So first and foremost, I need to express that I’ve been so blown away by how much some of you have enjoyed the album. If you’ve left me a nice comment that I haven’t somehow acknowledged, this is me doing that right now. You’re awesome. Thank you. It means so much to me that I’ve reached people who I’ll probably never meet with this music through our mutual connection to this story. What a powerful thing. How lucky we are to be alive. I love being a human in this wretched world etc etc etc etc
BUT the point of this post is to provide a little more insight into the album and how it got made, the intention I had behind the tracks and other fun little tidbits you might have missed. If that’s something that may interest you, read on!
Comically long post under the cut:
Just some general stuff:
The entire project was recorded with one mic — a contact pickup installed inside my harp — which was hooked up to my laptop through a pedalboard (the same kind of pedalboard that you’d probably see an electric guitarist use). This means that everything you hear is live acoustic sound, although a lot of it has been heavily processed by the pedal effects or by plugins on Ableton, or both. Like I mentioned, there was no microphone used other than the one attached to the wood of the harp. When you hear vocals, it’s me singing into the back of the harp’s soundbox (lol), when you hear ‘drums’, it’s me banging/knocking on the harp. I also do some Other Stuff that I’ll mention when we get to the regret prison track :) :) :)
In terms of the editing side of things, I enjoyed mixing the album a lot, since that’s mostly a creative process, but beyond that it was a pretty stressful struggle (which I documented at length, sorry @ my followers). I originally intended to hire someone to master it for me, but I had a tiny budget which meant paying someone was out of reach and I wasn’t willing to use AI to master my music which is unfortunately what a lot of low-budget musicians end up doing. So, I had to master it myself!
I don’t have any formal knowledge or conventional equipment as a mastering engineer so I’m sorry if you’re putting it in playlists and it’s not sounding as crisp or as loud as your other songs. It probably bothers me more than it does you, but if it is noticeable, just think of it as me protecting your ears from AI mastering through the power of slightly mediocre sound quality lmao
He Who Hunts Alone:
This of course exists to introduce the first of our protagonists. I wanted it to sound panicked - I had this image of Solas running through the Vir Dirthara completely distraught at what he’d done, but I also wanted to convey the Dalish idea of him as a predatory wolf stalking his prey AND have a sort of ‘time is running out’ feel AND naturally it needed to capture his inherent sadboy tendencies. So basically I wanted it to capture some of the complexities of a person who isn’t always sure himself whether he’s the hunter or the quarry.
It’s worth saying that this one was the most complex track on every level. A huge bitch to mix and edit, and the only one that forced me to actually write out sheet music when I was arranging it. As petty and difficult as its namesake, I guess!!
The ‘growl’ you hear at the end is me deliberately buzzing the hell out of a bass wire. Here it is with all the effects removed:
Vhenan:
And here we have Lavellan’s theme. I had trouble conceptualising this song, since we all have different OCs with different backgrounds and genders and general vibes. Obviously I had to make some executive decisions, but I think what binds a lot of different Lavellan experiences together is that what the world misunderstands about them, Solas can see perfectly clearly. I feel like the opening is what the world sees, this ethereal ‘idea’ of the Herald of Andraste, but then what Solas gets to see is something closer to reality: something with more movement, complexity, and vulnerability.
There’s a repetitive, circular motif that underpins most of the song and that was intentional. I always imagined that Solas would liken falling in love with Lavellan to falling asleep — easy and peaceful, but also accidental. A complete surrender of control, a fight that he’s guaranteed to lose, and he’s haunted by the knowledge that when he does lose that battle, he’s going to be left vulnerable and exposed. The hypnotic repetitive melodic texture is supposed to have that sort of lulling feeling to it, one that simultaneously entrances you but also pulls you off-kilter and ruins all your Veil-related plans.
In Another World:
My working title for this interlude while I was writing it was ‘Don’t Go’, and it was supposed to depict the Crestwood scene. Originally I wanted to write it as a sort of ‘conversation’, where the lower-range rolled chords are Solas’ voice (inspired by the defeated, resigned opening chords from ‘Still Hurting’ from The Last Five Years if anyone’s familiar with that musical), and the higher, inquisitive (lol) melodies are Lavellan’s voice. Lavellan is asking all these questions, and he’s just presenting the same non-answer. But, as I was working on it, it struck me that it sounded like Solas fantasising about this ‘other world’, where they would have been able to be happy, and the creeping inevitability of their reality, in which he cuts their relationship short, and Lavellan is ultimately left alone.
Dinan’shiral:
This little interlude was inspired a lot by Hadestown’s ‘Doubt Comes In’, specifically the concept album version (which, to me, is the best version of Hadestown we’ve ever heard. Sorry. Listen. I’m a old-timer Hadestown fan from 2017 when pretty much all we had was that album and nothing will ever beat it in my eyes. Don’t @ me. I’m happy to be wrong about it if necessary.) I had the image of Solas limping forward on this long journey of death, his heart beating slow, and Lavellan, like Eurydice, a few paces behind — although of course in this iteration Solas doesn’t turn around, as much as I’m sure he wrestles with the temptation.
