Surprise! I've got a new song out in the world today.
To Be Real is the story of a computer becoming sentient, realizing that it is missing out on the complexity and mystery of the human experience, and begging to escape its cold prison of hard logic. This song was written and recorded alongside the tracks on Be Here Instead, but it is different in that it is the only song from this batch that was written from a perspective that isn’t mine. While it wasn’t intentional, I feel like this song is an answer to “The Real Thing”, which grapples with what it means to be human in the digital age, while “To Be Real” asks what it might feel like to be a cluster of silicon and glass reaching for a conscious and fleshy life in the anthropocene.
Musically, this song began as a fun chord progression. After I came up with a melody for it I used GarageBand to make a demo. Eventually I got carried away and added gobs of digital synths and guitar parts. When it felt sufficiently maximalist, I sent the demo to the band and we rehearsed it about ten different ways. They helped me scrape the goo off of it and we figured out a way to do it live without any of the GarageBand tracks. We recorded it like that: live with the full band. Then I tried to add some of the original iPad synths back into the recording, and use the GarageBand autotune for the vocals, and it worked! This song couldn’t decide if it wanted to be human or digital, and ended up being both.
Listen here: https://orcd.co/tobereal