Well, this was a strange one from the start. For those of you who don't know, I'm a Lifeguard & Swimming Instructor by day. So I was teaching one of my classes on Monday (February 24, 2020) & I misheard one of my swimmers (I honestly still don't know what he actually said). I heard him say "A turtle ate my woman". Yeah, not sure why I heard that.

Anyway, it inspired me. I had been toying around with the idea of writing a melody based on words. Because Jeskola Buzz (& most trackers for that matter) use a QWERTY Music Keyboard layout for imputing notes (Q = C-5; 2 = C#5; W = D-5; 3 = D#5; E = E-5, etc…), I had this great idea to spell out the words in Buzz & see what notes would come out. So my misheard student phrase above formed the main melody of the song (with letters that don't correspond to keys acting as rest notes). Then I needed something for a chorus. For some reason the phrase "In Time" jumped into my head, so that's what I went with.

I decided early on that I only wanted to use native Buzz Machines for this song - no VST's. So I started with Geonik's Primifun, one of the standard Subtractive synths in the Buzz arsenal. The Primifun was the instrument that played the word melodies. Next I used FSM's ArpMan for the arpping synth effect that is at the core of the song. Then I added a choir sound to use on the chorus care of the Matilde Tracker machine & a wonderful choir sample. Lastly, I used one of Zecoop's drum songs that he posted for other FAWMers to use (again played through a Matilde Tracker machine) to give this song a final touch.

So a misheard phrase, some creative experimentation & a whole lot of fun, I have probably one of my "poppiest" songs. Who would have thought.

See You In The Shadows…