Qwertyuiop by Oculex
qwertyuiop
For my music practicum, I wrote & produced an album under the name, "Oculex". The music is all electronic dance music, and is mostly themed around samples or vocoded lyrics. Incorporating lyrics into a track is always difficult, but vocals, especially in combination with humor, can help differentiate music from others'. Cape Town is a comedic song that uses samples about Toby from the Office. Dreams includes a sample from a popular viral video, "Have you ever had a dream like this?". [1] The title of the album, "qwertyuiop", further reflects the memetic content of the album; satirical in nature, "qwertyuiop" will be the first album on Spotify with the title, and may thus attract listeners who are curious enough to type in the pattern of letters.
To upload music to online distributors like Spotify and iTunes I used a service called CDBaby. The biggest challenge of the album, though, was learning to think like a producer, and not just a composer. In order for an mp3 to compare in quality to professional tracks, it's necessary to devote time and attention to "the mix". Throughout the term I spent a lot of time working with EQ's and different types of compression to make subtle but powerful improvements to the overall sound quality.
Links and files to the music are listed below. I hope you enjoy listening! Be sure to follow if you want to hear what's next.
Project Files & Links
Song Files
- Echoes From The Future: A dance track written in 9/8 time, featuring futuristic lyrics.
- Dreams: A 128 BPM house pop-song.
- This Is Who I Want To Be: A lower BPM track with vocoded vocals.
- Cape Town: A dance track featuring real guitar, Toby Flenderson, and a sarcastic overuse of vocal one-shot samples.
- Apollo: A drum and bass track using samples from NASA
- League of Draven (Adoration): A Draven song based around League of Legend's character Draven
Links
Spotify: Coming Soon
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/oculex