In the interest of making sure I wouldn’t get copyright stricken for any music that I decided to include on the podcast, I decided to make my own stuff. This was the first soundtrack I made for the podcast.
I think the saddest thing is that the podcast got struck down by YouTube and Spotify for using copyrighted music - negating the only reason I decided to do this.
Hot Cocoa
The first and only song that I composed specifically for this podcast. It was a fun little exercise in making something simplistic, somewhat jazzy, and somewhat lo-key.
Chess over Coffee
Technically (if you’re going chronologically) the second piece I wrote. I took this from the soundtrack of Tales of a Shoebox, a short film I contributed to about two years ago. It was a fun little piece that I thought would fit the vibe of the podcast.
The vibes of the original song were supposed to emote a classy, yet somewhat mysterious vibe. I added in the virtual accordion later down the line and redid the piano part, but everything’s about the same from the original.
Closing Shop
The last piece I wrote for the podcast, but the third if we’re going chronologically by original concept. I wanted to take the melody of Into the Rain, a song I composed as a testbed for two new plugins I’d recently acquired. The original song was already moody, so I decided to slow it down, remove some instruments, and make it emote the sort of feelings you’d get closing up a shop on a rainy day.
Midnight Brew
None of the songs here really fit the vibe of “scary” or “mysterious,” so if we decided to hone in on a topic of that quality, we would’ve been out of luck. I decided to take the original main theme of Tales of a Shoebox, which was already supposed to be used to showcase the dark and sad mood of the film, and use it as the base for this song.
I added in a little intro sequence and reorchestrated the opening segment to better fit the vibes of the rest of the EP, but otherwise, everything’s about the same.
Album Art
When I originally made placeholder artwork for the podcast, I decided to use a blue-ish gray background and a few simple colors. Vian, who’s a much better artist than me, took that concept art and turned it into a beautiful podcast cover. However, I still had some concept art, so I decided to modify it a bit and use it as the album art for this EP.
Anybody is the font used for the “Here’s a Minute” text because that’s what we use internally to write our episodes. My name uses Figtree.
Closing Notes
I loved taking a look back at my old work and cherry-picking the songs that I thought would fit the vibe of the podcast. In the future, I’m looking at writing more music for the podcast - but only if we continue to do it.
Listen to Here’s a Minute on Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts.