Creative Process of "Infatuation"

"Infatuation" was written in late 2016 as a submission to a class project in college. During this time, I was very lost. I had no idea that post-high school life would be so difficult. This was the second college I went to since the first one didn't work out. One could say that I was naïve and too hopeful of the future, but I also should consider that I have trouble staying positive or ambitious about things. I easily grow bored, so to find something I like or a passion is very difficult, including real life jobs (I still don't know what I really want to do even now). Committing to something is a very scary thing for me personally, but I think if it was something I really wanted, then maybe I'd continue to pursue it. But that's easier said than done.

Voice synthesizers are something I've been fascinated by since 2012. That would be nine years ago at the time of writing this. There are lots of fans in this community that were interested in writing music or making covers, experimenting with development of their own synths or characters (especially UTAU), or just listen. I was very content with being a listener-type of fan. I had no intentions or ambitions to work with voice synthesizers myself.

The very first time I used a voice synthesizer was the trial version of VOCALOID2 Hiyama Kiyoteru. I was in high school at the time and I never published anything with him. I was curious about what VOCALOID looked like and how it worked. If anything, I only made very simple melodies and tried to get him to sing in "English" (if you didn't know, Kiyoteru is built for Japanese). However, after that, I decided it wasn't for me and continued to listen up until late 2016 and early 2017.

As said before, "Infatuation" was created as a submission for my class project. As a college student in "General Studies", I needed to take several electives. Admittedly, I wondered if I should take classes in things I already knew about or if I should challenge myself. I decided on the former, mainly because it would serve as a "refresher". I personally had not studied music in a very long time. I was in chorus as a child and I took piano lessons up until middle school, which was difficult due to the large amount of homework I've been receiving, giving me no time to practice. I had to quit.

For this project, we were given the option to create originals or covers on any instrument we wanted. Performing them was optional. Again, I had trouble deciding if I wanted to take the easy way and just play a cover on the piano or if I really wanted to challenge myself and do an original. Given today's topic, obviously, I chose to create an original. However, before deciding, I was pondering my options. I wasn't a musician; I had no experience in compositions and arrangements. If I wanted to write an original, it had to be a collaboration. My professor allowed collaborations, but she didn't specify whether or not it had to be with someone in class or if we were allowed to work with someone from the outside.

The thought of communicating with a classmate frightened me. I'm not exactly the most extroverted person unless with close friends. I had trouble making friends and retaining them as most of the time, we only became friends due to circumstance (same class, same place, etc). I literally had no friends in that class and I didn't make many during college as the lessons' timeframes didn't really allow for me to socialize. After a student raised their hand and asked my professor, she confirmed that it was fine to collaborate with someone from the outside as long as we, the students of her class, were still writing it (melody, lyrics, etc). In addition, I knew I wanted to try to use a voice synthesizer and I asked about that through a private email and she was fine with that too so long as the rules applied.

If that was all it took, then I was going to do it. I wasn't entirely sure what to write about, but I just let some thoughts flow. Somehow, I created some weird lyrics about someone who was possessive of another person and didn't like the idea of sharing their fixation with anyone else... I'm genuinely unsure if this was my own feelings or not. Considering how my own UTAU, Xiao Meihua, was given traits that described her as clingy and hating abandonment, I would not be surprised if that it's me projecting through these things. Either way, the singer sounded like someone you don't want to be around with because they seemed very dangerous, unlike Meihua who would sadly accept her place in this other person's heart, should there be any room for it anyways... I wasn't comfortable with the idea of making this a Meihua original (plus she had no dedicated English voicebank at the time), so I needed to find someone else to be the vocalist.

I can't remember exactly when these started to gain attention, but around 2015-2016, Plogue's Chipspeech and Alter/Ego lines were emerging. As this project was for the Fall semester of 2016, there were some new Alter/Ego characters that were coming out at the time. One of them was Bones, a character produced and voiced by tora_ouji (Tyler). Bones was capable of singing in English and Japanese, but also had a speech voicebank in English. This was perfect for the lyrics as I also added some "dialogue" parts. I wasn't sure if this was going to be voiced, or if we decided to make a video for the song, it would only appear as text on the screen. A speech voicebank would allow for the words to be spoken.

Bones was released to the public on Halloween 2016 and at the time, Tyler was hosting an original song contest for him. The deadline was December 1, so I figured that would be a great deadline and motivator for myself. Unfortunately, the song wasn't finished nor uploaded until around the second week of December. Even so, it was really great to see and hear other submissions at the time!

