Production trivia, sound examples and lyrics from the recently released single It Was A Great Year.

Production Trivia

All the voices are virtual. Cheap, freeware or operating system speech synthesis.

The original title was "Caliginous Aestivate" and it was supposed to be a easy, instrumental summer track.

The current album version is slightly shorter than the first edit, the intro was twice as long. The radio edit will probably be shortened even more.

The melody is actually very simple, both tonally and rhythmically: Just two-three notes in a simple, repeating rhythmical pattern. The musical development is mostly happening in the underlying harmonic structure.

The robot voice is generated with very simple, basic speech synthesis:

The voices is then stretched, and edited with Melodyne to make it sing:

I also had to do a lot of processing to make it sound better integrated in the track:

For the chorus part, I used several voices from different speech synthesis engines, to make it sound fuller.

I wanted to have a C64 sounding instrument for the later instrumental part. But I also wanted to introduce a retro atmosphere very early in the track, so I ended up using a C64 arpeggio in the intro. This made it harder to find something interesting within the retro scope for the melodic part, and I ended up with a layered and processed piano. I'm not too happy with this solution, but never managed to create something that worked. Some people suggested the voices should hum the melody, it is a good suggestion and  I actually tried that, but I felt it became too much voice throughout the track.

The song was written in February this year, the core of the track done in a few hours. The lyrics and vocals took some more work during spring.

This track was the "green light" for Ugress 4, the track that completed the puzzle and nailed the release date. The album title "Reminiscience" has been with me for a long time, but I was unsure if the material within would live up to the title. With this track, everything fell into place.

Lyrics.

(There might be some difference from written lyric to actual programmed sound.)

Verse 1:

Mechanically reassert
Electric, always on alert
Intentions are profound

Emotionally never hurt
Biologically disconcert
We never ever let you down

Imaginary photoshops
Of thousands of megawatts,
We differ from your kind

Celluloid snapshots
Of silver screen Robots
The image printed, the image linger in your mind

Chorus:

It was a great year
We tried to stay there
It was a great year
For movies with robots

It was a great year
We really liked it there
It was a great year
For movies with robots

Verse 2:

Absolutely digital
Opinions predictable
You know what we think

Programmatic gentle
Never accidental
We always play in sync

Prioritize directive
Logical detective
We'd give ourselves for you

Never too affective
Always objective
Our feelings equal to true

(Chorus repeat.)

I'll put them into the lyrics database when I've got time.