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[Tomasque]

You're lying on your bed, strumming some sweet chords, when you get that feeling. You set down your guitar, boot up your laptop, and open your generic audio software. It's time to make some music!

But where to begin? You scroll through your bookmarks until you find it: the LoFi Leaderboard, also known as the greatest repository of music that mankind has ever known! If you want your song to go big, here's where you should start.

Spoiler: LoFi Leaderboard (click to show/hide)

RANK	TITLE	LENGTH	USER	FAME
01	sunrise through your window	4:08	JameS	3372
02	all natural feeling	2:49	philli	1202
03	Homeworld	4:02	t4rdigr4de	1189
04	Melancholy Planets	3:32	A.Thompson	0440
05	Cabin for the winter	3:29	a.part.ment	0423
06	Mono no aware	2:37	SwingSing	0385
07	b o n s a i	3:23	artist.exe	0322
08	Lemonade Stand	2:43	ALostSoul22	0233
09	cold stars	2:47	MannyH	0224
10	one room mansion	3:11	@rophy	0195
11	Bedroom on the moon	1:50	Mincemeat	0186
12	tokyo_living	3:55	THOMMY	0140
13	Miyako Island	1:44	artLover	0139
14	Radio Taiso	2:24	guest2351	0136
15	garage Sale	3:03	hi_there	0130

With a good idea of what's currently in style, you start putting together your song. This one will hit the charts for sure!


Every action, come up with what you'll do for editing, vocals and instrumental. Here are some ideas of what that might include:

EDITING
  -Create a thumbnail (Describe what will be in it or find a picture online)
  -Add sound effects or filters to the song
  -Edit the song to a specific length (deleting specific content doesn't require an action)
VOCALS
  -Look around for inspiration (Choose an object you look at or place you look through)
  -Listen to a song for ideas (Could be real or in-game)
  -Write some lyrics of your own
INSTRUMENTAL
  -Make music using a collection of objects/instruments
  -Sample some music (real or in-game)
  -Create music from a basic beat (Chrome Music Lab is easy to use)


There's no sign-up sheet and now player cap (yet). If you're reading this, all you need to do is post an action to join!

[Pavellius]

I record myself strumming individual strings on my guitar, then edit stuff until it sounds spacey. I use a random word generator to inspire interesting but meaningless lyrics.

[High tyrol]

I record myself strumming individual strings on my guitar, then edit stuff until it sounds spacey. I use a random word generator to inspire interesting but meaningless lyrics.

+1 also,
put it in f-sharp minor. Buy a small sheet of metal and recorder the sound of hitting it. Try to get a good rumble then slow it down to make it even lower pitched. Use it as a base put play at a lower volume than normal. Modulate the volume and have the volume of the base very slowly increase as the song progresses. At the most intense point, suddenly have the base go silent, but keep the higher note spacey strings going.

[Demonic Spoon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW1oY26kxQ

[Tomasque]

I record myself strumming individual strings on my guitar, then edit stuff until it sounds spacey. I use a random word generator to inspire interesting but meaningless lyrics.

You scavange around your computer for that headset you remember buying, tape it to the side of your guitar, and begin strumming.
[3] It sounds just like you'd expected - rife with editing potential. After you're finished testing out different patterns, though, you play it back on your computer and realize that the headset didn't pick up all the notes. Bummer.

Undaunted, you move on to editing. You can make it sound better in post.
[3] Sometime later, you've finished with mixed results. You were hoping to find a way to keep the notes sounding distinctly guitar-like, but your attempts to make it sound spacey have made the already poorly-recorded notes lose their acoustic origins completely. Still, it's not a complete loss: it's spacey noises regardless, if more synthetic than you would have liked.

Setting that aside, you pull up a random word generator - your mechanic muse, of sorts.
[6] The words form together surprisingly well, and you're penning a song that seems to be writing itself. "And the father takes to flight / Followed by a children's kite / Beautifully, the death tonight / Brought with it the end in sight." More stanzas of similar material follow afterward, until you are forced to come to a unfortunate realization. It's interesting, that's for sure, but you wanted something that would match the music you made for it, and this is too wordy - too much - against the ambiance of the background track.

I record myself strumming individual strings on my guitar, then edit stuff until it sounds spacey. I use a random word generator to inspire interesting but meaningless lyrics.

