Hiatus Notice

I’ve been thinking about what my last song (before the hiatus) should be for a while now.

I started writing songs in April 2016, just over 10 years ago.

At first it was just to let my feelings out and I wrote freely. Soon it became clear that this is a special and important thing to me, so I tried to be more disciplined about recording ideas and thinking about my songs whenever my mind was idle. My productivity peaked in 2019 when I felt like I had so many song ideas that my brain could explode. After turning most of those into reality, I promised myself that I would at least release a song every year, either on my birthday or on 2/22, the anniversary of my band. Most recently, I've just released songs as they became ready.

This slowing down is not exactly surprising, but it has made me pay extra attention to the few songs that do make it. Lyrics have always been the main focus of my work, but I do feel that using lyrics to motivate everything has taken a toll. My songs tend to lack energy because they are driven by the rhythm of the melody instead of actual rhythm tracks. My desire to make the music fit the natural cadence of spoken words often leads to the melody feeling rigid. I wonder why I still choose songs as the form factor when, for instance, turning these stories into poems would probably make me a lot less stressed about writing them. Lastly, I’ve always been into the idea of making the arrangement of a song directly a part of its message, but this is hard to do when most of my tracks use the same instruments.

So I figured taking a break would give me time to get better at music. The only question was when to do it. Remakes like Ann and 风 were nice full-circle moments. I was really proud of The Blue Bar and Aziraphale’s Song, and both seemed like a worthy place to pause on a high. With The Speech, I finally wrote for a crowd, and it would be fulfilling to conclude on a song that was heard by a lot of people as I performed it live.

But I decided to stop not because of past songs, but rather future ones. I’ve held a superstition that if I share a song prematurely, I won’t be able to complete it. But since this is a special occasion, I might break the rule. Here are some of the songs I have planned:

• Angsty Long Distance Queen
• Goldfish & The Whale
• 邯郸のAphasia
• Cursed Quaternity
• The Duet
• The Lullaby
• Genre Change
• Kitty Love
• Viktor Arcane x Generative AI

Maybe just by looking at these titles, you can sense that they are pretty ambitious projects—some have survived my procrastination for a long time, but I still don’t want to give up on them. These songs need me to be better at every part of songwriting. I want to take a break from the narcissistic way of only working on my own music when I play, and learn from others instead. I want to be able to recognize chord progressions. I want to have a hobby after work. I want to rediscover the swell of emotions that can be experienced without any words.

So thanks for listening to my songs thus far. I bid you (a temporary) farewell, but hope to sing for you again soon. 💙