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Premise

This was my first real attempt at writing a proper song with lyrics and everything. I wanted it for my space-themed concept album. The idea behind it is that it’s a song by a robot/AI spaceship traveling through the universe at faster-than-light speed to reach a distant galaxy.

Along the way, the ship encounters “the void” and loses power, destined to drift in the vastness of the cosmos forever, unable to ever relay its experience back to its creator at home.

Lyrics

Chorus

Star hoppin’, I’m star hoppin’

Star hoppin’, I’m star hoppin’

Take a trip across the universe

Time and space is what I traverse

(repeat x1)

Verse 1

Kick the engines into hyperdrive

Folding space, blowing past warp 9

Even as my head spins round and round

The speed of light can’t keep me down

(Chorus)

Verse 2

Across the universe I fly

Superluminal, is how I ride

I swing on the pull of gravity

Flippin’ the bird to relativity

(Chorus)

Closing Verse

The engines freeze up, making no sound

Now I see darkness all around

I drift here in the cold of space

The void encroaching, what a cruel place

I can’t believe this is really the end

I’ll think about you, my only friend

At least I had a wild ride

I’ll see you on the other side

Sound Design

Saw Stabs

The main musical element of the track is the chord stabs lead by once again, a lovely Serum Saw Lead preset “Marina”. Playing the main chord progression with a pattern of 3/8 5/8. Routed through an auto filter and some light sidechain compression to get out of the way of the kick.

Best estimate of the chord progression from trying to identify the chords amounts to:

• B Minor 7
• C# Major
• G♭ Minor 7
• B Minor 7
• B Minor 7
• C# Major 7♭9 (minus the B?)
• G♭ Minor 7
• D Major 7

The chords are all a little complex for me to perfectly quantify, but usually entail the root chord plus a stacked octave, and various inversions.

Little Arp

My favorite element of the track, the little arp hook that chimes through during the Chorus and leads out the track to a slow, sad end.

It’s a Serum Synth Lead preset named “BraveHeart” fed through an auto filter and driven by a Ableton’s Arpeggiator in “Converge” mode in 16th notee through the first few apperances of it in the track. Toward the end of the track, I automated the type from “Pinky UpDown” back to “Converge”, and then ramped to 1/24 notes in “Down” pattern. From there, back to “Converge” but slowing down through 1/12, 1/8, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and finally 1/1 with final somber B note echoing off into nothingness.

Chord Pluck

Another Serum preset, this time a pluck named “Sunny”. The chord progression here is a but more simple than the main stabs and meant to counter the tone a bit.

• D Major
• C# Major
• G♭ Minor (2nd Inversion)
• C# Sus4
• D Major
• C# Major
• A Maj (1st Inversion)
• B Sus2 (1st Inversion)
• C# Sus4

Bassline

More Serum presets! I had just purchased Serum at the time, so this was my first time using it.

We’re using a bouncy pattern using “Trancy Bass” fed through a bit of EQ Eight, layerd with a different more stabby pattern at a higher octave with another preset I love “Feed the Mau5”.

Vocoder

It’s a layer of two Serm saw presets, one “Layered Hypersaw” and the other “Titan”. The Hypersaw is following the same chord progression as the stabs, while the Titan lead is a modified version of that chord progression and with random notes inverted to a higher octave to make them slightly different voicings. They’re both fed through Ableton’s vocoder with some heavy processing both before and after. The lyrics driving the vocoder were sung by yours truly :)

Drums

Just yer basic dance beat, some random samples, the part I was least concerned with as long as it fulfilled the purpose of being drums. There’s an 808 clap in there and some awful hihiat. I could’ve reworked it but it did the job.