Also, put it in f-sharp minor. Buy a small sheet of metal and recorder the sound of hitting it. Try to get a good rumble then slow it down to make it even lower pitched. Use it as a base put play at a lower volume than normal. Modulate the volume and have the volume of the base very slowly increase as the song progresses. At the most intense point, suddenly have the base go silent, but keep the higher note spacey strings going.

Somewhere, someone far away has a very similar idea. One quick stop to the hardware store later, and you have all the instruments you need.
[6] Guitar in one hand and drumstick in the other, you alternate between plucking notes and striking the sheet metal with satisfying reverberation. As the crescendo approaches, you combine the two into a beautiful harmony, then drop down to just the noise of the last few guitar strings. This raw music will sound amazing after the edit, but you're not sure how you'll be able to fit any words over the noise.

You load what you've got into your editing program and get to work.
[4] All you need to do is separate the guitar sounds from the background noise, turn up their echo, and set them to make minor chords in f-sharp against the background bass. Modulating the sound of the sheet metal proves a little more tedious, but it eventually grumbles to your satisfaction. A proper fade-out at the end, and you're done.

With the rest of your work finished for now, you randomly generate a couple words to set your mind going on the lyrics.
[5] "falling senses"; could you make that work? "backwards morning" - huh, that actually sounds pretty nice. Maybe if you make it short and sweet, it'll fit in the couple seconds after the crescendo drops away. Something low-energy, something that meshes with cosmic guitar noise, something just like ... "I've heard of stars falling / I've only seen one / it fell in reverse with the sun." Perfect.


With what you have here, both of you can finish your songs by coming up with a title and then publishing them with the audio and lyrics that you have. However, you can keep working on it instead, to add new material or improve what you already have. If you really want to, you can start from scratch instead, although you'll still keep a copy of what you have, in case you want to come back to it later.

Spoiler: LoFi Leaderboard (click to show/hide)

RANK	TITLE	LENGTH	USER	FAME
01	sunrise through your window	4:08	JameS	4889
02	Homeworld	4:02	t4rdigr4de	2199
03	all natural feeling	2:49	philli	1262
04	Cabin for the winter	3:29	a.part.ment	0782
05	Melancholy Planets	3:32	A.Thompson	0638
06	Mono no aware	2:37	SwingSing	0404
07	tokyo_living	3:55	THOMMY	0371
08	b o n s a i	3:23	artist.exe	0338
09	cold stars	2:47	MannyH	0280
10	Lemonade Stand	2:43	ALostSoul22	0244
11	Bedroom on the moon	1:50	Mincemeat	0232
12	here forever	3:58	a.part.ment	0219
13	one room mansion	3:11	@rophy	0204
14	Radio Taiso	2:24	guest2351	0197
15	Rising Moon	3:18	美的音楽	0194

[Tomasque]

oops. accidental post.

[High tyrol]

First, attempt to find a cool looking picture of a shooting star form NASA's website. Resize it to fit in a thumbnail. Then add a flame decal around the outside tinted blue with a glow effect. Put a little more glow around the shooting star as well. Finally, attempt to publish the song with the title "Stars Falling".

[lawastooshort]

I realise that artistic truth and beauty is found in the most mundane of things, so start scribbling notes about my problems at work today involving trying to properly align text boxes on a newsletter that for some reason I have to do on MS Publisher, and the awkwardness of colleague chats across the desolate wastes of the urinals. They make me feel empty, dude. I mumble these words along to a catchy tune I hastily put to a beat for the verses:

https://goo.gl/NBkf44

For the chorus, I go a bit more obvious, and blend into a heavily fuzzed chord on my acoustic guitar that I capture using my freeze pedal, playing just that chord (no drums), at near-amp breaking power, for a dozen or few seconds, before blending that out and bringing back the beat accompanied by a vicious 1 note slightly flat guitar solo (the one note being G flat) - with the chorus lyrics explaining that I'm not ready to die.

During the editing phase, edit in the ambient hum of an unused communal kitchen throughout.

[Pavellius]

I'll scrap the space sounds and use samples of sadder music that fit the lyrics. Then I'll edit the song to make it sound like an old record.

Also, I'll use the random generator to come up with words for my next song.

[Tomasque]

Oops. I accidentally posted before I was done!

[Tomasque]

I've changed the examples under the "editing" action to better encapsulate what you guys are using it for. Additionally, removing specific content from a song can be done without being dedicated to the editing action.

