#writing verifs sucks bc effort and thinking but part of me is happy i did it

[fmdjoosungarchive]

location: bc & gold star buildings, studios

date: april-may 2020

word count: 1409

warnings: of the paras this one references major & seasonal depression the most, but it’s not in depth descriptions

tldr; verification for sung’s song nosedive. partial everything. sung writes a song about the big d (one that’s not his * * *), and wants to recruit features from people that he knows understand that struggle, which ends up being @durifmd and @fmdaidynn

crafting this album meant that, to the last moment, sung needed to be working on the production. every song needed to work together and flow perfectly, to create the kind of sound sung wanted. two exceptions weren’t as strict, being the first and last songs. they were bookends.

that didn’t meant sung wasn’t going to try to make them similar anyway, even if the point was for them to be different enough to stand out a little. nosedive stood out, maybe less than happiness did, but it stood out nonetheless. being that it was the first song sung ever completed, of the songs that made it onto his final tracklist, that had a lot to do with it. most of the songs that were chosen had been written, or re-written, later in the process so that they fit together under the concept he’d come up with. nosedive didn’t have a need to be completely reworked, and sung liked it too much to let go of it.

and that was why, minutes before he had to send off his version of the final tracklist for approval, sung was still working on fine tuning the productional elements of the song. he’d had one idea that he couldn’t shake, in the shower that was meant to be used to distract himself from the impending due date. sung had run out of the bathroom with his hair still sopping wet, to rush to his computer for as much time as possible. by then, his face and neck had about ten different lines of water that had dripped down from his hair, but sung really didn’t care, not enough certainly.

he needed this last change. earlier in the process, it was something that had crossed his mind, but it was so brief that within a few moments, he’d already forgotten. but it was a great idea, and one he’d been utilizing in small bits here and there throughout the album.

audio panning.

the first time sung heard audio panning in a song was the first time he felt asmr. finding out that asmrist also did audio panning in their videos was a whole other tingle-ful monster he came to unravel -besides the point. with time, sung had come to see how much more powerful audio panning could make a song feel, in adding to immersion. and if he was going to be late to a deadline, it was going to be for this.

and, in a positive light, worrying about this meant not worrying about any other changes he’d made on songs. bonus.

he relaxed the sound during their vocal and rap lines, just to come back full force throughout the song, like a motif. although, really, the entire song was part of a motif, as the album was. nosedive was meant to set the tone for the entire album, and introduce the general concept of what the album would talk about.

sung could remember his fear over that, as if it was still happening in the moment. back then, he hadn’t decided what kind of album direction he would go in, if anything at all. having a concept as involved as this one wasn’t on his mind at all at that time. however, he had ideas. from his best guess, it seemed like gold star might have wanted an album around winter time, and winter was known for ballads. sung wasn’t. however, in his own writing, in what mattered most to him of the songs he’d put out so far, sung wrote about sad things pretty often. of course, he enjoyed songs about love, and enjoyed writing songs about love, but that wasn’t what was the biggest thought on his mind during winter. sans christmas.

winter was the most difficult of seasons to sung and many people, including those he saw every single day. it was a shared struggle amongst the general populous. sung knew that was something he could talk about, and if he was going to write an album for winter, it was something that he should talk about. that didn’t come without fear, though. starting a concept that once felt so grand and impossible brought a lot of fear with it.

weirdly enough, approaching duri with the idea, asking for a feature from him, helped. it was someone that he could share the burden with, not only in writing the lyrics, but in the entire concept he’d started crafting. working well together as people was also a help, because it didn’t take more than a session for them to plot out the basics of both of their parts.

...both, because sung had realized part of the way through that the song still didn’t feel complete. he could have written a second verse for himself, but the bridge would work better if it was a back and forth, with someone who didn’t have vocals that would blow him out of the water any day of the week.

a couple of days later, when the fear of rejection had passed enough that sung could send out something as simple as an email, he messaged aidynn. the two of them weren’t close as people, but sung liked the other man well enough in the time they had had together. even if he didn’t like aidynn, he’d have put on a polite and loving smile, for daisuke, just like he did with andy. thankfully, that wasn’t the case. from the most genuine place in him, sung knew that aidynn had struggles like he did, like duri did. and so, he sent off a message.

aidynn responded in the best way sung could have imagined, with a verse of his own, and after a few back and forth messages of little changes, sung felt secure in the song he’d created with two people he’d like to call friends.

he liked, too, that one of aidynn’s lyrics mentioned one of the same phrases that he did in another one of the songs on the album. for as different as the composition had come to be from the bulk of the album, it still housed references to the rest, just like each chapter held tidbits of one another.

sung wasn’t sure he’d make something so cohesive again.

when making nosedive’s composition, he hadn’t been thinking about how to be cohesive. he focused only on making something that sounded good to his ears, and could house the kind of message he wanted to spread.

he started with a simple beat, snapping and clapping onto his own body. it didn’t make for the cleanest of recordings, especially the claps, but it was doable for that minute. then, he hummed. the thought crossed his mind of picking up another artist to be doing this for him, especially when he naturally started humming into notes his vocal chords strained to try to reach. sung ignored the thought for then, thinking it might be best to, i don’t know, have a song, before asking someone to join on a song.

with a basis for a melody, maybe for the chorus, sung tried to create an actual beat, from a mix of digital instruments, and the same snapping he’d recorded before. the snapping wasn’t bad at all, production-wise. with it, he added the line of waving sound that flowed throughout the song, and later ended up being put through an audio panning reverb.

and from there, trouble hit in being so busy, that sung handed the song off to another producer to keep working on for him. by the time it came back to him, with a new beat inlayed, and lots of smaller additions, including a short moment of violin, sung had decided that this was going to be at least an option to take the album into. he could plan for several versions, sure, and if he was going to start one, it would start with this.

that motivation pushed sung into overdrive to finish the composition within the day, which was a big feat considering he had to drive to a violinist to add onto what the other songwriter had started with. after the audio panning, that might have been his second favorite part, and it was all thanks to someone else.

when it came to music, sung was largely a lone wolf, but sometimes, only the best results could come from letting others in. maybe he could send duri, aidynn, and that songwriter baskets of food from his mom.