Ninety Seconds

The other day I was carefully determining the difference between two very similar songs, one which I love and the other which I hate. By the time I was done, I had some new insights into what I think makes good music, and so I decided to write a new song. This one turned out much better than Life with Television.

Download: Ninety Seconds.mp3

In case anyone cares, the things I've learned so far are this:

1. I love saw synths with all their awesome harmonics. ...but I didn't use any in this song. :(

2. Everything sounds better in ZynAddSubFX when you bypass all of the filters and turn off the reverb and whatnot.

3. Swing beats are awesome!

4. Instrument parts that feature a lot of rests are awesome too.

5. I only like drum patterns that contain at least:

    "a_b___b___b___b_"

This particular song uses my favorite drum patterns,

    "a_b_aaba_ab_aab_"  and  "aab_"  and  "aabb"

6. I like syncopated instrument parts, similar to this:

    "x_x_x_x__x_x_x__"

...basically, when the notes are on even beats and then later they are on odd beats. It's just cool.

7. A survey of many of my favorite songs revealed that they all mostly use chords I, IV, and V. Apparently I don't like anything else, so I used only those chords.

It definately has a much more happy sound than my last song.