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Bandcamp YouTube "6Vlog" is an instrumental piece I made specifically for the purpose of being background music for YouTube videos--for my YouTube videos, to be exact. I have a blog called Our Journey in Journals that's about bullet journaling, calligraphy, and stationery, and I've made a few videos on its companion YouTube channel. After making a few using YouTube stock music as the background music, I thought to myself: Hey, I'm a musician! Why don't I just make my own cheesy vlog music instead? Finally, on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, I created this song. I was able to upload it the very next day. This song is fairly generic and corny, but that was my intent. I threw together a basic chord progression (C F Am G7, to be exact) and programmed MIDI drums, piano, and bass guitar. There are actually four ukulele parts and five acoustic guitar parts. For ukulele, there's:
After I made all of this backing track stuff, I wanted to add some sort of high melodic part just to add a bit of interest. After trying out several different MIDI instruments, I decided to use glockenspiel. I quickly composed a part that sticks entirely to chord tones. The glockenspiel part, phrase wise, looks like this: A A B B C C A* A* B* B* C* C*. Each phrase is eight measures long, and the second time around, there's a second glockenspiel part that plays a slightly higher, somewhat parallel harmony. I then added a bit of flanger and chorus just to make it sound a little less boring. Because I made this song specifically for Our Journey in Journals, I made sure the album art reflected that. The background photo is one of my favorite pictures I posted onto the OJIJ Instagram, and the color scheme and overall design of the text and rectangular overlay is how I make the "thumbnails" for my blog posts. All in all, if I had to describe this song in one word, it would be "basic."
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Bandcamp iTunes Spotify Amazon SoundCloud And available pretty much everywhere else "Magic in the Air" is the first original song I've ever released! I wrote it back on June 20th, 2017, so a couple of months before I recorded it. I wrote it at a songwriting summer camp hosted by a local singer-songwriter named Brett Wiscons. However, the conception of the song itself began on June 3rd. I was at a dinner party with my parents that was hosted by family friends. I had no desire to be attending, as none of my friends were there, my phone was running low on battery, and I didn't bring anything to do since I hadn't been aware of the fact that I was actually going in the first place. Fortunately, they had a piano, so I just decided to noodle around on it. At the time, I was particularly enjoying the song "Change Your Mind" by the Summer Set, and since I really liked it, I was inspired to emulate it with a similar-sounding song. More specifically, I wanted to incorporate a sparkly monophonic motif that started from the very beginning and repeats throughout the song but with different roots and chords. So, I began doodling on the piano, played some chords, and came up with that ditty that goes on throughout most of "Magic in the Air." Originally, the song was in G major, but I wanted to avoid writing in that somewhat overdone key signature. Thus, I decided to shift it up by a half step to Ab major--to where it is now. While still at that party, I kept on playing that riff over and over again. I then wrote the lyrics and melody for the beginning of the first verse: "endless days and sleepless nights and afternoons by the stage" and the melody--but no lyrics--for the next line. It easily went with the piano part since almost every syllable falls on the downbeat, and thus, a note in the piano "riff." I didn't touch the song after this, but I recorded the musical seed as a voice memo in my phone to ensure I wouldn't forget it. Later, on the second day of the aforementioned summer camp, I remembered that I had this snippet of a song written. So, I decided to expound upon it. This song really wrote itself; I was able to complete it in that one sitting (and by "it," I'm referring to the lyrics, melody, and chords/piano part), and the song now is pretty much as it was back on that summer day. The first two lines of the chorus ("Do you feel the magic in the air? / Anticipation for the first breath") actually came from lines I wrote in December 2016 (something like "Can you feel the anticipation, the magic in the air?"), which was in turn inspired by the fragrance by Bath and Body Works of the name "Magic in the Air." Though Brett and Cara Nowlin--a girl who was also attending the camp--were with me when I was writing "Magic in the Air," I (and they) don't consider them to be co-writers. However, Brett did suggest the modulation to A major in the last chorus, and Cara came up with the majority of the vocal harmonies. After writing "Magic in the Air," I felt like it was one of the best--if not the best--song I've written. Almost 10 songs later, I am still of that opinion. Now, fast forward this narrative to early September. That is when I started drafting out the song and prepped it to be recorded; I began programming MIDI drums, composing violin and bass guitar parts, and recording some rough demo vocals. I also programmed the piano part, so by around early October, I had the entire song composed and fleshed out with MIDI instruments. In mid-October whilst I was on fall break, because I will find any excuse to avoid my APUSH homework (and, of course, I simply enjoy doing music things), I decided on a whim to take the opportunity of newly-opened up time at home alone to record the song. On Monday, October 16th, I recorded the piano, vocals, and guitar parts that I came up with that day. The following Saturday, my friend