A Project A Month… Fizzling?

Hey Greg, you say. Why does that image look like Colin Mochrie trying to perform a Vulcan mind meld on himself? Well, I went over to Pixabay and searched for “headache” and this AI-generated photo was my favorite result.

My project for October was supposed to be my own version of “Dark Lullaby” (here’s Suno’s version of Dark Lullaby) and I did put a lot of work into it, but it was difficult to get it sounding like I wanted. I posted an early bit of progress, but it just felt… off. The timing wasn’t right, and I was feeling like the instrumental part was too close to the sung melody.

I made it better, but not good enough. Fixed the timing a bit and fleshed out the sound, but it just wasn’t… right.

My mom used to tell the tale of how I never brought home art from pre-school. She asked my teacher if we did any art projects. The teacher said we did, but I kept crumpling mine up and throwing them away because I was frustrated that they didn’t look like I wanted them to. I was 4 and already my harshest critic. “Greg Bulmash, trashing his creative work that doesn’t meet his standards for over a half a century!” Heck, the only people who have read Save The [fill in the blank] (the satirical novel I wrote and revised for my senior thesis in college) are me and my thesis advisor.

That said, I did have some fun playing with Suno some more. Here’s a song I wrote about my frustration with trying to get my insulin covered by Kaiser. I had no melody for it. Just lyrics, but it felt like an 80s Hair Band kind of song.

I also just made up a nonsense phrase (“beep boop blickety bligh”) and decided to see where it took me. That turned into a song about how I believe that most religions take all sorts of paths to get to the same message… love God, love others, serve your community, care for the less fortunate. And that felt like a country gospel song with a little bit of a rock feeling.

I could have recorded vocals on “Dark Lullaby” and put something out, but I just didn’t feel it was going in the right direction. That said, I’ve only really taken a beat-making class and an online music theory class. Blending my sung melody and my underlying instrumentals (along with arranging for fuller, richer sounds) still escapes me, so I delved into my “on-deck” catalog of music classes and have started into a 4-part series on “Song Science” on Udemy.

I think I was a bit overconfident. I’m getting better at notes and chords, but I’m still very much a beginner. Imagine trying to write my SamplesOrganizer app when I was a few weeks into learning to code.

It’s not awful per-se, just… underwhelming. So I’m giving myself some more time and more classes to get better before I try again. I haven’t given up. I just need to reach a better level of skill before I can put out a whole song from start to finish.

I’m tempted to record and post the vocals just so people can hear that part. I have the words and the sung melody (I think, though I’m trying not to be married to the melody). I’ve been creating little acapella pieces since forever. It’s been getting the instrumentals that continues to elude me, and that’s what I’m chasing.

Technically, the two Suno songs could count as delivering a song for the month, but I’m calling it a miss. I’ll get back to it in the new year, but November is about drawing and animation. I’ll have to deliver one silly animation that I can consider myself proud of. Then December will be about the thing people have actually paid me (and paid me well) to do… writing. That said, it will mostly be scripts and show bibles for the two animated series I’m working toward producing in 2025/26.

Wish me luck.

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