janice kwan

hello, this is my project journal 🐈

[janicekwan]

TUNIC (PIANO SKETCHES) 🎹 // These are some early piano concepts written for the game TUNIC. Sometimes when I'm feeling unsure, I find it helpful to look back and see how something began, and then where it ended up. It helps me remember how much tracks can evolve over time, and that it doesn't have to be love at first note.

Time is an interesting factor in creating things. Sometimes a track comes out in a flash--those are times I feel invincible and I could do this forever. Sometimes it needs to sit and ferment, and the flavour becomes more apparent over many sessions--these are times when I'm reminded that music has a life of its own and my work is in being open to whatever comes.

TUNIC https://tunicgame.com/

TUNIC SOUNDTRACK https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/tunic-original-game-soundtrack

[janicekwan]

POROUS 🌊 // Someone asked if I used all my own samples for "five colour bird" (I used some but not a majority), and the thought stayed with me. I wanted to explore the thought further, weighing the experiment in these tracks most heavily on finding music in everyday sounds which, for the purpose of this project, were sounds heard and recorded just going about our day, not necessarily recorded for the specific purpose of making music.

There's a certain letting go in adapting to a frictionless source-to-sample process. Being able to record at a moment's notice with a device that can fit in my pocket comes with an acceptance of "noise" as more of an intimate friend, and the music we make as a curiosity of the conversations we can have together.

What I mean by noise here are sounds we try to eliminate, work around, or prevent like handling noise and ambient noise when recording a specific sound in living, moving spaces. Sometimes I feel like my tracks sound really rough because of these "noises" especially when I have to look for references in finalizing the mixes.

Then I'm reminded of the moments people have mentioned when music has broken past the surface and hit them deeply:

when a live performance is slightly out of tune

when a performer makes a mistake

when a singer's voice sounds "ordinary" or "worn" in a neighbourly way

when the artist takes a risk and just deep dives

The common denominator of these seems to be the momentary proof that what the listener is engaging with is raw, alive, real. So it makes me wonder if it isn't perfection we're after, but the feeling that we're not alone.

Mastered by Matt Morgan

[janicekwan]

HYPER DEMON🤚by @sorathdev // A track by @eugnosis for the birds. @eugnosis also released HYPER DEMO, a whole album of unused tracks made during the project. Everything about the game is mind-blowing. @lifeformed and I were so lucky to help out with just this little tiny bit. We worked on the string element which plays off the zhonghu, a bigger and lower pitched erhu. The challenge was trying to play it in a way that didn't sound familiar. The security guard in our apartment could hear it through the walls and said that I should stick to piano T_T his suffering was for a good cause.

HYPER DEMON https://hyprd.mn/

[janicekwan]

TUNIC 🦊 // A soundtrack co-composed with @lifeformed for the game by Andrew Shouldice, Finji , Power Up Audio, Eric Billingsley, and Felix Kramer about a little fox in a big world. What a dream to be a part of this project, passions converging on every level of collaboration. One thought that kept popping up while working on this was "what am I fighting for?" I kept thinking about my favourite track from the FFIX OST "You're Not Alone" and how it made me feel the weight of what drives all the characters even though it was different for each of them. I feel like something opened up inside of me, a part of me felt completely free to pour in every emotion.

TUNIC https://tunicgame.com/

Mastered by Matt Morgan

Album Art by Jon Marshall

[janicekwan]

月見 🌕 // A collab with Gardener. Dwayne came up to my parents' place a few years ago to watch the fireworks. I recorded them enjoying the moon and fireworks and have been wanting to use the samples for a long time. @lifeformed introduced me to the luscious and classically wistful sounds of Nujabes. I was crushed when I learned that the tracks we have from him now are all we'll ever have and gratitude that we have that much. This track came out of processing that and wanting to help carry on the sound in some way. Dwayne in his special, magical way wrote lyrics that fit perfectly.

[janicekwan]

Once in a while, I get the chance to pull up an old unfinished song and give it a home 🌊 // Gardener sent his track over to me and when I heard it, it felt like a couple verses I had recorded years ago might fit well. Listening over, it felt good. It was a nice reminder for me that some things are written for another time.