Lauren Nielson--whom I know from the orchestra ensemble I'm a member of at my school and through mutual friends--came over to my house to track the violin parts. I spent the next several weeks painstakingly creating a lyric video and engineering the song, but after realizing I would never get the "perfect" mix that I would be 100% satisfied because 1. there is no perfection in art, and 2. I'm really bad mixing and mastering, I finally released "Magic in the Air" on November 6th, 2017. Well, it was the 5th in the time zone where I live, but Distrokid, the distributor I use, counted it as the 6th since it was past midnight in UTC. Now that you've heard the story of the song's creation, I'm going to talk about the meaning behind it. Last school year, I participated in my school's production of The Great Gatsby. It was such an amazing experience; I really enjoy theatre, so doing a big, (somewhat) serious production was fun, but since it was quite a time commitment, I'm so very thankful to have gotten to make so many new friends and become even tighter with the people I already knew. Overall, being a part of that play was incredibly magical, and ever since closing night, I had been wanting to write a song that was an homage to being a part of Gatsby. Anyway, that's what "Magic in the Air" is about. In general, the overarching theme of the lyrics is that together, we--both the cast and crew--spent all of this energy and time and effort to coalesce into this amazing production, but along the way, we also made so many memories together off stage, and I became close with people that I hope to continue being friends with many years into the future. However, I won't break down each individual line; I still need to keep some sense of ~mystery~ with my "art." Plus, I believe that a wonderful aspect of poetry and songwriting is that each person can interpret each line in their own unique way. The album artwork is a photograph by Roger David Manning, a local photographer who does a lot of photography my school's theatre productions--including for The Great Gatsby. It was taken on April 28th, which was our Friday opening night show. It was from the end of the first scene of act II, where we all fall down in joy and laughter after "wildly" dancing. I'm the one in the red dress on the right side of the photo. Fun fact: the girl playing Daisy Buchanan and I accidentally bought the same flapper dress from Amazon, just in different colors. LYRICS: Verse 1: Endless days and sleepless nights and afternoons by the stage Memories painted in ink that forever leave a stain Recitations, preparations, learning through mistakes Every person working, trying, giving all that it takes Pre-chorus: So much more than the sum of all parts Beating together as a trove of hearts Chorus: Do you feel the magic in the air? Anticipation for the first breath The last several months like ninety years Culminating to bring us here Verse 2: Bonding closer, more than ever, living harmonies Voices hushed backstage in trust, keeping us at ease Pre-chorus Chorus Chorus, x2 Oooh Oooh Oooh I hope you enjoy "Magic in the Air!" It's something I a put a lot of effort in and am very proud of, so you better appreciate it and buy it and stream it and stuff--or else . . . WHERE TO STREAM/DOWNLOAD:
Bandcamp iTunes Spotify Amazon SoundCloud And available pretty much everywhere else This is the second track that I've released. In contrast to The Sea, My Home, I recorded and produced it myself. I got the Focusrite Scarlett Solo Studio Pack for my birthday (which includes an audio interface, a large-diaphragm condenser microphone, a pair of studio headphones, some cables, and some software), and I received the package at the beginning of September. However, when it arrived, I was sick - hence the name "Sick Crave Cover." Nonetheless, I was very excited to try out the new equipment, so I still wanted to record something. Considering that I had a stuffy nose and sore throat, I think the vocals ended up turning out okay. The entirety of the recording - which I did without any concern for good acoustics and at some points even without a microphone stand - was done within one evening, and I did the mixing over the course of the following two days. The ukulele I used in this was an acoustic-electric ukulele (a Kala KA-CE) recorded DI, since I wanted to test that specific "feature". The "kick drum" was actually me hitting a massage chair's ottoman (very badly and out of time, I might add), which was in part inspired by Andrew Huang, who does a lot of found sound music. The shaker was actually my friend's school craft project from last semester, where we made maracas by filling plastic Easter eggs with rice and taping plastic spoons to the egg to form the "handles." However, I used it as a hand-held egg shaker instead of a maraca for better control, though I still find using an egg shaker to be unexpectedly difficult. The song itself is a cover of the song "Crave" by the punk band Waterparks from their debut studio EP (Cluster EP); I became obsessed with that band on August 18th, and I plan on doing more covers of their songs in the future. I decided to cover this particular song since I already knew it well, it's somewhat easy to sing and play, and I had already gone through it several times just for fun in the past. Originally, I was going to record a music video that was somewhat inspired by the original music video, where I was planning on filming random footage of my cat (who is the album cover). Unfortunately, I didn't have time to film when I first recorded the song, and by the time I was like, "Oh, I can film this weekend," my cat went missing. It's incredibly sad, and he hasn't come back yet. :( I hope you enjoyed seeing the story behind this cover! Make sure to listen to it, download it, stream it, etc. if you haven't already.