While I was figuring out how to use Alter/Ego and adjust Bones' phonemes, I was also messing around with the settings for his speech and singing voicebanks. This was probably the most interesting part for me because of the results. I ended up trying to make him sound creepy for the dialogue and sort of "croaky" for the singing. I also created the vocal melody and my portion of the project was done. All that was left was the composition, vocal adjustments, and mixing from my partner.

At the time of doing this project, my voice synthesizer-loving friends were too busy with their own classwork and life events, so I was never able to collaborate with them until much later. If there were any prior to this song, they were more to do with JAE UTAU PROJECT (now known as JAE VOCAL PROJECT) covers and even then, there weren't many. Instead, I reached out to Muse of Discord, a musician I went to high school with. I told him about how I needed to write an original song for my class project and he agreed to help out. After providing the lyrics, vocal melodies, and the settings I made for Bones, he set to work.

Now something to know about Muse of Discord is that when he writes original songs, they pretty much feature his own vocals and sometimes, they are voice acted if it's a song dedicated to a character. Other times, he creates covers and honestly, he is quite talented, so I would recommend looking him up. He isn't as active as he used to be, but you can always check out his links via VocaDB and listen to his tunes.

There were some changes between the original lyrics and the modified version. They were more to do with rearranging the order (particularly the dialogue portion) and changing a couple of words, but overall, the lyrics were mostly the same. There were also adjustments to the vocal melody to make it flow and sound better. No matter the changes, I was still really pleased with the result. But something was missing. The song didn't have a title. I wasn't sure what to call it. At first, I thought maybe I should create a title from the lyrics, but even then, I couldn't think of anything. I can't remember which titles were ideas, but I'm sure "Obsession" was one of them but I didn't care for it. Muse of Discord, however, suggested "Infatuation". Funny how words with similar meanings just sound better than one another. So really, I have no one to thank but Muse of Discord for everything and for collaborating with me on this really fun first piece.

Once everything was completed, the song was uploaded to SoundCloud on December 13, 2016. To this day, it is still my most popular upload on SoundCloud and the most popular original song I worked on overall.

When the song made its debut, there was no art for it. It was literally the title with a glowing border against a dark background that was obviously made in Microsoft PowerPoint. At the time, we were perfectly okay with what it was: an audio-only upload.

2018 was the year my friends and I were uploading more content, especially for JAE VOCAL PROJECT. Xiao Meihua and Ser0 were released as the only two vocals at the time, so there weren't too many PVs, but there were a few that didn't have visuals as they were also SoundCloud exclusive. Those songs eventually received video releases and "Infatuation" was also not too far behind in earning the same treatment.

For "Infatuation" specifically, I reached out to my friend MinaKi. To me, I thought his artstyle would work well with Bones and he had experience with video editing. Personally, I'm not very good at drawing or making videos. I don't think I have an eye for creativity, so more often than not, I'm usually planning and contacting people to put things together. That's actually how I ended up receiving the "organizer" role, though never officially started using it as credit until 2019-2020.

Mina ended up creating some interesting appearances for Bones. He's in a suit and tie and he looks like your every-day type of person. However, there are parts in the video where he's seen as a silhouette with a creepy face. It's suitable for this song and I loved how it turned out! Actually, combined with the lyrics, it does make me a little uncomfortable myself, knowing that an ordinary person could be hiding something sinister. It really reminded me of some people I knew when growing up, but interestingly, this song wasn't about them.

The video version was uploaded on July 13, 2018 and seeing my first original work finally make it up on YouTube was honestly a really great feeling. Even if it's amateur and dated, maybe even defined as "cringe" (don't worry, I won't be offended if people don't think the lyrics are good. That's what learning is for), I'm still happy to call it my first. To this day, it's still the only original song I worked on in terms of lyrics and vocal melody composition. I only worked on two other original songs by now, both of which are tuning that I did for or with my friends.

I don't know if there will be another time where I'll write lyrics again and publish them as a final product. I did try some other times, but they're not very good and they don't make a lot of sense. I treat them like outlines: ideas that need a lot of work and molding in order to make them better. Even if I never write another original song via lyrics or melody composition, I can't say I regret this one. I'm glad I put it out for everyone to listen to and critique if they'd like.

And more importantly, this one helped pave my path into creating more cover songs and work with originals as collaborations. That is the most important thing for sure. This was the start of my journey and nothing would change that.

  - Description on uploads