Chapter 47: The Creation of the Haze
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Michael woke up. The sun was streaming through his bedroom window, but he felt rested. The night before had been... fun.
The Instagram live with his friends had been chaotic, loud, and strangely normal. Watching Jake and Sam fight over who was on camera more, while Leo rolled his eyes, had relaxed him.
He sat up in bed, the memory of the live stream bringing a smile to his face. It had been an impulse, a spur-of-the-moment decision to show the beat.
He grabbed his laptop from the nightstand. He was curious to see if anyone, besides his usual fans, had noticed the 30-second teaser.
He opened Twitter. And his eyes widened.
It wasn't his usual followers. His "Mentions" feed was full of a type of user who had never paid attention to him before. They were producers. They were audio nerds.
People with avatars of their studio monitors or the Ableton interface.
"Did anyone else hear Michael Demiurge's live last night? WHAT WAS THAT SYNTH?"
"I need that preset. NOW."
"It's not a preset, idiot. It's processing. It's insane."
Michael felt a rush of professional pride. These were the people he respected, the people from the forums he used to read in secret.
He opened YouTube, searching for his own name. And what he saw froze him.
The first page wasn't full of fan reactions. It was full of technical analysis.
The channel "Beat Breakdown", a channel he followed himself and which had hundreds of thousands of subscribers, had uploaded a video just a few hours ago.
The title was: "ANALYZING Michael Demiurge's NEW 'PSYCHEDELIC' SOUND (Live Teaser)".
It had thousands of views and likes.
Michael clicked. The video began. The host, a well-known producer in the community, had recorded Michael's live stream. He isolated the 30 seconds of the beat.
"Okay, listen to this," said the host, his voice serious, analytical.
The beat played. The whoosh of the reverse reverb filled the speakers.
"Did you hear that?" said the host, pausing the music. "That, my friends, is reverse reverb on the main chord. It's not a simple swell. It's meticulous work of exporting, reversing, applying echo, and reversing again. This kid is not an amateur."
The host continued breaking down the sound.
"And the background pad... how did he make it sound so 'watery'? It's like it's floating. What VST is he using? Is it a Juno? Is it Arturia?"
The video continued for ten minutes, analyzing every layer he could hear.
Michael stared at the screen, stunned. They weren't reacting to the song. They were reacting to the engineering behind it.
He went to the subreddit r/trapproduction. The front page was full of threads about him.
"OFFICIAL: 'DRUGS YOU SHOULD TRY IT' HYPE THREAD"
"Can anyone recreate the synth from Michael Demiurge's live?"
"The quality jump from 'Sodium' to this new beat is crazy. This kid is learning at a terrifying speed."
People were hyped for this new song. They were impressed by the leap in production quality. They saw him as one of them. A producer who was pushing the boundaries.
Michael closed the laptop. He watched all this with a quiet smile.
He felt... validated. In a way that 'White Iverson' could never achieve. Viral fame was great. But this... this was respect.
Respect from his peers. From people who understood the work that a whole week of technical hell had cost him.
They had deciphered how he did it, but they didn't know why. They didn't know the guide came from a divine system. They thought it was just him, a 16-year-old genius in his bedroom.
And what was better: they hadn't heard the best part.
They hadn't heard the vocals. They hadn't heard the way the Auto-Tune would melt with those synths. They hadn't heard the backwards outro.
They hadn't heard anything.
He got out of bed. The YouTube fame, the Reddit threads... it was all outside noise. It was time to finish the work.
He went to his studio, sat in his chair. Opened the drugs_v1 project.
It was time to record the vocals.
Michael sat in his chair, the psychedelic beat of 'Drugs You Should Try It' playing on a loop on his monitors. It was time to record.
He stepped into his closet-booth. The hype from the producers on YouTube had given him a new confidence. He wasn't nervous; he was focused.
This recording wasn't about raw pain or rage. It was about texture.
He started with the most complex part, the one he had been planning. He recorded the outro first.
'When you're home alone in the mood...'
'I know you wanna move, I know you wanna dance...'
His voice came out soft, ethereal, almost a whisper. He recorded it several times, stacking harmonies.
Then, he exported those vocals. He dragged them to a new track. He reversed them. He added a ghostly echo to them. And he placed them right at the beginning of the song.
He hit play.
'(Hoo) Yawa thgin eht esahc...'
'Ot ydaer 'nitteg er'uoy wonk I...'
The sound was incredible. It was his own voice, singing backwards, acting like an otherworldly introduction. It was exactly the psychedelic trick he wanted.
Now, the main song.
He activated the Auto-Tune plugin, setting it to a fast and noticeable setting. He didn't want to sound human. He wanted to sound like a synthesizer.
He pressed record.
'I try it if it feels right... This feels nice...'
His voice melted into the beat, the Auto-Tune locking every note in place, creating that robotic and beautiful texture.
'I've been down and lost for days...'
'Glad I found you on the way...'
He sang the lyrics with genuine honesty. His fans. Chloe, Victor, Damien. They were the "you" he had found on the way.
'When the day gets brighter, the night gets nighter...'
'I always feel this way...'
'Through the hills / I hear you callin', miles and miles away...'
The chorus flowed effortlessly. It was a simple melody, but the soundscape he had built made it feel epic.
Then, the verse. The energy changed. It became more rhythmic, more like rap.
'We up all night, from dawn to dusk, it's always poppin'...'
'I fell in love, fell outta love, we both had options...'
He thought of Clara. Of his own parties. Of the empty life he was starting to taste.
'I played the drums, she rolled the drugs...'
'I rocked the club, we both throw up...'
'We was the band you never heard before...'
