Saturn's Speakers #2

Hey, remember when I said this was gonna be a weekly thing? Me neither.

Anyways, I thought I'd use this week to talk about the EP I have just released, titled "I Will Protect The Ones I Love". I was really surprised with the amount of content I actually produced over the past two years that was somewhat presentable and decided I think it was time I published something related to music.

The self-titled track was a homage to most generic anime openings. I began making this track yesterday, actually, as a joke, but it turned out too good to not share. In my opinion, it's my favourite song I worked on, hence why the EP (and each subsequent song on the EP) was named (or inspired) by anime cliches. "I Will Protect The Ones I Love" is a cliche most protagonists of shounen anime say, and I thought this fit perfectly with the idea that this song was meant to sound as generic as possible.

The BBEG Approaches gave me vibes of a big bad evil guy approaching slowly, like on a red carpet, thus it was named as such. The main riff idea was somewhat inspired by one of MY FIRST STORY's songs "Boom", and I appreciated the idea of being able to make people move with a simple riff. At the time I was making this song, I had no intention on adding any lead guitar bits, hence why the structure is very different to every other song on the EP.

The Beach Episode was the first song I worked on, which was almost 2 years ago. I was experimenting with some effects and new chord shapes which I almost don't remember. My lead playing wasn't up-to-stuff at the time, so I tried to make a lead line that would compliment the track. It's called "The Beach Episode" because it's the lightest song on the EP, and most animes have a filler episode where they go to the Beach. That isn't to say this song is filler, though!

The Fight Scene From The Beach Episode was written a couple months ago, when I listened to My Chemical Romance religiously. I think most people can hear the influence from MCR in this song. I purposely kept the length short because I feel without vocals the song can't stand on its own. In all honesty, I had no recollection of working on this song. All I knew was that it was inspired by MCR because the working title name was literally "MCR".

I tied the album up together with The Hero's Training Arc. I made this song with the intent that I wanted it to contain motifs from the rest of the other songs. I never worked with such a high BPM, but I thought it sounded good. Most anime soundtracks have a motif that plays through every song, so I used the lead vocal lines from I Will Protect The Ones I Love as a motif on the chorus of this song. I also used a lot of dissonance and riffage from The BBEG Approaches to give a sense of conflict within our protagonist's heart.

I'm excited to work on a new EP, possibly a part two to this one. Hopefully with longer songs and possibly even some vocals from me! (or someone who can actually sing...)

For those wondering, the cover art is of Zero Two from the anime Darling In The FranXX, drawn by me. It was the anime I was watching at the time and the sketch came to fruition when I was testing out some new art software.

You can find my EP on Soundcloud, and Youtube.

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/aaron-patrick-4/sets/i-will-protect-the-ones-i-love-ep

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhq8Vn6Fzb8

Thank you all very much for listening! I was able to get over 200 streams as of release date and when this blog post was released. Here's to more songs being created!