“Don’t Go” was completed in just three days. I recall sitting down at the piano, toying around with major and minor seventh chords. The melody just kind of happened. The whole foundation of the song came together in probably about 15 minutes. I immediately loved it. Hustled to my bedroom studio, made a fresh project file, and got to work translating my piano into a retro-sounding beat. I felt it needed a soft vinyl crackle, so perused lo-fi sample packs until I found the perfect sample. Most of the song's sounds have an instance of a plugin called J-37 Tape Saturation in the mixer to create a vintage wobble. Writing the lyrics for this track felt as natural as creating the music did. "Don't Go" is a simple song. Its words are admittedly generic, and it is comprised of few musical elements: drum samples, a synthesizer, a lead synthesizer, vocals, and an Ibanez bass emulator. 

There were uncertainties about "Don't Go". The verse has a grainy robot filter on it. This is because I sang the verse poorly. I had a serious case of demo-itis, and I spent so much time "fixing" the vocal that I fell victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. The first person I played the song for was my dad. 

"I think the verse could use some work, and the synth is too wobbly," he said.

My mom provided me with similar constructive criticism. I went with my gut, though, and released the song as it was.

The album cover is a picture I took on a bus ride to school in the morning. I remember that morning vividly. The lake was mistier than I had ever seen it, so I snapped a picture as the bus crossed the bridge. Years later I stumbled upon the picture while looking for album art candidates. I digitally imposed a rocket using Adobe After Effects, slapped on Apple's Dramatic Cool filter, then called it a day.

There is a great story surrounding the music video. At least, my brother and I think it is great. We filmed it in the mountains of North Carolina, though I do not know exactly where. My family was staying in a lake house at the foot of a mountain for Spring Break 2021. It was very cold. My brother and I occupied ourselves each day by going on kayak rides and walking our dog, Milo, up the mountain. One day, we took a wrong turn that we assumed to be a shortcut to the mountain's peak. We wound up trespassing on a Christmas tree farm. Our minds were blown — It was enormous. We vowed to keep the location's existence between the two of us and not clue in our parents until the last day of the trip. That evening we hiked up the mountain again to catch the sunset. It was the perfect place to film a music video. The following day, we filmed. Perhaps the biggest challenge in filming this video was due to our parents. My brother and I had to be back inside the cabin before dark, and, obviously, filming at sunset made achieving this difficult. The Christmas tree farm was a long way up, but we were content gaining fitness from sprinting down the mountain. By the time we got all the requisite clips for the video, the final day of vacation arrived. We celebrated by waking up at 5:00 AM, making hot chocolate, then sleepily tottering up the mountain. We spent that morning awed by the sunrise over the thousands of Christmas trees, listening to a staticky hand-crank radio, the sky turning pink while hot chocolate singed our tongues.

The video was posted a few days after the song's release. It helped pick up a few extra streams, but the song still displayed <1000 on Spotify. In fact, it took a whole year for "Don't Go" to cross the threshold, and it was not my first song to do so. It gained traction on TikTok in February 2022 and has been growing in popularity since then.

I will forever associate this song with my brother and our shared experience on the Christmas tree farm.

The bones of this song formed in 2021, but it wasn’t until August 2022 that I finished it. It took about three days to record, mix, and master “Postcard,” and about two weeks to make its music video. My brother and I finished the video two days before the first day of school, and the song went live the following day.

As I have with each of my songs, I crafted “Postcard” from the ground up. First I recorded the string section, then I programmed the drums, recorded the guitar, and added the rest. My favorite part is definitely the violin at the beginning of the track. (But who cares about my favorite part.)

I try to learn something new with each project. For “Postcard” I had to extend my vocal range to hit the high notes in the chorus. I learned how to animate on visual effects engine Blender to make the music video with my brother. While the song is about long-distance relationships, the video is about how quickly our dreams change. For two weeks straight my brother and I locked ourselves in our rooms and designed each shot. Of course we had a storyboard to work from, but we each took creative liberties because, after all, dreams are neither linear nor realistic. Collaboration made this project doable; I don’t think I would have been able to pull off the music video on my own. The way in which my brother and I collaborate evolves, but we use our experience with past projects to be more efficient.

“Postcard,” my ninth release, opened the doors to inventive projects in the future.