[janicekwan]

What if I stopped trying? 🐢 // What if I let go of the desire to write something that would sound “nicer” than how I am feeling? What if I accepted the muteness when it appears and let my senses guide me? What if I wrote because I needed to not because I wanted to? I don’t know. With these tracks, I tried to not think too much.

[janicekwan]

One day something unexpected happened 🧲 // I remember being on the floor, and I just couldn't get up. But something moved me, it lifted my back and moved me. It felt kind of like I was saying these words to myself.

[janicekwan]

This took really long 🗻 // This was a project of practicing things, so many things. I kept adding to the list of things I wanted to try:

> Practicing taking out my camera and capturing things in the moment that caught my eye. Internally, it was trying to accept that things that caught my eye are worth capturing.

> Imagining and setting the sound and ambience for Part I.

> Making some sense out of the footage for Part I and II. I set a restriction of only using footage taken for this project (all from one family trip a few years ago).

> Writing the music for Part III. One of my favourite tracks is "Yumeji's Theme" by Shigeru Umebayashi. I only heard it through "In the Mood for Love" and have always wanted to explore the sounds.

> Writing the words Part III. This took some work. I wanted to make something that helped me think about my family and had some words written but something about it didn't feel right, maybe like I was trying to make it fit. In the end, I let it go and instead tried to practice listening to how it felt when I thought about my parents. It felt very awkward to read the words out loud, but I wanted to try to do it anyway.

[janicekwan]

This has been sitting around for a while 📚 // I wrote a basic version 5 years ago for Mother’s Day. I was so curious to see what Dwayne could do with it and was blown away by the openness in his writing and performance. My personal favourite is the parts where he sings. 

My biggest lessons were:

+ Going with where the song wanted to go // Besides bringing Dwayne into the mix, I had been re-recording it to replicate the original draft but one day, I opened the project up and heard something different (the current ending). It was a moment of “Well, that’s where it wants to go, then let's see what happens” and in the end it felt really good to let go.

+ Mixing // This took so many tries. So many. It is still a part of the process that I feel so inexperienced and like I’m doing it all wrong. The lesson here was to just to go through the tries: adjust, export, check, sit on it, etc over and over. I ended up cheating a bit at the end because I just couldn’t really grasp the Mastering part and settled for that being a lesson for another day.

[janicekwan]

A collab with @lifeformed​ 🌊 // He made such a hypnotic and energetic track that kind of breathed life into the words. The lesson for me here was behind the lyrics. It took a lot of time and processing to work through old thoughts and come to a place where I could write and sing the words. 

[janicekwan]

I find it tempting to add and add and add stuff sometimes 🌫️ // With this track, these lyrics were floating around for a while, and I wanted to try something that was more bare bones and not bound by my own expectations of genre.

[janicekwan]

I wanted to pair soundscapes with some instruments 🐉 // I used the Guzheng (a Chinese harp), experimented with breathing as an instrument and geese because I like geese. One of my favourite sounds used in this is the sound of an old chain from a broken dam recorded in a forest. It has this incredible slicing and dragging sound to it.

[janicekwan]

This is a profile short for an amazing painter and friend 🎐 // It was a lesson in study and reevaluation. I was excited to experiment musically and wrote a more complex piece to accompany the visuals. In the end, talking with the artist to understand her style better and how she thought of her work helped tone it down to something much simpler and reflective of her. One of my favourite elements in this is the wind chime which was a gift from Heidy :D

http://www.heidysumeichuang.com/

[janicekwan]

A collab EP with @lifeformed 🌠 // Going into the first 2 tracks, I thought he would be processing the samples to a point where they wouldn’t be recognizable, so I tried things I hadn’t done before vocally which involved both testing unfamiliar melodic lines as well as pairing simpler lines with an unfamiliar style of singing. Terence’s interpretations were so other-worldly, it really fueled the desire to explore and experiment. With the last track, I had some help from a cool guy named Matt Schmitz, he helped me record it back when I was burnt out and had no money. T_Thank you Matt, hope you are making beautiful things.

[janicekwan]

How to sing, idk 🙊 // I wrote this song thinking of friends.

[janicekwan]

I was starting to feel insane, so I sat down and cranked something out 🌿 // This piano sits in a big house. It gets played once in a while. It’s missing some things, but it can still make everything feel better.