birdie

digital artist, poet, storyteller, composer

[callherbirdie]

blog intro! birdie aka callherbirdie

hi! i'm birdie, otherwise known as callherbirdie. i've been writing and posting music since 2021, but i only recently started doing music with vocals.

i was classically trained in piano as a kid, was in band during middle school, and spent all four years of high school in choir; where i got the award for "most improved" simply because i overcame tone deafness.

while i've been doing music for most of my life, i originally started in creative writing! i wanted to be an author like my hero, douglas adams, because his book hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy saved my life when i was growing up.

eventually i started writing poetry in high school, before transitioning to writing short stories during college. it was around this time that i started dabbling in musical composition and writing my own music, after discovering the website bandlab.

this was when i wrote my first EP, stranger(s), which i finished in two weeks while learning how to compose.

now, ~4 years and 2 more EPs later, i am working on my first album, called on borrowed time - which contains my first ever songs that contain vocals!

i'm not very good at maintaining a social media presence (and also i enjoy my privacy), but i will try to be better at managing my socials more often going forward.

links:

stream my music on soundcloud!

buy me a coffee or download my sheet music on ko-fi!

watch my music videos on youtube!

follow me on instagram @callherbirdie!

MY MOST RECENT SONGS:

asks are currently open for people who have questions about my content, or are interested in collaborating!

use my discount code FRIENDOFGAZPACHO on ko-fi to download my sheet music for free!

other projects:

rpg maker mv dating sim/jrpg hybrid (currently in worldbuilding/concept phase, solo dev interested in forming a team. will post updates on @garlicbreadeddev once i get around to setting up the page. looking for coders, artists, and possibly composers.)

spooky ocean themed collection of lullabies for adults

various short stories

[garlicbreadeddevlog]

Intro cutscene for my new RPG Maker project currently in production - "Another Place: A World Without You"!

"Another Place: A World Without You" is an otome dating sim JRPG hybrid with multiple love interests and branching routes/multiple endings depending on who you choose to romance!

Synopsis:

You've dreamed of defeating the Demon Lord since you were a child, and your childhood best friend has always shared this dream with you… Or so you thought! One day, catastrophe strikes, and your childhood best friend disappears without a trace. Racing against the clock to find him, you summon multiverse versions of him from other worlds in order to aid you on your quest! Is there any universe where you can be together? "I love every version of you." How far are you willing to go to prove it?"

Features:

6 Romance-able Love Interests

Comprehensive Social System

Branching story with multiple endings per Love Interest

Diablo 3 loot system

Repeatable Dungeons

Day/Night Cycle with Calendar System

Breathe life back into an abandoned town, build relationships with NPCs that have their own daily routines and unique dialogue

Donate to my Ko-fi here

Buy my discounted album here - (all proceeds will go towards the development of the game)

Are you interested in a game like this?

Yes

No

Maybe

Unsure

Voting ended onApr 30

[mrbimbo]

birdie

the only time i can truly be honest about how i feel is when i'm singing about it on a piano. i do art to make others feel the things that

big news! I am now selling my music on Bandcamp for $1 a track. you're welcome to pay more if you wish, but the price stays at $1!

I will be slowly uploading my entire discography over the coming months, as well as uploading my tracks to YouTube. I may or may not also make a Tiktok to promote my music!

in spite of this, Soundcloud will continue to be my most frequently updated platform - but I will try harder to accommodate those who don't use it going forward!

https://on.soundcloud.com/1fqOuItVzkogihloMY

You can also buy some of my piano sheet music on Ko-fi or tip me!

Visit birdie's Shop!

I've opened a shop. Come take a look!

[callherbirdie]

final girl

the only time i can truly be honest about how i feel is when i'm singing about it on a piano, or writing about it in a poem. i mainly write

song for when love is so atrocious that you feel like the main character in a slasher fic

[callherbirdie]

just realized that this fits perfectly with slashfic by dorian comics lol. maybe i should play it

[callherbirdie]

final girl

the only time i can truly be honest about how i feel is when i'm singing about it on a piano, or writing about it in a poem. i mainly write

song for when love is so atrocious that you feel like the main character in a slasher fic

[callherbirdie]

heaven for dogs

the only time i can truly be honest about how i feel is when i'm singing about it on a piano, or writing about it in a poem. i mainly write

Another attempt at bedroom pop! hopefully I fixed the vocals.

[callherbirdie]

trichotillomania: eyelash wish

trying out a new genre

trying out bedroom pop for the first time

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

Hey, wanna make music? Yeah? Got a buncha money? No? Well that's perfectly fine, check this free stuff out:

Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)

Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.

Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.

Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.

The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).

BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.

Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.

Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.

This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!

sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.

Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.

Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.

Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.

Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.

Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.

Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.

Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.

MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.

Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).

Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.

ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.

UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.

Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.

TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.

Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.

Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.

Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.

fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!

WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!

aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made a while back :P

As for DAWs, it's been a long while since I've used anything other than FL Studio (not counting Audacity, which I still occasionally use for specific purposes), which, while being the only one I can directly recommend, is paid. However, I've heard good things about Reaper which has a "free trial" that you can technically use forever, akin to WinRAR. Additionally, I've also heard some good things about Waveform Free.

[callherbirdie]

Personally I use Bandlab - which is free, browser-based, and has a mobile app! the mobile app has occasional ads, but I'm willing to forgive this because it has cloud storage so I can easily transition between devices to work on my compositions continuously. the only major downside i've encountered is that you need an active internet connection to save your work.

