My Music. My World.
I wrote Hang On back in 2018 when I was listening a lot to the synth revival of Aly & AJ. I created the music and recorded using GarageBand. The MacBook I used is now forever dead, and what remained was only the exported audio. I wasn’t even able to recreate the music either because I didn’t have the same instruments. But you just keep swimming, right? So here is Hang On, extended.
Huge shout out to my sister, Gette, for her incredible work engineering the sound to be good as they are now. This project would not have been possible without her magnificent home recording set up 👌🏽
The tracks that have instruments other than a guitar or a ukulele were made using GarageBand. Tracking the vocals was done using GarageBand and, yes baby, Audacity. It’s true.
On January 18th 2020, my CoStar said to me: "It gets better." I wrote that phrase down in my notebook and didn’t think much about it until, probably, a few weeks later. Then the song basically wrote itself. This is a tribute to the little girl who always wanted to see herself on the screen or hear herself on the radio, but never really did. To all the little versions of us that wished there were someone they could 1000% relate to, but never found them back then. One of the greatest feelings is hearing that a little Asian girl saw me on stage once and said she found someone that looked like her. Those someones are now us, so keep doing what you’re doing.
Seal’s Skin. The story that prompted Open Chest was Seal’s Skin. I happened to open up my high school computer files and found it in my Grade 12 Writer’s Craft folder. The beach sounds were taken from a trip to Port Dalhousie with my soul sister Kaylyn, on a day we spent song-writing for Tethered The Ghost by the shore. What a complete 360.
I wrote everyday during my days in university, and I even used the first verse for an audition to show off my ukulele and impersonation skills (Britney, Adele, Xtina, you name it). Shout out to the roommates that have locked the door behind me as I rushed out to catch my bus for school. Y’all the real MVPs.
I wrote a pt 2 for this celebrating the days after I had graduated from uni. Spoiler alert: not much has changed. You can check it out on my friends’ awesome site theforestofus.com or instagram page @theforestofus. You’ll find myself along with several others who have put their life stories into short videos. Another spoiler alert: you can upload your life story too! Do it - you know you want to.
Also available to stream on:
