more things that she said

I made 2 more "things that she said"s in rapid succession, this time focusing more on the chords instead of the melody first. They're just really simple outlines I guess. i did this by putting 10 minutes on the clock and forcing myself to just put out the first thing I thought of. I wrote them without listening to them until the very end, so that makes me feel slightly less shitty about how bad they came out. even though i shouldn't feel bad because i'm just starting out and i was intentionally trying to experiment with weird things so really, it's expected that they come out weird. i gave it roughly one chord per line of the poem so they're really short. They both sound really shitty wonky because idk chord functions, and i should probably go and learn about that. and listen to more music analytically. also I was reminded about that "make 50 of something" challenge that Vi Hart did a while back; the idea is to make so many different versions of something that it forces you to try new things and improve on it, and it also helps you be ok with a lot of them being bad because there's less focus on the individual versions and more focus on the whole thing as an exercise. So I think i'm gonna do that; making 50 versions of things that she said, or at least as many as I can before I get too tired/bored/annoyed.Things that she said 2 by Samantha Liu

So for this one I learned that just because it's a major chord doesn't mean that it's going to sound happy (exhibit A: measure 4). I think I compartmentalize too much in my mind because I was thinking only about that one chord change without the context. So I learned I'm bad at stringing things together into long coherent phrases. I think the motion of the melody also contributed to its weirdness, with that fall from F to Eb and then the wistfulness of a minor 6th, was definitely NOT the mood I wanted for the line "Let yourself go." Maybe I should just start with writing things that use like NORMAL chords (1, 4, and 5) maybe I'm trying to jump ahead of myself by putting in weird spicy chords just because. i think maybe next time I try this I'll make one really "borrect" example just as like a control or something.

Things that she said 3 by Samantha Liu

well, this one's more normal than the other one at least. I still don't like what happened in measure 4 though, and I can't figure out why. I think I don't like the movement from G to C back to G so quickly in this context. like the peak was at the wrong place. maybe I should take the cues from the poem even less literally than I already am. because I made the melody peak on the G relatively where the "go" in "let yourself go" would have been but it musically doesn't make sense. Or maybe it's one of those deals where it just sounds weird because I've been thinking about it and staring at it for so long. (Actually, coming back to it after lunch, it does sound less weird than I thought it did. But I still don't entirely like it.)
Also, I've already hit my 5-score upload limit on the free version of Musescore, so it looks like by the end of this project I'm going to have like 15 musescore accounts. whoooops?
the good thing is I already feel SOOOO much better about making these. It doesn't make me want to kill myself whenever I listen them anymore. Now it's more like slight cringe and disappointment, but even those easily go away when I sit down to analyze my mistakes more systematically. So yay!!! This is progress! i'm feeling good. :)