine minutes-!

I really don’t have a problem with longer instrumentals—I feel they have their place honestly—but this?

Barely any musical progression other than just getting louder, and not really trying to say anything either.

Let’s try to imagine I’m some stranger that stumbles upon this track—My reaction to it would probably go along the lines of:

“Why is this piano so out-of-time? It doesn’t seem to follow any pattern and just sounds really bad-?

“This Piano really isn’t going anywhere—where is this song going?”

“9 minutes!? Well, I think I’ve heard enough, I can try something else now…”

Genuinely… I’m sorry if this has taken an overly-negative tone but- I re-listened to this track and just barely paid enough attention to articulate my thoughts on it… (had to wash it off with some Anri afterwards ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ)

But I feel that’s the core of my problem with this song—it starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and kinda does all of that sounding like a 6-year old trying desperately to mimic someone like Hiromi…

Now I don’t think a song being “nowhere” is inherently bad, and if you’re interested you can have a look at my take on that here!

But I feel there’s a level of artistry that’s needed to execute something like that—proficiency that I just completely lacked in when attempting this style.

So, almost 10 months later, here we are: me just lightly-tearing apart one of my own tracks, and you… well, honestly if you’re still here, then I’m ever-grateful you could sit through one of my rants~!

(fun bonus for you—Searing Debut is also the only song I’ve removed from all my playlist…)

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If you gave the 9-minute noise a listen, then feel free to share your thoughts down here—I think we’ll have a great time just tossing knives into this! Unless you actually like it- in which case, if you’re up for it or course, I’d also like to hear from you to get a different perspective on things~! ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪

Whenever the next entry in this ranking comes out, just know I’d love to see you back here to join me for that~

‘Til then, all love to you!