///07 Scrapped Collaborative EP (2015)

The three demos here technically predate Twinkle Park entirely. I wanted to write cutesy acoustic instrumental music back then. Yuck! I'm kidding, it's just hilarious how different what I make now is. "Settle" was the first thing I every recorded by myself. I used an ancient microphone I bought as a child to make Lets Plays with, and drum samples from animal crossing wild world, and one of those vintage consumer-grade casio keyboards. I like this thing, it's slinky and dinky in ways I think are charming. "And Two" was supposed to be the second track on an EP that never got made. It's old enough I don't even think I have the other songs anymore, but they're nothing special, I assure you. The third of the three demos is itself three demos that were written just a bit before I decided to make Twinkle Park. I don't remember their purpose, I was probably just writing for the sake of writing. I should write for the sake of writing more often

So, with these Orange tracks comes the origin story for Twinkle Park. They appear here in the order I wrote them, and they were the first three songs I ever wrote for the project. I was driving home from a show a band I was in at the time played, and it kinda hit me all at once, like, man, I really want to make electronic music. If the music I'm writing solo is acoustic-focused, I want to experiment with making something that's totally computer-centric, with electric guitars. I want to make shoegaze. I want to write songs with vocals and I want to use Vocaloid. And so, I did just that. I got home and I wrote Lester. And then I pirated Hatsune Miku, I had her sing the simplest vocal part in the world, and Twinkle Park was born. Not the name though, that had to come later

Twinkle Park has been a vocaloid project since day one, or more specifically a vocal synth project, since I've used Utau and now almost exclusively use Synth-V. I just love the tech so much, it's so fascinating and exciting to me. Both as an exploration of the sort of transcendent life a character has outside their context, like how certain personality traits are universally ascribed to them, although that's never been a facet of my music, and just, like, the simple fact that I can plug some lyrics and a melody into a piece of software and have the voice behind some of my favorite songs ever perform something I wrote. Also, plainly, it's really convenient, and the control over the nuances of a vocal track is something I'm not allowed anywhere else. It's freeing to not have to worry about actually singing something, but also not putting my words in another human being's mouth. Like, I don't wanna put that on someone else

Anyway, back to Orange. This will sound insane, because nobody was listening to my music to begin with, but I had actually intended to release it under a pseudonym and never attach myself to it directly. It was easily the most vulnerable set of songs I'd ever written, not just because it put a voice and words to the feelings I was imbuing into the music, but because I thought it was way too weird and rough around the edges and I didn't even know if it was any good in the first place, so I didn't think my friends would like it. That's why some of the titles on that original release were ironic and why they originally opened and closed with stupid in-joke samples. I decided to fix that and restore one of the titles to its original title, the one I used before I got self conscious about all of it

By the time I'd assembled a release though I realized I actually was kinda proud of it. And y'know, looking back, oh, jesus christ, seven years later, I am proud of it. When I wrote the last movement of Sweethearts, I couldn't believe my ears, like, shit, I wrote that. It was electrifying. It's hardly anything special now, but that repeating melody is still one of my favorite things I've written, in part for that reason. That's why it appears somewhere in every album I've ever written since. But because that record has been offline for so long, because I wasn't proud of it for so long, that reference was for me, and for me only, but I'm comfortable with letting other people in on it now

Alright. We're coming up on the end here, thanks for sticking it out. This last stretch of songs is a five track EP that predates Twinkle Park. They were based on demos I was writing around the time I wrote that demo, "And Two". Very loosely based, that is. Those demos were fucking horrible, but what you're about to hear sounds, well, really slick. That's because they were recorded, extremely generously, by a friend of mine over a long weekend, who wound up guiding the project and pushing it in directions I always wanted, but didn't know how to do. I learned so much from that experience, and while I can't remember why it never got released, watching someone's process for recording and expanding upon these very simple ideas I brought completely revolutionized my sort of "musical toolbelt", so to speak

I'd go on to use what I observed, or the versions I remembered, when writing parts for bands I was in. I'd eventually record for those bands, and I used more of what I observed during those sessions when doing so. I became the go-to audio engineer among my friends, and for a brief stint thought I'd be a producer first, solo artist second. I can safely say the way I create music is my own now, but at its core its an iterative amalgamation of traits made up from every single person I've ever worked on music with, and who has been generous enough to help me. It was all invaluable, and I'm really grateful for it. The last song of this batch, the sixth song, is actually the first completed song I ever had a hand in, which was also recorded and mixed by that same friend. It has vocals by Alyssa on it, and was our first time collaborating, just shortly after we had first started dating. There's still one more song after that, though, as you can see, but I'll get to that