I've decided to henceforth write a blog post about every release that I do. I'm starting out with the first song I ever "officially" released: The Sea, My Home.
This is a cover of a Chinese song from around 1982 called "大海啊故乡" - or in English, "The Sea, My Home", and it's a generally famous song among Chinese culture. To give some context, my parents are Chinese immigrants, so I'm a first-generation American. I do a solid amount of gigs, usually on vocals plus guitar, throughout the central Indiana area at various Chinese events. My mom has me learn a new Chinese song every year or so, and one year it was this song. Over this summer, I had the opportunity to record in what's essentially a professional recording studio - i.e. the basement studio of a Chinese family friend. I only recorded two songs: an original (my choice) and this song (my mom's choice). I wasn't particularly satisfied with how the first one turned out, but I quite like this one.
This song only has two guitar parts (though you may not be able to hear the second one) a vocal melody, and a vocal harmony. I wrote the harmony part for the chorus, but since the outro's harmony was written by sung by someone else, it was a bit of a struggle to learn and perform it within one day, and you might actually be able to hear that come through in the recording itself. The video actually took a pretty long time to make. The photograph is by Stephen Crowley on Unsplash (used with permission), though I did the rest of the design. That in itself wasn't too difficult, but then I also made a couple of variations of the image where the text was slightly shifted around. Next, I put the images into Lightworks (my video editing program which I am incredibly unfamiliar with). Originally, I made the words way too shaky, so then I pretty much had to start over. It took me a long time to figure out how long to make each image last, then to learn how to copy and paste the sequence over and over again so that the "animation" would continue throughout the entirety of the song. I'm not entirely sure when I started the process, but I finished the video and uploaded it to YouTube at around 3 AM - very healthy. CHINESE LYRICS: Verse: 小时候妈妈对我讲 大海就是我故乡 海边出生 海里成长 Chorus: 大海啊大海 是我生长的地方 海风吹海浪涌 随我飘流四方 大海啊大海 就像妈妈一样 走遍天涯海角 总在我的身旁 Repeat verse and chorus Outro: 大海啊故乡 大海啊故乡 我的故乡 我的故乡 ENGLISH TRANSLATION: When I was young, my mother told me: "The sea is your home You were born by the sea, and it's where you've grown up" Chorus: The sea, oh, the sea The place where my life has grown The seaside wind blows, the waves surge Let me drift anywhere The sea, oh, the sea Just like my mother It travels all over the world It's always in my heart Repeat verse and chorus Outro: The sea, my home The sea, my home My home, my home WHERE TO STREAM/DOWNLOAD: Bandcamp iTunes Spotify Soundcloud Amazon Google Play And available pretty much everywhere else Hi, I'm Mae-Mae Han! I'm a musician from Indiana, USA, and along with singing, I play a variety of different instruments. I have my background in classical music, specifically piano and viola, but my techniques in playing and writing popular music and instruments mostly are self-taught. You can learn more about me in my about page. I've only been making original music for about two and a half years, and I have learned so much in that short amount of time. You can find my music on my YouTube channel or my SoundCloud. |
mae-mae hanI'm the singer-songwriter and musician behind this site (and almost everything of my music). I hope you enjoy both my songs and this blog! latest videoarchives
April 2021
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