I also made some tweaks to how I generate the leaderboard, and it ended up slightly affecting the popularity of songs. I've retroactively applied those changes to the previous two leaderboards.

First, attempt to find a cool looking picture of a shooting star form NASA's website. Resize it to fit in a thumbnail. Then add a flame decal around the outside tinted blue with a glow effect. Put a little more glow around the shooting star as well. Finally, attempt to publish the song with the title "Stars Falling".

You search up NASA's online gallery and take a look through their photos.
[1] After a bit of searching, you find a picture that'll fit. The flame decal goes well enough, and the glow isn't too hard to add (although getting the right tint against the black background is a bit of trouble). After you clean up the edges, you cut to to the right size and save it to your hard-drive.

You upload the song to the LoFi Leaderboards and add the thumbnail. With the name picked out, you submit it for the world to see. Glancing over your finished product, however, you are shocked to see that the thumbnail isn't loading. A broken picture? You can't believe your eyes - and after all that hard work, too! You'd go back and correct it, but re-submitting songs isn't allowed, and you don't know what caused it, anyway. You do, however, check to see if the audio is intact, and it thankfully is. With a song that sounds that good, you tell yourself, there isn't anything to worry about.

I realise that artistic truth and beauty is found in the most mundane of things, so start scribbling notes about my problems at work today involving trying to properly align text boxes on a newsletter that for some reason I have to do on MS Publisher, and the awkwardness of colleague chats across the desolate wastes of the urinals. They make me feel empty, dude. I mumble these words along to a catchy tune I hastily put to a beat for the verses:

https://goo.gl/NBkf44

For the chorus, I go a bit more obvious, and blend into a heavily fuzzed chord on my acoustic guitar that I capture using my freeze pedal, playing just that chord (no drums), at near-amp breaking power, for a dozen or few seconds, before blending that out and bringing back the beat accompanied by a vicious 1 note slightly flat guitar solo (the one note being G flat) - with the chorus lyrics explaining that I'm not ready to die.

During the editing phase, edit in the ambient hum of an unused communal kitchen throughout.

You take out your pen and paper, and let the frustration flow through you.
[3] Writing songs makes for one heck of a creative outlet. You come up with an especially inspired verse about the urinals: "Between them, it's a wasteland; / The sticky floor, like quicksand. / Why won't anybody aim? / Instead they stand and chatter / and try to make it matter / but it's awkward all the same." Maybe the ending needs a little work, but that'll have to wait - you've come upon a greater problem. The lines are definitely inspired, but they wouldn't make any sense to someone else who was listening - and not in a cool, mysterious kind of way, either. You're considering scrapping the whole thing, when your eyes catch on an unfinished couplet, abandoned in the corner of a page. "I work to pay my dues and (pay?) my cost / my (*something* work?) a shell - its meaning, lost." That's it! The feeling you've been getting at the whole time. It still needs to be finished, but you're too burned out to do it now... and that chorus you were going to...

To take your mind of of it, you move on to the guitar and drums. You already have a bopping beat in mind, but now it's time to put it into practice.
[6] The chords couldn't be fuzzier and that solo couldn't be any more vicious. You got so close to breaking the amp that any normal person would have panicked - but you kept cool as ice. You've pushed your equipment to the edge before. Still, there's one thought that clouds the back of your mind: that guitar solo is as fast as it is vicious, and any chorus that accompanies it will have to be quick and snappy, or it just won't fit.

You decide to round this out with some ambient noise. Maybe someone's playing this song from a radio, sitting at the edge of window, facing a communal kitchen...
[6] The sounds of clinking plates and silverware are easy enough to add, as are the occasional scrapes of a chair against the floor or the sound of the table being pulled between the rival siblings. What the two say between them, however, is a bit more work, and the chatter of the husband as he talks about his model airplanes is a nightmare to research. When you have to find sound-bytes for an argument between Mary and Rosanne, you're almost ready to call it quits, but you power through. By the time you're done, you feel fit to collapse, but it's done - your grand narrative is finished! Wait, wasn't this supposed to be the background noise to some kind of song? Maybe you can make some room between the first course and the third if you leave out grandma's toast, but you'll have to remove a lot more than that to set it to any kind of music at all.

I'll scrap the space sounds and use samples of sadder music that fit the lyrics. Then I'll edit the song to make it sound like an old record.

Also, I'll use the random generator to come up with words for my next song.

