- June 25th, 2011 at
12:49 pm by --KALEB NATION-- -
Aside from being a very serious business author of literary fiction intended only for the most prestigious academic circles, I sometimes make music videos and post them on Youtube. My latest, “Pop Tart Heart”, is the tragic and true story of a cat searching for love in space:
You can get the song on iTunes here. It truly is the perfect music to listen to whilst enjoying a respectable plate of crumpets and cheese.
LYRICS
What do I do with my heart,
When it’s flying through space like a cat in a pop tart?
Where do I go when I fly all alone
Wishing outer space might lead me home.
What do I do with my pop tart heart
The edges and the middle are burning hot
You sent me flying into space and into the dark
Cutting through the galaxies, colliding with stars.
All I hear you saying is
Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan
All you hear me praying is
Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan
All the voices telling me
Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan
That outer space is where I’ll be
Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan
[Chorus]
How can I find love so far away in the stars
My heart is going faster than an outer spacial race car
All the broken promises you said you would keep
Without you here the galaxy just isn’t complete
- February 15th, 2011 at
4:28 pm by --KALEB NATION-- -
I like to make music. That is, if you can call what I make ‘music’. I made this last night in an insomnia-induced stupor, and this is how I found it this morning:
Beside that Owl-City-ish file was this All-Caps-esque one, from last week:
And probably 20 others. My keyboard has become the go-to place when battling sleepless nights.
Since I was about 15, I’ve used Cubase and a giant set of virtual instruments to make songs. I started with horrendous MIDI beats, and slowly — as technology/my experience/my instrument collection improved — things ceased to resemble the disharmony of three Atari’s playing different games in the same room.
I start a song with absolutely no purpose in mind. I do things backwards: I play around with the keyboard until I find a sound I like, then build on that, and then only after the song is done do I start thinking about putting words to it. This is probably why most of them never end up with lyrics at all. I also can’t read music, so my range of playing around is limited to Finding-Middle-C-And-Then-Counting-Up.
Unfortunately I happen to lack any and all vocal talent. In fact, my vocal abilities are so pathetic that even layering two or three levels of autotune on top of them still sounds like a gorilla humming into a can (this is actually very accurate. I suggest finding a gorilla to reproduce this noise).
Me, singing. Also, you, reacting to my singing.
And if there’s one thing that irks me, it’s people who do something badly while thinking they are doing it wonderfully. This is why all the songs that I DO put online are jokes — if I can convince people my songs aren’t serious, my abysmal vocals become part of the joke
making music... with no instruments
So until they make an autotune that physically corrects every possible aspect of someone’s voice until it’s barely recognizable as the person’s voice at all, these songs will likely not have my voice in them. But I pick old songs back up and remix them all the time, so don’t be surprised if you hear one of these in a video in the future. And, technology is always improving — maybe one day I WILL be able to sing/hum/gorilla-voice my way along.
I’ve found that making a song is like writing a book: you start off with an idea, you work around and build on the idea, then spend more time editing that you actually spent writing it in the first place. So the song I made last night is one of those first-draft things that either stick around and get edited into something worth putting up, or forgotten in the stacks of songs that were not.
I have so many of these currently-unused-but-might-be-used-one-day song ideas. I might start posting bits and pieces up to see what people think when I make them. 4 ears are better than two
