Galaxy Shores On the Making Of “Melancholy Daydream”
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind "Melancholy Daydream" and the story it tells?
Well during a weekend trip to the beach, there was one night that I was feeling particularly antsy and kind of anxious. I was just starting the journey of making music and wasn’t really seeing that many returns from it, and I had all this pent up anxiety, and for me anxiety kind of makes me just shut down. I decided to take a walk out to the sand to clear my head, so I just stood out on the shore by myself listening to the waves, and the first batch of lyrics came to me “the waves crash alone and I share in their solitude, the sweet release of routine the same things I always do.” From there I just followed that feeling and sat in it and more lyrics began to come out. The song deals with the feeling that your dreams may be too big for you, so why really try to achieve them if it’s just going to hurt more when you fail? Sometimes you just sink into the patterns of stuff you already do all the time, and it almost lulls you to sleep when in reality there’s this amazing future waiting for you just outside of your comfort zone, it’s just hard to get there.
How did you approach the arrangement and composition of the music for "Melancholy Daydream?"
The first demo for “Melancholy Daydream” was actually recorded when I was still finishing the Galaxy Shores EP in late 2021. I already had the EP track list together so I knew it would be a song for the next album, but in listening it felt more like a cheap version of “It Is Not Meant To Be” by Tame Impala so I let it sit for a while and came back to it much later. Once it had room to breath, I went back and reshaped the chord progression and remade the synth and guitar sounds from scratch to make everything sound more lush, and I really felt like the song became fully my own sound, even if it retained some of it’s influences here and there. Once I had it all recorded I spent countless hours on just the drum sound first, because I really wanted to capture the live sound of the kit I was playing, something that I really struggled with while making the EP. As for the song title itself, one night while recording I went to my brothers room and when he asked how it was going I said “its going good, I’m recording a little “melancholy daydream” in there.” And he said “is that the title of the song?” and from then on it was.
Were there any memorable or standout moments during the recording sessions for "Melancholy Daydream?"
Some of my proudest sounds on this track are definitely the synth sounds. After listening to the progression on the demo, I knew I wanted to keep the same chords but I wanted to make everything deeper and more lush, and this meant finding new ways to play all the chords to capture more low end sound without losing the high end texture of the pads I had made. The gliding lead synth in particular took me multiple days of just holding one note endlessly and knob turning and it almost drove me insane cause I couldn’t quite nail down how I wanted it to sound. I also am really proud of the main guitar lick because it kind of came out of nowhere just noodling around the neck. It’s super simple, but I feel like it really captures the vibe of the song and makes for some fun head bobbing moments, at least I hope. This is also the first song I’ve ever recorded where there is no midi data, so every sound you hear is analogue and recorded live in the moment, which I really think is cool.
Could you share some of your musical influences and how they have shaped your sound?
My dad raised me on classic rock, so from a very young age I was listening to everyone from Boston to The Eagles to Queen and Pink Floyd and so on. This gave me a fascination for rock type music that has lasted a lifetime. In high school I discovered electronic music, and was drawn in by how massive every song felt, and I fell in love with all the synth textures I was hearing. Getting to college I discovered Tame Impala and finally discovered a genre of music that blended the synths and guitars that I love into one cohesive vision in a way I hadn’t heard since Pink Floyd, and from there I went on a deep dive. I was immersed in modern psychedelic music during the initial quarantine period of summer 2020, which is where the initial idea for Galaxy Shores came into being. I’ve become obsessed with songs that give me an other world feeling, no matter how they do it, and that’s something I have really tried to capture in my own music and I hope its the feeling that people get when they hear it.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a musician, and how did you overcome them?
My biggest challenge has definitely been starting essentially from scratch in regards to recording and producing knowledge. At this point in my career, all my songs have been written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by me. As I was beginning, people were telling me to send my stuff to other people for mixing and mastering, but I was so fascinated with the songwriting process as a whole that I decided I would just try to do the whole thing myself. I also really don’t know that much in regards to music theory, so a lot of the songs are recorded by feel, and this makes the recording process super fun and spontaneous but also very challenging at times when I want the song to transition somewhere else but don’t really know how to get there. I’ve had to overcome this by learning more and just putting on the hours with the gear that I have and trusting myself. As ive gotten deeper into this journey, I have found it incredibly difficult to make a name for myself in a musical world that thrives off of viral music and Tik Tok hits. I don’t want to “sell out”, but I also want to be able to make money doing music, so it’s a difficult spot to be stuck in, and it’s hard to take myself seriously sometimes when I’m putting all the hours in and have only a few listeners. In those moments I just have to step outside of myself and remember that it’s not about me anyways. It’s always been about trying to honor God through the pursuit of excellence and pouring into the people around me, and I have to stay consistent, hone my craft, and trust that as I improve the songs will get in front of the right people and they’ll be able to hear the passion and inspiration that I’ve put into all these tracks.