Project 23: Spring at 80 BPM or less

Project 23 is an original composition project. Submissions must be based on one common theme and adhere to one common constraint. If you’re really curious what was all submitted, find out in the video right here.

Theme = Spring

Constraint = No faster than 80 BPM

Songs will be due by 9pm CT on Saturday, March 25.

Spring Sketches by Brian Eveslage

I tried to capture the optimism of early spring, along with the dred of the last month of winter.

Grant Eull’s Spring Songs:
Meltdown
Windows Down

The thought of writing music again was super exciting so thanks for the opportunity to push and create some ideas from scratch. To be honest I didn't go into this challenge with much enthusiasm for the restraints of “Spring” as a theme and “under “80 BPM” as the tempo. I was concerned that my results would just be ballads or folk songs and I wanted to make rock music. Well as a surprise to me, I managed to create some drums at this tempo that inspired me start stay closer to my intent. Both of my submissions are at 78 BPM, but they are very different in tonal texture and attitude. As I was thinking about spring ideas “growth” “sunshine” “flowers” “warmth” etc all the initial ideas that came to my mind, made me ill. These were just too happy for my taste, but then the word “meltdown” popped in my head and I was off to the races. Words came easy once I decided to write about the transition of both the season and a pending spring birthday with an edge of negativity to the vibe. I decided at that point to not start with guitar my normal go to instrument but instead find more of a synth vibe for Meltdown. Once I had some sequences and pads I played a bass line that rooted the entire song and it was all about creating some texture and dynamics after that. Even if it may be a negative song I do hope you all enjoy the vibe, I know I am incredibly happy with the result. Meltdown so was completed with plenty of time till the project deadline, so I chose to try a guitar based power pop kind of thing and see if I could turn a tune in a weekend. The result is a bit more of a celebration of spring and the chance to share that with others. Just a few days ago I had a chance to roll my car Windows Down for the first time this year and loved it. This song is goes by quickly; just like spring, enjoy it while you can. As always, thank you for the opportunity to contribute and to listen along to all the submissions every month.

Relative Ease by Tom Stromsodt

Apparently, 80 BPM is…not my jam. This was attempt three. Still fun though.

I Hate Spring (feat, Old Man Winter) by Bill Fricke

I had two or three attempts at some “Spring” songs that were pretty and light, but couldn’t find the words. Or perhaps was too afraid of writing something trite or whatever.  I almost decided to sit this round out.  Then, I had a thought of maybe trying something darker, and what is more dark than using tritones?  Its has worked wonders for Danny Elfman so far. :)

This one came surprisingly quick. I had no plan. But, the good old tritones put me in a mood to hate Spring.  And who would hate Spring more than Old Man Winter?  So, this became more of a musical theater piece with Old Man Winter bemoaning the end of his reign and the coming of Spring and how he longs to keep us all in misery for a little longer.  Lyrics came pretty quickly once I found the character.

It’s silly, but I’m all about silly.

Eric “Czahr” Scott’s Spring Songs:
Get Out In The Spring
Yellow Birds

I was very excited by this project because I’ve always enjoyed creating new songs.  I went back and forth working on two very different songs, unsure of which I would end up submitting. I decided on both.

Get Out in the Spring tells the story of someone who is captured for committing an undisclosed crime with two friends.  His friends escape while he is sent to jail.  Spring is about renewal so I thought it would be interesting to create a character who, while a criminal, remains positive, confident and always looking forward.  “Yeah I’m behind bars but I wont let that keep me from realizing my dreams.”  The song features me on vocals and guitar and a Novation MIDI keyboard.  I didn’t use a click track and I tend to gradually speed up while I play guitar, but it should hover around 77bpm. 

Yellow Birds is also about renewal.  A couple mutually parts ways as Spring is setting in.  While their feelings are as soggy and cold as the ground they eventually warm up and realize their lives will be better this way.  The lyrics were inspired by a close friend of mine who recently went through a similar scenario.  It’s all MIDI except for my vocals and is 79bpm.

Sole Survivor by Randy Dever

79.9 BPM. aka 'the sweet spot'. 

I caught myself making 60 BPM beats that sound a lot like 120 BPM with creative beat division. 

In trying to impart a theme of spring to the piece I was planning on having a slow dreary part gradually get happier to represent winter moving into spring. I changed my mind because all that was too "on the nose' for me. "Who am I? Vivaldi over here??"  Well, I ended up just making a dreary dirge of a piece. I produced this in the springtime anyway. I hope that is sufficient to check the box.

Pretty minimal instrumentation. This is my first use of side chain compression and I liked it.

Spring by Kelly Duclos

Here is an ode to the profound powers of Spring. It's not the most groundbreaking chord progression or melody but with only a couple weeks until the due date, I decided to abandoned an effort to come up with a unique direction to take the song and just plowed ahead with building onto a simple banjo part and some fragments of lyric ideas I had quickly put down earlier in March. I've thought about doing a song for Spring for a long time so I was excited that it was chosen as the theme. Part of my struggles with finding a unique direction was the constraint of 80 bpm which is lovely because the direction I ended up heading was very much driven by that tempo. Good fun! What a great project to help fend off the Winter blues.

