I released an EP of progressive electro-pop songs in September 2020. Ace Symmetry features odd time signatures, nonsensical lyrics, inventive beats, and catchy synth solos. It was an interesting and fun challenge to work on a focused project like this. I talked about the project and featured some of the songs twice on Song Talk Radio, in October 2017, and in October 2020.
Check out the landing page for Ace Symmetry here, with the full EP music video and links to streaming platforms.
Songwriting
Before I started writing, I established three rules I had to abide by. In any creative exercise, it’s actually really helpful to deliberately restrict the space you work in. It gives you focus and allows you to write more quickly.
The three rules I established were:
- All time signatures had to be odd; no 4/4 allowed
- All lyrics had to be nonsensical
- The final EP had to a continuous stream of music, with no breaks between songs
When it came to writing the lyrics, I usually started with a title. The titles sometimes came from twisting something in the real world – a sign for a Credit Union became Credit Onion, a poster for the One of Kind show became One of a Mind, and the Bobby McFerrin hit Don’t Worry, Be Happy became Droll Wordy Bee Honey.
I usually started with the chorus hook, writing the lyric and singing a melody to figure out what the odd time signature would be. Then I sat at my piano to hash out chords, writing more lyrics and melodies as I went along. I enjoyed including red herrings and suggestions of meaning in the lyrics where in fact there was none :).
The question of complexity occurred to me early on. In any song, you want certain aspects to be complex and others to be simple. A song with a simple 1-4-5 chord progression should ideally have complex and interesting melodies and lyrics. For me, I knew I had complex rhythms and arguably complex lyrics, so I decided to use fairly simple chord progressions. I used mostly major and minor chords, and always changed chords on downbeats, and mostly stayed in one key signature for every song.
I made sure each song was written with piano, melodies and lyrics before I progressed to producing the song with drums, bass, and synths. The time signature changes were also all in place before I hit record. Sometimes for each section I would program a simple drum loop to help me develop that part in the odd time signature.
Production
I decided that these songs would use only synthesized sounds, with no acoustic instruments. Although, I did break this rule in one song where I added a 12-string guitar sample where no keyboard riff gave me the right feel.
I also left ample space for keyboard solos, as I knew this would be a main feature of Ace Symmetry. Writing solos in odd time signatures was fun and interesting, and sometimes I had to edit the notes in MIDI to get the melodies right.
Virtual instrument plugins I used included Massive, Vacuum Pro, Hybrid, Loom, Rounds, Monark, Absynth, FM8, Xpand2, and z3ta. And for one song, Real Guitar.
For the synth basslines, I made them a melodic counterpoint to the vocals or lead synth melodies. For the drums, I used Native Instruments Battery 4, and the Step Sequencer in Cakewalk by Bandlab to program all the loops. I quickly decided that no matter how complex the beats got, I had to maintain the kick drum on quarter notes to ground the beats. This is constant throughout every song on Ace Symmetry.
Mixing and Mastering
I wanted the vocals to sound almost like another instrument. Given the nonsensical lyrics, this idea made a certain amount of sense. I used Melodyne to pitch correct every note perfectly and squash any vibrato, resulting in a robotic “auto-tune” style vocal. I also eliminated all the breaths to make it even more artificial sounding, except for one song where it felt better to keep them in.
Slap delay, chorus, long delay, and reverb were added to the vocals to give them a little movement and life. It was always clear to me that harmony vocals or doubles did not belong in this project.
The mastering for Ace Symmetry became a challenge. I’ve made a short video describing the unique planning and execution of the mastering process:
An EP-long music video
Ace Symmetry was designed to be listened to in order, as a continuous swath of music. It made sense to make a music video for the entire EP, as the best way to experience the album.
The video was a combination of royalty-free stock video footage, and an abstract view of me singing along to the tracks. I wanted my face to be presented as a silhouette, with different abstract backgrounds, which meant I had to learn how to do green screening. I picked up an entry level video kit on Amazon which included a green screen, a white screen, a black screen, and two high-powered lights with white and reflective umbrellas, and all the stands too.
The biggest challenge with the green screen setup was getting the screen lit strongly with almost no light on my face. The contrast between subject and screen is essential to getting video editing software to successfully erase the green screen. I had to try several times before I got the lighting close to right (it was never perfect).
Originally, I setup the green screen in my living room, since I had more space there than in my studio. I played back my EP on my iPod and lip-synced along. I spontaneously starting doing “air keyboard” for the solo sections, and ended up using some of them in the video!
There are some amazing websites for free video footage, and all of it is really excellent quality. I was really impressed that these video creators offered such well made videos for free. I credited all the video creators in my youTube description, along with the websites I found them on.
As I selected stock footage clips, I wanted some of people dancing, but the rest was intended to be as nonsensical and random as the lyrics. I chose footage of mundane activities like cleaning and cooking, as well as landscape footage, animals, and objects in motion. Perhaps subconsciously, I chose clips that were bright and fun, just like the music.
As I started editing it all together, I used a wave file export of the whole EP as the base to edit to. As I got more than about 17 minutes into the edit, I started to notice that my singing footage drifted in time relative to the recorded audio. My lips were drifting out of sync. I discovered that my iPod, which I used to play back the EP to sing along to, played back at a slightly different rate than the exported wave file. For a 4-minute song, this difference wouldn’t matter as it’s very slight. But for a continuous video of 21 minutes, you’re going to notice the difference.
Frustrated, I setup the whole green screen shoot again, but this time in my studio, so I could play back the wave file in my video editor to ensure my lips would always be in sync. Fortunately, I had learned enough by then to better setup the lighting and get a better masking for my face.
Maybe because I did the video in a few weeks, where writing and recording the EP took me 5 years, I feel like the video took me many more hours than the music. But I’m really happy with the result!
Distribution
While I worked on the video, I submitted my EP for digital distribution to all the major streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and Google/YouTube. I found a free service, Routenote, which distributed to all the stores, but didn’t include some of the bells and whistles of paid services like Distrokid or CB Baby, like a custom landing page. For me, this was not a big deal as I created a landing page on my own website. They also took about two weeks to get the EP in stores, longer than some of the other distributors.
With the free plan, Routenote also take a small percentage of your earnings. I’m fine with this, as this was never a money making venture for me.
For the album cover, I had my wife take a photo of me with the green screen setup and I designed the cover around the idea of asymmetry.
