SparkySynth

Again, small content warning since I talk about mental health. I’ll stay on the surface but the bad stuff does come up.

(part 1 here btw)

We Need To Talk, Kid
So I was hustling on those instrumental EP’s and not quite getting my new songs where I wanted them to be. They were lingering ever since finishing “Start Somewhere” back in 2020. Now a lot of people had a Covid-19 moment and I was fortunate enough to work mail delivery at the time. This meant I got to do a lot of walking outside to clear my head, listening to music and podcasts and… oh dear…

Reading back the lyrics and drafts from the last few years there were two main themes:

• I was begging, itching, pining for transformation. I did not like my body.

• I did not want to be here, if this is all there was to it

Now as they say in the biz… My egg cracked. Hard. Clearly I had to check if I was in fact transgender or not, so that became a whole thing. Half written lyrics from before transition now a got a little post-discovery flair. And thus I wrote “We Need To Talk, Kid” as a letter to my past self.

“Crush” talks about wanting to be the cool guy. Which I tried. Several times. But for some reason it’s not working. I wonder why?
“Socially Accepted” is about my relation to alcohol, cigarettes and media at the time. Clearly I was “self-medicating” myself into health issues. Stuff I’ve luckily grown past.
“Sick & Tired” is more body dysphoria stuff, with a dash of just the mental exhaustion of it all. I realize the ampersand is not supposed to be used that way now. Just pretend it’s the angel and devil on my shoulders.
“Lullaby” is to remind me I was a bit of crybaby scared of shadows, but how modern times seemed so much worse.

Then there’s “S-word”. I still think I’m pretty clever with this one. Yeah it started out with self-censoring the word “suicide” since it’s in the song. But also it kind of looks like Sword and that gives me a bit of a fighting spirit?
Ultimately, it has come to mean Sorry. (“Yet all I can say is I’m sorry/For taking this long”)

And just like that life was fun.

Backing Tracks & Happy Remix Time! (2023)
Whelp I wrote nine songs and I still had the stems. Why not release the instrumentals? And so “Backing Tracks” was released as a little bonus.
Aside from music my brain was fully on the whole transgender thing so I wasn’t creating as much. I did want to celebrate making progress though. That he/him pronoun in Start Somewhere caught my attention. Could I transform my own songs too?

So I made questionable nightcore versions with added glitch from the SP404 and drums from the Drumbrute Impact. And yes the title is “Happy Remix Time!” just so I could call them the HRT! versions in stores.

Play (2024)

Life was fun again and the drive to create was there. I wanted to “Play”. I found myself also wanting to get back into streaming after a bit of a hiatus. So I tried #Jamuary. One synthesizer jam a day, posted to the internet. This first attempt I got to Day 19 before giving up. I would later buy the Hologram Microcosm and ran the best stereotracks through it for some extra spice. “Roll Credits” definitely gives “Out For A Stroll” a run for it’s money as my favorite track.

Breathe (2025)
After managing 31 days for #Jamuary2025 I really need a moment to “Breathe”. I bought a kalimba to give a very pure sound to the Hologram Microcosm to let the pedal to most of the work for an ambient album. There’s also a huge samplepack made out of those raw recordings!.

What’s next?
I am procrastinating editing 32 jams right now. Come yell at me on Twitch to finish more music.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading.

<3

Hey Ampwall! I’ve decided to hang around for awhile so I figured maybe a “get to know me” was a useful thing to write. Also, getting people interested in old releases seems hard, so why not do a two for one deal?

Roughly five years ago I decided it was time to just try the whole thing on my own. I used to rely on bandmembers (in a punky/metal project) for most of the musical side, although I did some lyric writing, came up with the occasional left field keyboard part and became an expert in screwing up arrangements. But alas, the band went the way of many and slowly withered.

Start Somewhere (2020)
What is an almost 30-year-old to do? “Start Somewhere” ofcourse. A song about songwriting, the usual femme fatale metaphor for addiction, a song written for an audition I didn’t get and a tune against depression. A solid first EP if I say so myself. I made it using free vst’s. I ended up doing a series of checking them out on stream.

I stream on Twitch btw.

Broke (2021)
Well, I rode the high of releasing my music for the first time for about a year. I did some somewriting, but it didn’t pack as much of a punch as I would’ve liked. Could samples make the difference? On “Broke” I went on a quest for freebies and tried to make a banger. "Out for a Stroll” is still one of my best bops I’d say. Fun fact: I think I accidentally shifted the arp in “Generator” by like… a 32nd note in the second half. Wild.

Sketch (2021)
After that samples seemed the answer and a friend of mine pointed out a sample library service. I decided to check it out and also challenge myself a little. Could I make a “beat” in a day on stream? Not quite, but I did end up with a lot of short atmospheric tracks on “Sketch”. A dash of melancholy, some darker stuff, and one slide guitar hype track.

Drift (2022)
After that I was kind of aimless. For content I tried piano beats with a looper (the oldest stuff in here) on stream and it kind of worked, but not really. At that point Reaper decides to bring out it’s own extreme timestretch algorithm. So I sampled 4 minutes from those jams and just…. stretched. I then cleverly exported individual tracks from a multiband compressor and went ham on the fades. “Drift” ended up being a bit of a tense ambient EP, but it’s still mostly relaxing?

Recycle (2023)
Here the transition (subtle foreshadowing) into being a hardware based musician starts. I got an SP-404 mk2 on account of liking using samples so much. At worst it would just be a multi-fx unit. So I had to try out the vinyl and tape sim right? It was time to… “Recycle” the old free vst’s jams I did. You know… the demos’s back from the Start Somewhere days.

Over these years I also tried writing more songs, but it wasn’t working all these years. Till I really examined those lyrics and saw one major theme pop up.

If you’ve made it this far: I’ll stay on the surface but content warning for some mental health stuff of varying degrees (up to and including the real bad stuff). More in part 2: https://ampwall.com/a/sparkysynth/news/the-story-so-far-almost-5-years-of-music-part-2-content-warning-for-bad-mental-health-stuff-2025-02-20