You leave the original composition on the cutting room floor and look around for some more fitting music.
[6] You decide to go down the leaderboard, looking for something that will work. You discover it almost as soon as you've begun: Melancholy Planets. The poignant melody of the yamatogoto fits the tone and rhythm of your lyrics beat for beat. You hardly need to change a thing... you hardly can change a thing. If you give A.Thompson credit in the description, you might dodge the backlash, but it's a risk.

Perhaps a record filter could make your version audibly distinct.
[6] You overlay your lyrics on top of the music and apply the filter. After a little tweaking, the results aren’t too shabby, but it’d still be obvious to any distinguished LoFi listener who’s song this really is. Experimentally, you add a couple hops and skips to the track. When that seems to improve things, you  throw in chorus by looping the catchier parts of the song. By the time you're finished, it’s just different enough to be original, but still clear enough to appear to be a homage to A.Thompson’s work. However, your solution has created an unexpected problem: All the skips and repeats you’ve added to the song have cut out half of your verses, and the ambient sounds of the record player often overpower the sound of the yamatogoto.

You find the random generator you've bookmarked before and begin writing a new set of lyrics.
[1] "verdant, prickly, aloof, consign, birth, alarm, hobbies, inflame, sincere, bizarre..." You stare at the words on the monitor as they continuously flicker by. You reload the page again and again, but to no avail: there is no inspiration for you here. If you want to come up with lyrics, you'll have to do it another way.

Spoiler: LoFi Leaderboard (click to show/hide)

RANK	TITLE	LENGTH	USER	FAME
01	sunrise through your window	4:08	JameS	6111
02	Homeworld	4:02	t4rdigr4de	3628
03	Cabin for the winter	3:29	a.part.ment	1290
04	all natural feeling	2:49	philli	1072
05	tokyo_living	3:55	THOMMY	0908
06	Melancholy Planets	3:32	A.Thompson	0797
07	here forever	3:58	a.part.ment	0448
08	cold stars	2:47	MannyH	0350
09	Mono no aware	2:37	SwingSing	0343
10	Rising Moon	3:18	<japanese>	0320
11	Bedroom on the moon	1:50	Mincemeat	0290
12	b o n s a i	3:23	artist.exe	0287
13	Radio Taiso	2:24	guest2351	0246
14	Lemonade Stand	2:43	ALostSoul22	0207
15	one room mansion	3:11	@rophy	0173
~~	~~	~~	~~	~~
23	Stars Falling	2:05	High tyrol	0088

[lawastooshort]

Edit! Time to do some chopping and switching about and stuff, and get the damn chorus lyrics down, and snappy ones too.

Editing action:
So – the song’s minute long intro is the kitchen noise, but louder, and it starts REALLY fast before slowing down to a more normal speed, and then it continues lowly as the fuzz chords/solo come in – BEFORE the verse. Fuzz chords, solo, chorus, something along the lines of (because it’s lofi, right?) mumbled:
“I am not a CRAB
I am not a CRAB
I am not a CRAB”, repeated 6 times. People will either get it, or they won’t, you know, like, once my art’s out there, it’s also other people’s, so if they can’t understand their own art, that’s, like, just an expression of their closed-off mind, dude.

Stare at the patterns in the carpet for inspiration to finish the lyrics
Then the inspired and TOTALLY MEANINGFUL lyrics and first verse come in AFTER the first playing of the chorus, with the guitar fairly low, and the ambient kitchen noise just above audible. If I can’t come up another verse, I guess I could just repeat the first verse a couple of times.

Bit more editing of the ambient social commentary and also cut in the chorus again
Then cut all the noise, except the husband talking about model airplanes, and after he’s done repeat the chorus: FUZZ CHORD DEATH.

Yeah, hopefully that’s the right arrangement.

Focus for a second or two on the chorus again
No, wait. Crab? Wtf. The chorus lyrics should be:
“I am not a cookie CRUMBLE
I am not a cookie CRUMBLE
I am not a cookie CRUMMMBLE”

So, hopefully the finished structure will be:
Ambient Kitchen Intro
CHORUS
SOLO
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3
Ambient Kitchen Bridge
CHORUS

Done! Listen to the results just to check my vision is mostly intact.

[Tomasque]

I won't be able to update this until maybe Tuesday, because I'll be doing something over the long weekend.

[Pavellius]

I'll release the song as "Farewell, Neptune" with this thumbnail:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll spend my other actions listening to lofi and lipsyncing in front of the mirror.