There’s also a wolf howl in this track LMAOOOOOO. (I burst out laughing so many times while making this EP you guys wouldn’t believe). I debated hard whether or not that was going to be too heavy handed but ultimately decided that cringe is dead. I ended up using that sample twice actually, the first time it sounds like a wolf howl and the second time it appears a few seconds later it’s been pitched higher and reversed and it sounds like a scream*. I quite liked the rhyme of that. It’s satisfyingly palindromic. Anyway that’s my justification for kneeling on the floor, covering my mouth with my hand and making howling noises into my harp.
What I Feel For You Will Never Change:
When I was structuring the tracks for this album, I called this one the ‘heartbreak’ song, and considered the theme you hear throughout it the ‘heartbreak’ theme. (The theme here is inspired by the Fen’Harel altar theme from Veilguard. I don’t think it’s on the official soundtrack which is really wild??)
For me this song is, in a lot of ways, kind of the crux of Solavellan. It was the point the story was stuck at for a decade while we waited for Veilguard. For a while there, it looked like this was where the story ended. In my mind, if ‘Lost Elf’ is Solas and ‘Dawn Will Come’ is Lavellan, then this theme is the new melody they make together in their collective sorrow. The image that kept appearing in my mind when I was working on this was both of them on either side of an Eluvian, staring back at their own reflection, maybe pressing a hand to the glass.
Just some stuff on the effects used here —
There’s an effect on my pedalboard that kind of makes my harp sound like an underwater piano*, and I loved using it for this song. It sounds like someone very far away, or on the other end of a phone. In the outro you can hear the music shift from that effect to a more conventional reverb, as if the listener is passing through the glass.**
I imagined the bell-like reverb effect over the top of the melody*** as spirits or wisps in the Fade watching, maybe singing along and reflecting back their longing. Who else watched Peter Pan 2003 and was fundamentally changed by the scene where Peter and Wendy dance with each other as fairies fly and dance around them. Yeah. Very that.
[In case you’re curious, this track is my favourite :)]
Prison of Regrets:
Full disclosure, I recorded most of this track in like 8 hours when I was having a bad day and trying to escape my problems. It felt very apt. Almost autobiographic. Then I spontaneously posted it on here completely unmixed without thinking too hard about it, so I’m glad I was able to clean it up a lot when it got released with the rest of the tracks.
The pedalboard really does the heavy lifting here in terms of how processed and unsettling it sounds. Aside from that though, I’m also doing some freaky shit to my harp. I’m scratching on the wires*, I’m pitch-bending the strings with a tuning key**, I’m literally pressing on the strings to make the tiniest sounds possible***.
There’s obviously quite a few different Lost Elf moments in there that are easier to hear. The central melody is almost entirely intact, but gets stuck before the last phrase since he’s trapped both literally and also in the sense that he’s stuck in the regrets of his past. If you hear singing it’s the melody of Dawn Will Come in some form. I wanted to end on Dawn Will Come for this track because I felt that even in a place as horrible and dawnless as the regret prison, Solas would be holding on to the hope that he’d get to see the sun again.
I Forgive You:
A simple little interlude. Lavellan forgives Solas, as much as that’s possible. Even though it’s very straightforward, I cried a lot when I recorded this one. Everyone has a different understanding of Solavellan, and what lies at the heart of it. For me personally, that heart is called forgiveness. Forgiveness is the reason I love this ship so much and what makes it so special.
You can hear the heartbreak theme from What I Feel For You underpinning the melody half way through. I think a crucial part of healing / forgiving is accepting the sadness and the time lost for what it is. Making friends with the pain. That’s what I think Lavellan does here.
It Won’t Be Terrible If You’re With Me:
I don’t want to say loads about this one, since I feel like it speaks for itself, but I will say the effect you hear throughout is a ‘reverse delay’ effect on my pedalboard*. It records the sounds I make and then plays it backwards a second or two later, sometimes at a different pitch. It’s probably my favourite sound that my pedalboard is capable of producing. Someone told me once that they thought it ‘sounds like magic’, and that’s what I hear now every time I use it. I immediately knew I was going to use it here, to tell the story of Solas and Lavellan, who make sparks fly even with just a couple of stolen kisses in a 100+ hour game. The more I worked on this track, especially as I was mixing it, I realised it also sounds kind of like wedding confetti falling through the air.
Thank you so much for reading, and for listening. I think I mentioned this somewhere else, but this thing would never have been made if it weren’t for all the incredible art/writing that already exists in this fandom. I’ve already had a couple of people mention they write to this music, or it’s giving them ideas for their own projects and holy shit, that’s all you can really ask for. We are all dancing together in a symbiotic waltz and it is surreal and messy and wonderful. May it never cease. May our love endure <3
i am coming to terms with the fact that i am perhaps not doing well mentally at all, and that i’m in too deep to do anything about it. life is weird when people in your life are depending on you to survive.
