On December 6th, 2020, I uploaded my first ever piece of music to YouTube, entitled "Jesus Pizza". I get more and more tepid about linking it every year since it sucks, but it's necessary as an introduction!! I know I'm late again this year, but I had finals to worry about, plus at this point I think it makes more sense to transition this post towards the end of the year anyway, since an end of year recap on December 6th feels kind of wrong.
Anyway, what did I do this year??
NGAP20
My first collab of the year! I teamed up with Jaksana who did a little vocal intro at the beginning of my entry, which I think added a nice touch. I'm really glad I got to contribute to such a huge celebration of the audio portal! I didn't feel that my entry was super intricate, but that doesn't really matter, it's the thought that counts! Now that I'm in the Newgrounds Audio Collab Discord, that's been opening the door to even more collaboration, though I'm still trying to get over the whole shyness thing. I never actually uploaded my part of the collab here on NG, but I did put it on my website (which is also new this year), which has songs and demos that I never uploaded here!
Beat Saber Collab
Unfortunately, this one isn't out yet, but I will give it a mention because I cooked for this one and I'm still really antsy for it to be done. I made a song that will eventually be included in a Beat Saber map pack filled with songs from other musicians here on NG, organized by sereneFalconer! The cover arts for each song are also made by NG artists, and in my case I was paired with UnsolvedCases, who was a pleasure to work with and who also cooked hard!! If all goes well, I should be able to reveal my contribution in 2024!
Sea Shanty Collab
Yeah okay this one isn't out either, but my part is done for this one too, so I still count it as this year. I made an instrumental for the upcoming Sea Shanty Collab organized by VoicesByCorey and MonkaBonka809! I did a cover of "The Last Shanty", in this case the Derina Harvey Band version. I saw this collab back when it was first proposed in like April, but I didn't feel I had time for it at that point. When it was revived a month or two ago, I listened to The Last Shanty and felt like I had to hop on, so I did! Once the whole collab comes together I think it's going to be really awesome, so stay tuned for that!
Okay that's it for the collabs, but I did pop off in general this year
Seriously I feel like my improvement this year has been monumental. Once the summer hit, something just changed, and my compositions have just been getting so much more interesting. I can't even count the amount of times I've just been working on a song and been like "holy shit I made this???" and then I physically stand up and start pacing around. In the grand scheme of things I'm still not exactly a professional, but I've really been on the up and up.
Greatest Hits
I do still have one more song that I'm working on right now, but I still don't think it will trump Wishing Star as my personal favorite song of the year, mostly for personal reasons. I made Wishing Star right as I was leaving for college, and that period of time combined with the instrumentation and composition of the song made it so that it has a strong emotional impact for me. Production-wise, it's probably not even the best song I made this summer, but production < feels.
Another one I really liked this year was Make It Last Forever, which was the first song in my streak that's been lasting throughout the latter half of this year. It was the first song where I really felt that little bit of extra spice was added, and it definitely shows.
Last one I'll mention here is 555, which I really really enjoyed making. The sampling of a voicemail is radically different, but it was fun. It was probably the most fun I had working on any song this year, just because it's infectiously bouncy. It also blew up over on cohost.org, which is the website that it was originally made for in the first place, which I'm still riding the high of over 2 months later. It really accented how much I've improved lately.
What next?
No idea! Only time will tell. I'm sure I will do more collab stuff next year, and hopefully garner the cajones to go even more outside my comfort zone. Until then, I hope you all have a very good holiday season!! Thank you to everyone who supported me and who I collaborated with this year, 2023 has been the best year of my life so far and pretty much everyone I've met this year on NG and Cohost has contributed to that.