The Death of Winter
by Andrew Charon
Featuring Sinceramente Ketel

There were so many things that were successful with this track and a couple of things that weren’t but I’m happy with how this turned out. t really wasn’t sure how things are going to end up when I started. In addition to the spring and BPM requirements, my starting point is wanting to use the OmniChord for this song and it needed to be called “The Death of Winter”. The catch is I’m not a writer or vocalist so I felt the need to collaborate with others on this song.

I engaged a friend (a silent partner) to help with lyrics and they spent a week writing around the theme of The Death of Winter. I was able to record the song on the OmniChord and we had the song prototyped out. I had been wanting to use the OmniChord for a couple of years now and realized that it would work the best for a slower song so the slower BPM was a nice opportunity. I ended up finding a vocalist on Fiverr to take the lyrics and create a melody for the song. Her name is Sinceramente Ketel from Argentina. She had complete creative freedom and she came back with the vocal track. One thing that happened which was a bit of a fail on my end is that the vocalist had asked if she could modify the lyrics. I did ask the lyricist if it was ok and she said yes, however in the end, she felt like there were key parts that had been left out. Due to limitations I couldn’t make any changes to the vocal track. When passing this along to Sinceramente Ketel I was purposely ambiguous with the direction of the style and what I was trying to do. She listened to the track and said that she wanted to write a melody inspired by Phantom of the Opera.

The Death of Winter was recorded in GarageBand and used Ozone10 Elements to master it. I’m surprised at how nice the sound quality of the Omnichord is with this recording. The lyrics are great and the vocalist did a really nice job with the melody and harmonies. I added some low end via MIDI in Garageband and ended up adding a rhythm created in GarageBand by “Funky Songwriter” with “Blowing Speakers” sounds. Enjoy.

SpringHeel Jack by Noah Warren

When I think of Spring I either think of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs or this obscure Stephen King short story called "Strawberry Spring". It was set in the late sixties at a quaint college being terrorized by a serial killer named Springheel Jack. All I can remember from the story was a lot of fog and creepy vibes. 

I tried to get Chat GPT to write a song about a serial killer but it refused. So I thought of the line "springheel jack's at your back door" and asked it to write a creepy rhyme to that. The result was slightly more horrific that I expected. Then I asked for some chord progression suggestions and it gave me a progression with "dissonant chords that create a sense of unease that carries over into the chorus before resolving back to E minor". 

I challenged myself to not change any words, so I just omitted what didn't jibe with what I was going for. This was a fun exercise! Thanks Chat GPT! I,for one, welcome you as my overlord. 

Sprung by Colby Heston

I got a Jazzmaster for my birthday around the same time as this project started. I was really enjoying figuring out the differences between this guitar and my other guitars and wanted to incorporate it in some way for my song. One difference that I appreciate is the vibrato/tremolo system on the Jazzmaster, which is different from a typical "strat style" tremolo. It is more along the lines of a Bigsby tremolo. Anyway, I was using this to bend the notes and chords slightly out of tune. To me it sounded "melty".

I wanted to create something slow and "sludgy" using the constraint of no faster than 80 bpm, so I programmed my drum track to 50 bpm and got to work. I was almost completely done tracking when I came to the realization that I had gone too far. It was a bit too slow so I started over and sped it up to 60 bpm. That was just enough, although it's still pretty slow.

There was a snowman in our backyard that my daughter had made months ago. As I was composing the music, I would notice that her snowman was shrinking. This inspired me to write the lyrics from the perspective of a snowman coming into spring with the realization that his time was up. This fit well with the "melty" theme of the music.

Everything was tracked straight to Garageband on my iPad. All of the guitar parts (there's a lot) were recorded on my Jazzmaster. I didn’t manipulate the speed for any of the tracks. These are all real time using the vibrato to get that effect. I also got to use my new (to me) xylophone.

Hope that you enjoy the sludge.

Holding Their Breath For You
by Neil Fasen

My song turned out more like a school project than a song, but I guess that’s the risk of this project format. Just like at school, sometimes you just have submit what you have ready.

How Could We Know? by Jon Hart

This song is dedicated to my most favorite (but consistently least useful) guitar pedal. I love my Pedal Plus, and never have figured out how to incorporate it into a song. It is unwieldy, and makes my guitar sound like a weird organ in a cave. I started with a chord progression that sounded like it belonged in an old gothic church. Perfect for a song under 80BPM. When I layered in the drums, I realized it needed to switch it up - and committed to a 7/8 time.

I was listening to some Emma Ruth Rundle when I came up with the bass line. Who knew? But the lyrics just wouldn't come. I hummed along in the car for a couple weeks, procrastinating. And then finally this weekend I woke up and started recording vocals and making up lyrics as I went. There were phrases and ideas I had written down with this song in mind, but they all read more like a letter from an angsty teenager in the swoon of old and new love. Who knows? I think I distilled it down to something serviceable. Right now I hate the song, but I'm glad I finished it. I'm hoping I might like it again if I don't listen to it for a week or so.