'You got that tat' above your crack...'
'And on your cat, you be right back...'
'Your mama never know...'
The lyrics were a vignette, a polaroid of a fast and hedonistic life that he was predicting as much as describing.
'We were rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' stones...'
'When I'm all alone I wish you had a clone...'
'I take that puff, you take that puff...'
'You know we never care to overdose...'
The feeling of youthful invincibility. Of being stupid and knowing it.
He went back to the chorus, singing it with more force.
'I try it if it feels right (Oh)... This feels nice...'
He added the ad-libs in the background, the little "oh" and "ooh" that filled the empty spaces.
He reached the bridge. His voice became more spoken, more intimate.
'Shit, I try it if it feels nice...'
'Shit, this kinda feels nice...'
'M-miles and miles away... Miles and miles away...'
He finished with the outro, this time sung forwards, the counterpart to the intro.
'When you're home alone in the mood... I know you wanna move, I know you wanna dance...'
'Chase the night away (Ooh)... Oh, you love me, darling.'
He stopped the recording. In a few hours, he had all the vocal tracks. They were perfect: ethereal, robotic, and beautiful.
The work was almost done.
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Michael woke up on Sunday with a single goal: finish the song.
He sat in his professional studio. The psychedelic beat that had taken a week to build was ready. The ethereal vocal tracks he had recorded the night before were ready.
Now, he had to merge them. He spent the entire Sunday on the most complex mixing process of his life.
This wasn't like his other songs. 'Ghost Boy' was raw. 'White Iverson' was clean. 'Paris' was loud.
But 'Drugs You Should Try It' had to be... immersive. It had to be a three-dimensional soundscape.
He started with the hardest part: mixing the dozens of tracks. He had the reversed synths, the hazy pads, the crisp beat, and now, 10 or 15 vocal tracks (lead vocals, whispered harmonies, reversed intro echoes).
He put on his Sennheiser HD 650 headphones. They were like a microscope for sound.
"Okay, space," he muttered to himself.
He began the meticulous process of "carving". He used equalizers to cut frequencies, making sure the 808 bass didn't clash with the kick, and that the lead vocal had its own "pocket" in the middle of the synth fog.
Then, he moved on to automation. This was the real magic.
He wanted the song to breathe, to move.
He spent hours automating the vocals. He drew curves in Ableton so the ad-libs would fly from one ear to the other. He made the reverb increase at the end of a phrase and then disappear abruptly, creating a falling sensation.
He did the same with the synths. He made the main "pad" open and close, as if the fog were thickening and then dissipating.
For the chorus, he doubled his voice, moving one copy slightly to the left and the other to the right, creating a chorus that sounded huge and ethereal at the same time.
It was exhausting work. His eyes burned from staring at the screen. His ears were fatigued.
At sunset, on Sunday, November 29th, he leaned back. He was ready for the final listen.
He turned off the studio lights. The only light came from the LEDs of his equipment. He turned up the volume on his Yamaha monitors.
He hit the spacebar.
The whoosh of the reverse reverb filled the room. The beat entered, clean and deep. And his voice, soaked in Auto-Tune, floated perfectly over the sonic haze.
'I try it if it feels right... This feels nice...'
It sounded... incredible. It didn't sound like something made in a bedroom. It sounded like a million-dollar record.
It was the best thing he had created. It was his graduation.
He finished the song. He exported it. drugs_v1_final_master.wav.
It was song number ten. The milestone was complete.
Sunday, November 29, 2015 (Night)
Michael leaned back in his chair. The song was finished. drugs_v1_final_master.wav.
The file rested on his desktop, a small icon representing a week of grueling work and a quantum leap in his skill.
The hype on his social media, thanks to the live with his friends, was at an all-time high. The 30-second intro clip had been ripped and uploaded to YouTube by fans, with titles like "MICHAEL DEMIURGE'S NEW PSYCHEDELIC SOUND". People were desperate to hear it.
He knew he couldn't just release it on a Sunday night. This song was different. It was an event. It was number ten.
It was the end of his first era.
He decided this song deserved a scheduled release. A formal announcement. It was the first time he would do something like that.
He opened Twitter. His fingers moved over the keyboard, not with the rage of 'crybaby' nor the apathy of 'Sodium'. This time, he wrote with the confidence of an artist who knows he has a masterpiece in his hands.
He uploaded a simple image: a screenshot of the Ableton project, showing the dozens of audio and MIDI tracks. It was a chaotic and complex image, a glimpse into the architecture of the song.
And he wrote the announcement. A formal date.
"Thanks for the patience. Song number ten. The end of the era. 'drugs you should try it'. Tuesday, December 1st."
He pressed "Send".
He did the same on Instagram, using the same image.
The response was instant. His phone started vibrating on the desk so fast it looked like it was having a seizure. Retweets. Likes. Comments.
"FINALLY!!!"
"TUESDAY!!! WHY ARE YOU MAKING US WAIT?"
"SONG NUMBER TEN."
"THE END OF THE SOUNDCLOUD ERA"
Michael silenced his phone. He had created his first scheduled release event. The internet was marking their calendars.
While the world waited, he had one last thing to do.
He opened the System interface. His total balance was 136,645 IP. (96,645 + the ~40k estimated for this song).
He had reached his milestone. He had published ten songs.
He navigated to the "Milestones" tab. The button, which was previously gray, now glowed with a golden light.
[MILESTONE REWARD (10 SONGS) UNLOCKED] [BUY MILESTONE ROULETTE (10 SONGS)] [COST: 25,000 IP]
Michael looked at his balance. He had more than enough.
He smiled. Time to get more songs.
With a thought, he pressed the button.