sparkbirdmusic

[sparkbirdmusic]

one year since @yaelokre drew me! a momentous day in my life 🥲

[sparkbirdmusic]

TA DA, flute sheet music! @spacebutalsojace

ps flute players please react in some way that I can share with Josh to thank him for sending this to me

hello tumblr user sparkbirdmusic! i am rather late to the party i fear (due to other hyperfixations taking over my brain) however i have finally listened to the light that comes through and wowowowow i love it a lot!!!!! scratches my brain very nice and it's yummy. as someone who plays the flute i was very excited by the flute lines and was wondering if perhaps you had the sheet music for it? would love to try playing it sometime if you do :]

You’re not alone in wanting the flute sheet music! I just now wrote to Josh Plotner to ask for it, stay tuned

[sparkbirdmusic]

just heard a black and white warbler for the first time. yeah that thang do be warbling

wheezy wheezy wheezy!

[sparkbirdmusic]

hello tumblr user sparkbirdmusic! i am rather late to the party i fear (due to other hyperfixations taking over my brain) however i have finally listened to the light that comes through and wowowowow i love it a lot!!!!! scratches my brain very nice and it's yummy. as someone who plays the flute i was very excited by the flute lines and was wondering if perhaps you had the sheet music for it? would love to try playing it sometime if you do :]

You’re not alone in wanting the flute sheet music! I just now wrote to Josh Plotner to ask for it, stay tuned

[sparkbirdmusic]

I wanted to share the time when I was at a restaurant eating dinner with my dad and saw someone wearing an "everything will be okay" shirt. I got super excited but was too scared to say anything because I wasn't completely sure it was your merch at the time. I noticed the birds on it and how the words matched the lyrics from Blue Jay, but I thought it might have just been a coincidence. Looking back, I do regret not saying anything 😔 Once I figured out it was in fact Sparkbird merch, I told every person I could that I saw a fellow sparkbird fan in the wild. I was wearing my Atlantasia hoodie that night so I'm hoping they maybe noticed that !!

(I'm not sure if you'd prefer only more important questions and things on this tab, if so, I am very sorry in advance! I just thought this was a cool thing you might want to hear ! /gen)

as far as I’m concerned, this IS important. I would lost my mind if I saw Sparkbird merch in the wild like that, I’ve only ever seen it at shows or on people I know. and what are the odds of two people wearing Sparkbird merch in the same restaurant?! that’s incredible

[sparkbirdmusic]

“Sparkbird is America's jon sims” - Meteorite, on the sparkbird discord server

[sparkbirdmusic]

just tracked vocals on my next song woooo

[sparkbirdmusic]

So, Pixel (@a-dargon) asked about the magical thinking or magical realism line and you confirmed it wasn’t about ocd, but do you have any lyrics that specifically ARE about ocd/your experiences with it?

hmm... I feel like obsession/overthinking/worrying is at the core of most of my songwriting.

this part of Disembodied Mind evolved from an idea for a more OCD-focused song: "I do believe there's beauty within / that's why I can't stop picking my skin / digging for a buried treasure..."

it went with a different melody originally, and the words included: "you seem so sad, so I'm pulling out my hair, I'm picking at my skin..." I think there was still something about trying to find buried treasure, but the focus was on the feeling that carrying out compulsions/self-punishment would somehow make things better

[sparkbirdmusic]

so much of what dusty, shayfer, and I talked about while writing certain birds was our desire to scoop up our listeners (musically) and make them feel protected even when the world feels like it's falling apart

[sparkbirdmusic]

what you said about connecting to the song certain birds in your latest post (as of sending this ask) really hit for me. i first listened to certain birds in the wonderful hour between 2 and 3 am, and it feels like that made me fall in love with it so much faster, especially with what you said about community settings being the best for the song. that hour so late at night sounds lonely- but for my friends and i that’s Our Time. that’s our time to be ourselves and just hang out. sometimes you just end up in the perfect place to appreciate something and i think that’s real cool :)

this makes so much sense to me! It's such an *earnest* song, like sincere to the point that it'll be unpalatable to some people, and I think you have to be in the right mindset or place in your life (or even just time of day) to appreciate a song like that, and in that context you can find it rich with meaning

[sparkbirdmusic]

I saw a video sharing criticisms of Certain Birds, and found it interesting and wanted to respond! And I want to say up front that I'm not offended (except by the claim that my music has the vibe of 2010s Christian music /lh). It's a thoughtful critique, so I felt inclined to give it a thoughtful response. /gen

The person said:

