𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 (𝙵𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙱𝚡𝙱)

Track 46 | 𝟭𝟳 (𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼)

Well, that was really how it was for me. The few of us that have actual paying jobs tend to have it ten times worse.

We were able to borrow basic recording equipment from Beau and other bands that we'd reached out to online. Torrence was our engineer; he handled everything tech-wise, he cut the tracks together, adjusted the volume—or pitch—or gain—or whatever settings, mastered the audio, all the things that we didn't know how to do.

And while all that was happening, we were also juggling it with the task of trying to write our first hit. You see, we wanted there to be a song on the album that could really put us out there. Call it 'commercially acceptable', if you will.

We found ourselves constantly returning to that one unfinished song that Ari helped add insight into in the past. Something about the beginning of it felt hit-worthy, like when you're standing over gold but don't know where exactly to begin digging. We knew we wanted it to be fun and have a journey that went somewhere really exciting and beautiful; we wanted it to feel like a celebration of life almost but still have that angsty charm that teenagers like us could get with. We wanted attitude and energy. We wanted noise.

"I like that," I spoke in response to the drum beat Ari was testing out on his drum set in front of us.

Ari pounded the floor tom in a continuous rhythm, one kick for every four beats. Every two beats, he clapped his paws for the remaining two beats in the measure, creating an enthusiastic and lively groove that even the listener could participate in.

"Yeah, the claps are cute," Eden commented, clapping along to Ari's rhythm. "It would be fun to play this live and have the audience clap along to it."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Ari agreed, nodding along.

"Check this out," Torrence said, picking up a tambourine and adding his own funk to the beat, shaking the instrument to give the rhythm some dance.

"Oooh, fun," I replied. "Would that work better during the chorus, though?"

"We don't even have a chorus yet," noted Rian.

"That's in the works," Torrence said, staring down at the piece of paper on his leg, reading through the rough draft of the song's lyrics while still shaking that tambourine.

I grabbed Rian's acoustic guitar and attempted to play that D to B-Minor progression we had written a while ago—with the added rhythmic strumming that Ari had suggested earlier last month.

"I know something... you don't..." Eden sang along to the guitar and the drum beat paired together, fastening her paws around the back of her neck. She paced around Rian's living room, trying to figure out what else could be brought to the table. "You think you know it all, but... you won't..."

"I like this," Levi added his input from the corner of the room. "But, yeah, I think the tambourine should only be in the chorus."

"Still no chorus yet," said Rian, again.

"There's already a lot of energy here in the verse," Levi continued, "we should take the tambourine thing and save that last little punch of energy for the chorus so that it hits better."

"Okay, look at you, producer," Eden smiled, hyping Levi up, only to continue singing our revised lyrics. "We don't speak these days like I thought we would... I wanna go back to being the top of your world..."

And then we all stopped, not knowing what to play next. A blank was drawn.

"...And there it goes," Eden sighed. She continued to pace around the room, humming incoherent nonsense to herself in order to discover some melody that could work for the chorus.