🐾 A bold choice to open an album with a slow song, I'm sure, but if people don't like it, that's not my problem. I decided, for my debut album, that I would open it with a modern take of the very first song I ever made. "For the Stars" was a song I made in 2010 during a road trip from Kentucky to Nevada to visit family. As I sat in the backseat of the car (because I was 14 at the time), I looked out at the clear, starry night sky and was just taken by how many stars I could see out in the desert sky. I remember having this feeling, I can't explain it, but I wanted to express it somehow, so I opened up my little ol' iPod Touch, opened my Xewton Music Studio app, and made a pretty similar version of what you hear here, just much, much less developed, of course. I have the original song uploaded somewhere on SoundCloud (but you can't see it right now because I haven't been able to pay for it), and it was also my first full-length song.
🐾 Opening with this song shows that I'm a band kid at heart, while I was never in an orchestra, the use of strings, flute, oboe, clarinet, glockenspiel, and vibraphone instruments (and the strings are individual instances of Edirol Orchestral for Violins, Violas, Celli, and Contrabasses, just one for each, though, as the VST has, like, "Violin ensemble" and whatnot to get a fuller sound) — the use of these instruments is meant to signify my connection to classical music and traditional instrument performance, me being a percussionist myself. Near the end, I have a marching snare drum solo meant to signify my connection with marching band as a percussionist, one year having marched in the drumline, but for the other 4 years, I marched in the front ensemble. Then, of course, the song shifts to a more EDM-style vibe to better represent the style of music I will most likely be making, but with the classical instruments mixed in as there will always be that element of classical and traditional music in what I do.