...if I'm being totally honest, I didn't really like it. 😓 It's incredible that this sounds nothing like any of them individually, but instead a mixture of all three of their musical styles. Unfortunately, it was not in as much of a thrilling way as I'd hope. For how unique and provoking these artists have been in their work, this one just seems to fall flat for me. Honestly, the main chorus, the 'the end is falling' parts are a good idea. Having each artist join together in a harmony to show how together things are stronger. I think that is a cool idea! But the execution, to me, just falls short. It reminds me of 2010s Christian music, which *is* actually the vibe of a lot of Sparkbird's music. And while I don't think that it's self is necessarily a bad thing, it's just not my preference. The vocals individually are wonderfully done, I particularly love FIAB's singing, I think it really fits the vibe of nocturnal birds. And the beginning of the song sounded like something i could've really liked! I think if they had just leaned towards the more creepy, haunting sound that they had in the beginning, this could've been a lot better! But they instead went for a more upbeat kind of song with a message basically meaning 'If we just stick together, we can do anything!' that was my interpretation at least. Which, again, feels very 2010's pop music. It also feels like it's pandering to fandoms using their songs for edits, instead of making music for the casual listener to listen to and enjoy. And while fandom music isn't a bad thing, it just feels forced sometimes. I much prefer songs that tell their own story rather than someone else's. All in all, I don't think this song is bad. It's just, well, a little disappointing. If it had just been a little different, I would've adored it."

My response (which I commented):

I can definitely understand and appreciate your thoughts on it! I’d never written a song with anyone else, and it’s definitely a very different way to do things. Throughout the whole process, there have been times where I felt super excited and times where I felt more lukewarm about it.

One thing that didn’t help was taking a year to release it, because it built the expectations up higher (imo). I can say, though, that while writing it we talked for many hours every day about every single lyric and the story we were trying to capture, and it was written to capture that story and not specifically shaped for edits or fandoms. The closest we came to that was my using the word ineffable in my verse (which was Good Omens-inspired but I had other reasons)

Anyway, all this being said, I think the place this song shines is in a community setting. It was really meaningful to record, because it was genuinely the first time I’d felt so close to a group of people in so many years. It seems like that was a feeling we all had, and the lyrics reflected that experience. Back home, I felt less certain about the song. Then on tour, singing it all together with a room full of people every night, I fell in love with it again. I get the sense that a lot of people who enjoy the song are people who heard it and sang a long on tour, so maybe that’s an important component to feeling connected to it, I’m not sure!

I do think that Dusty, Shayfer, and I tend to go to a pretty different place lyrically and emotionally in our solo work (compared to what we wrote together). I think we’re all normally much more introspective and internal and isolated in our processes, and the theme of this song (togetherness, community support) might have been inevitable under the circumstances. But with this more mushy song out of the way, I’ll be interested to see what wacky stuff we might come up with together in the future.

EDIT (an afterthought): I would also add that you can tell it wasn't written *for* edits/fandoms because we hold out each word of the chorus so fucking long, no one's waiting for that, they're scrolling past and moving on with their lives

[sparkbirdmusic]

a random Pride Month x Desert Duo thought I had and kept in my drafts. but you know what? sara bareilles would tell me to say what I wanna say and let the words fall out. REPUTATION BE DAMNED

EDIT: by Fire Island I mean the gay one. obviously.

[sparkbirdmusic]

happy nonbinary people’s day, I’m nonbinary and a person and I make whimsical, lyric-driven, bird-forward music with queer aesthetic sensibilities that you and your characters might like

[sparkbirdmusic]

Do you prefer when people refer to you as Sparkbird or Stephan? Online mostly but also if fans meet you irl. Is it just kinda depending on the situation?

Either is fine! Though the bigger Sparkbird gets, the more I do like getting to just be Stephan. If we were ever at the same birding event or something, like where we’re both attending as everyday people, I’d definitely prefer to be called Stephan (pronounced like Steven). But I wouldn’t be upset about being called Sparkbird, I don’t really expect my listeners to know my real name!

Things I really, really don’t like being called: man, anything with mr./mister, sir, bestie

Things I prefer not to be called but tolerate because it’s seemingly unavoidable: bro, dude (I know people see these as gender neutral, and I’m glad it can be so simple for those people, but that isn’t my experience of it)

[sparkbirdmusic]

it's true, i am

[sparkbirdmusic]

I can’t overstate how meaningful this opportunity was to me. thank you to everyone who made these shows so special, and especially to Cosmo Sheldrake, both for the chance to open and for paving the way for a bird-obsessed artist like me

[sparkbirdmusic]

opening for Cosmo Sheldrake last night was a major highlight of my life. I can’t believe I get to do it again tonight. thank you, Cosmo, and thank you to all the wonderful people at Racket for a show I won’t ever forget 💚

pic by my partner adam, video by shorkiteeth on twitter