The resources listed here are probably better than Bandlab in a lot of ways, but I really value portability/ease of use and the ability to compose from anywhere (assuming I have internet). I can't tell you the amount of times inspiration has struck me while grocery shopping with my family or while eating at a restaurant. One of my favorite songs I've ever written was when I was eating KBBQ with my parents lol.

Recently I've taken to converting my midi files using MuseScore to make sheet music for my songs, the process is kind of janky and involves a lot of hand editing and adjusting note by note because stuff like key signatures and accidentals don't transfer very well.

[tacitcrow-blog]

Sometimes I remember I've been making music for a long time, for the same reasons, and I have to remix a song I wrote in middle school

Visit Original Link

(here's the "original," written for piano, transcribed from an old Finale Notepad file)

Visit Original Link

[tacitcrow-blog]

Visit Original Link

I think I might've actually relaxed today (loop this tune like I've been doing for the last half hour or something)

[tacitcrow-blog]

Visit Original Link

it's just been like this lately

[strangersinourworld]

can i just say something. I really love songs that are just absurdly long.

I was thinking about it recently... in the era of music we're in, where streaming has become this all-important thing and for a song to become popular it needs to Go Viral. I've noticed that song shave become a lot shorter because of that... because you have to base everything around the 10-second clip that's gonna go viral, because you have to put your effort into making 10 songs of 2 minutes each so that you can hike up those streaming numbers, so you can become Famous and get Money.

And then you have like, artists who are gonna put their whole soul into a 15, 16 minute long song. Artists who have an idea going throughout that entire runtime and develop it so beautifully that making it shorter is just doing it a disservice. Artists who make songs with multiple sections (even though it would probably be way more profitable to split each section into its own song). Like for them it's not about the money. it's about what they're trying to say with this song. And their insistence that it has to be told in this specific way. They're doing it because they love it and you can tell how much they love it in each second.

I love it so much. I love long songs.

[callherbirdie]

I miss the days of long songs! These days the average song I write is 5-7 minutes, and that's me trying to keep things concise lol. I don't know how some songs can fit into 2 and a half minutes.

When I first started writing music during the pandemic my songs were 2-3 minutes, but now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing I find that I have a lot more to "say" in each song. Ultimately I value preserving the artistry/authenticity of the work over going viral/making a profit.

Still, being disabled and having no source of income is a drag, so I have to find other ways to compensate. On top of all that I also suck at managing a social media presence :/ so I've had a lot of trouble getting my work out there and networking with other musicians.

Also, side note, I remember seeing a song teaser go semi-viral and I loved it, but all the posts always showed the same 15 seconds - and when it released, the whole song ended up being totally different from what I expected. That 15 second clip was the most polished part of the song.

I think another aspect to this whole thing is that social media and the algorithm has ruined our attention spans and our ability to enjoy long form content in general.

Honestly I think it's a really sad progression to go down

[callherbirdie]

ambient rain

i'm an "in every timeline" kind of person. the only time i can truly be honest about how i feel is when i'm singing about it on a piano, or

making ambient rain remixes of my music! will be adding to the playlist as I go along and will turn it into a compilation once i'm finished.

perfect for spooky DnD campaigns, music to fall asleep to, or ambient noise to have in the background while working!

[callherbirdie]

TW: suicide implications

three different versions of the song I wrote for suicide prevention month last year, based on my own experiences!

it's about calling someone to say goodbye when you're contemplating and about to attempt suicide, but no one ever picks up.

Lyrics:

Blink and you'll miss it

I don't have the heart

to say what I'm thinking

might take it too far

Blink and you'll miss it

I called on the phone

but you didn't answer

you'll never know, because

When I called you this morning

I can't say much was on my mind

I kind of just wanted to see you

afraid that I might cross the line

and I can't keep my composure

I don't want you to see me this way

so I call knowing that you won't answer,

because

Blink, blink and you'll miss it

it's almost like saying goodbye

Blink, blink and you'll miss it

There's no one on the other line

Someone to tell me

what my life was worth

Someone to tell me

that we'll make it work

Someone to tell me

Someone to tell me

Someone to tell me

Somebody tell me

Because I can't keep my composure

and you don't have the words that can save

But I guess I just wanted to see you

Someone with nothing to say

Just tell me to stay

tell me to stay

Just tell me to stay

and I'll swallow the pain

Tell me you'll miss me

That I'll see you again

I'll see you again

Because I can't keep my composure

If I called you, would you feel the same?

Come find me when everything's over

If you think you can outrun the shame

Blink and you'll miss it

I dont have the heart

to say what im thinking

might take it too far

Blink and you'll miss it

I called on the phone

but you didn't answer,

you'll never -

[callherbirdie]

song i'm currently working on! been sick recently and lost my voice, so i spent three days producing the instrumentals for this track.

i've also been sprucing up my social media profiles with new bios/descriptions/banner art, and have also spent the past three days updating my old album art.

for the past 4 years i've just been using old art i had lying around as placeholders for my cover art, but now i am working on giving each song a unique cover!

on top of this, i've taken the time to update the titles of some of my earlier work to better reflect my current identity as an artist.

i will be posting some of my favorite cover arts on here when i get the chance, but so far i've already completed about 20.

once i'm feeling better and get my voice back i'll be posting a new version of this song with vocals!

[callherbirdie]

wrote a song for halloween!

it's about watching as someone you love slowly stops seeing you as human, and the dehumanizing feeling that comes with begging for love.

i made the autotune slightly janky to add to that slightly inhuman, uncanny valley feeling!

[callherbirdie]

original song "this time, next time, so long, forever" by me!

video made with royalty free stock footage using Canva. no AI generated content was used.

music, lyrics, and vocals are all original by me.