I FELL ASLEEP

She Said You’ll Never Be Cool

This is a project I worked on in September 2024. It features unique chord progressions and leads on my various two Epiphones. The Silver Sun Burst Studio that my parents bought me when I turned 13. And my new Classic White Billie Joe Signature Epiphone Gibson Jr that I bought specifically for this project. Programmed drums that I produced with FL Studio. Bass was also recorded by me. Usually I record the guitars first then I move onto bass and mirror the guitar, maybe add a note here and there. And no I didn’t know I had autotune on until I was done with the record. JK! The lyrics are a mixture of freestyle and written. Sometimes I’ll freestyle songs, but for this project I wanted to write for more of a polished feel. I wanted the lyrical content and feel to match through out the record. I throw on that delay, reverb, autotune, some EQ, and compressors and let it rip. GREMLIN was the first song that was fully fleshed out with bass, drums and a simple 6 chord progression. It was definitely missing something though. I turned on my guitar and threw down some leads/solos over the intro and choruses with a stock FL guitar peddle plug-in. It came together like the final piece of the puzzle and this song quickly became one of my favorites. The atmosphere of all the sounds is that feel good vibe. The lyrics are just about my life.. about being alone and making music. Being a musician without clout is a lonely world. One I’ve lived in for a long time. “Lost my place in this society, trapped in a world where you wanna be..”.

CHOKING is the second song on the album. This was the first song I wrote for the project. I have a acoustic demo recording of it on my phone on SEPTEMBER 10th. This song features my Gibson Jr. I think the song is in a drop D tuning, so it kind of has this darker overall tone to it. For this project I also bought a BIG MUFF peddle. So I don’t have to rely on FL plug-ins. I knew I wanted to write an album with guitars. I grew up with a guitar and hopping type beats without being able to customize them was getting annoying. The song is random bits of poetry that I come up with on the spot. The chorus comes in with the BIG MUFF peddle. I looked at other peddles in the store, but the BIG MUFF caught my eye and sounded the best to me. Smashing Pumpkins used it the store guy said. Took it home and recorded that day. There was no specific inspiration for this song, other than the lyrics in the chorus talking about my psychotic moments. “These blank walls, they talk to me, speaking words of what’s not reality..”.

This video basically sums up what the music sounds like in my head. Two guitars overlayed with each other slightly similar. The bass guitar in the back carrying the rhythm. Vocals serving its purpose in the mix. And the drums are just kind of there by the computer. The song MYSTERY by Turnstile was a huge inspiration on this track, instrumental wise. It’s one of those songs that I play in my car on repeat super loud through the neighborhoods at night. Just the hugeness of the guitars in that song is something that I wanted on a record. I use a BOSS KATANA guitar amp with certain presets I made during my bands Penny Richer days. During the verses is when I think the amp shines the most. The chugs of the guitar fill up my car speakers nicely. With the mixture of the vocal melody and lyrics, its a nice track to cruise too. I didn’t have a car for a year until recently, so I’ve been jamming these tracks in it. I wanted the lyrical content of this song to be as simple as possible with short phrases. They were basically inspired by a girl that told me I’d never be cool one time. I don’t know why but that always stuck with me. These days, I’ve just accepted that she was right, I’ll never be cool.

There are 7 songs total on the project. I never made a video for the 4th and self titled track I FELL ASLEEP. I moved onto the 5th track, 2019. I mainly named the song after 2019 because I wrote the guitar riff while I was in a band with these girls I was friends with at the time. We wrote a few songs together, with me being on drums or me playing guitar and singing. We wrote one song together called, ANIYUH and it’s a recording that I come back to time to time. For a long time I was a immature punk, with bad psychotic issues. It was also the last year I remember having before I started having full blown psychosis episodes. I was also friends with a girl that lived in Finland at the time. There were many nights I would talk to her and her friends in the studio. They were always a day ahead of me, so I’d be up at 3am while it was 2pm for them. I also had a girlfriend that meant a lot to me at the time. She still does but that ship has sailed on. It felt like I actually had friends in a rare moment of my life. But that was years ago now and that’s basically where the inspiration of this song comes from.

This was the last music video I recorded for the project. TRIGGER was a song that was inspired by bands like A Day To Remember with their heavy drop open chords and break downs. I’m also playing octaves in the song, you can especially tell during the break down. The lyrics again are random scattered poetry that isn’t really suppose to mean anything. It’s a tough song to sing as well. Most of this album were one take goes, but this one I had to stitch together the vocals because of how difficult it was. I’m basically yelling through the whole track and sometimes it literally feels like my voice box is gonna pop out my mouth. Mentioning the break down again because I feel like it’s a highlight of this track. The vocals are just spot on, I recorded all of this at my house and I’m sure the neighbors can always hear me.

The End

Well that’s about it for the I FELL ASLEEP record. Hopefully you enjoyed this thread, because I really enjoyed making this album. Thank you so much and remember that I FELL ASLEEP is out on all streaming platforms and stores!