Q&A with nostraightanswer on specters
This interview was submitted by guest writer rinlingyo with editing done by Lupin / nostraightanswer
Released on May 29th 2020, specters is the latest album by nostraightanswer (known simply as Lupin), which explores some of his deepest personal fears. The album features VOCALOID libraries DEX, DAINA, and AVANNA as well as his own vocals, with all visuals by rice. Come aboard with the official playlist below:
At various livestreams (as well as on CuriousCat), Lupin has been answering questions from fans about his album and music production process:
What’s the meaning behind the trains in your specters videos?
I want to say it’s primarily for specters‘ visual aesthetics, but it was inspired by a train-related idea I had for “the dots”, which came after a similar idea I had for “empty”. rice wound up convincing me that I should just adopt the train setting for the entire album, and I came up with the “deeper meaning” after that: all of these people with their fears (all of which are representative of my own)… they still have a daily life, a routine they continue despite them. They’re all just like different strangers you could meet on a commute. Further than that, even though I have all of these fears, I still keep going. Sometimes it’s hard to, and I’ll look back to what feels like relative safety, but I keep on, regardless.
Did you learn anything new about your fears from making specters?
I learned what my fears were in the first place, and I learned a few coping mechanisms to deal with them. I also learned how to recognize when they were affecting me, and about my limits, particularly when dealing with the heavier fears, like thanatophobia. (That will actually wake me in the middle of the night, almost at random.)
Would it be safe to say that “sleepless”, rather than being about a fear like the other songs on specters, is about what the fear does to you?
Actually, yes, though being an insomniac is something I’m definitely somewhat afraid of. That’s the reason why I put it at the end of the album, especially after “don’t watch me die”.
I think one of your most interesting songs is “voicemail”. Compared to other songs on the album, this one feels more upbeat.
I’m glad you think so! I definitely didn’t want specters to be low energy all the time, but I didn’t want it to be too high energy, either. It was also important to me that none of the songs were entirely doom and gloom, and if they were, to at least have a message against it in some capacity. I’d also say “bokeh”, “face to face”, and “we’ll all be dead” were pretty upbeat, too, while the rest are low or moderate energy songs.
What was your favorite song to record?
My favorite song that I recorded myself was “empty” just because I liked doing the talking thing. (Laughs) I don’t really have many opportunities to incorporate rap or speech into my work, but I had been experimenting with it for some time: I sampled myself a little bit in “bring me down” and tried it in a techno experiment I posted on SoundCloud, but “empty” was the first song that I really… I had written the lines but wasn’t certain how I felt, so I just gave it a dedicated shot. It was super fun, and turned out great!
My favorite song to produce, meanwhile, was probably “the dots” and immediately after that would be “sleepless”, since I wrote both in live streams. Not including them, I’d probably say “face to face”.
In my opinion “empty” is the most impressive song in specters.
That makes me happy to hear, honestly… it’s an art song, y’know? I hadn’t made it to be enjoyable at all, I just wanted it to be important.
Actually, “empty” is one of my favorites, too, because it evolves in this really fantastic way. It sets you up with initial discomfort, making the end of the song, this hugely uplifting moment, hit harder. Afterwards, I summon back a shred of the earlier discomfort by repeating a motif: throughout the song, the bass does this rising motion, punctuating the beginning of the song and returning for the main refrains. When it returns at the very end, it has all this pretty stuff in front of it, so it blends that discomfort with the uplifting parts. It’s honestly beautiful, in my opinion.
Why is “sleepless” one of your favorites?
It’s just extremely vibe-worthy and relatable far beyond the fact that it is, of course, about insomnia and sleeplessness. The aesthetics I went with, even though I didn’t plan them, were really strong and enjoyable. One of my favorite moments in “sleepless” is the bridge: I did quite a bit of research to write the song, actually, like how body temperature falls just a bit when you’re getting sleepy, and the research is most prominent there. I also just like how it builds over time, similarly to “empty”; unlike it, “sleepless” doesn’t make you too terribly uncomfortable, so while it has that nice payoff at the very end of the song, it’s still easy to listen to, in my opinion.
What do you like more: making songs with your voice or with VOCALOIDs?
I like using VOCALOIDs primarily because of their novelty but also because they’re characters. It’s fun writing a song that I’m not going to sing because I’m not front and center, but it is far easier and more fun to just record a song myself and tune my vocals as opposed to a VOCALOID’s. It’s really just a matter of speed… It’s not like I don’t enjoy tuning VOCALOIDs, in fact I think it’s easy, but I’m pretty slow.
Do you have a general preference for which VOCALOID sings your songs?
In general, I absolutely prefer using DEX and DAINA, not at all because I worked on them, but because they are truly my favorite VOCALOIDs to use. They sound the clearest out of everyone in my entire library without too much effort. Even though they have their problems (for example, DAINA can be really tricky to use in her higher end), they have qualities that make it worth the effort (DAINA’s low end is honestly amazing).
As another example, there’s AVANNA, another favorite of mine… she has this problem with being too soft, to the point where if I make her sing “ooh” and auto-tune the result, she becomes a sine wave, basically. That quality makes her tricky to mix; it’s fairly difficult to get AVANNA to sound gorgeous in works out of and even within her element. The effort, however, is so worth it. So worth it.
How can you tune VOCALOIDs to sound more emotional?
What a lot of people don’t know about VOCALOID is, though it may seem obvious, by default they don’t sing like singers, they sing like robots. Something that VOCALOID doesn’t do by default is manage stress or emphasis in terms of performance. As such, one of the best ways to add emotion to a VOCALOID vocal is to split a note (depending on the tempo, at least a quarter note’s length) into two, adjust the length so the first half is shorter than the second, and bring the first half down one to three tones (with regard to the scale). Trial and error is necessary, but generally the resulting emphasis sounds like “emotion”. It’s important not to do it all the time however… using this technique too often can make the entire track sound whiny due to being over-emphasized.
What is your favorite FX to use?
Probably reverb. If I write a song that doesn’t use reverb at least somewhere within, it’s an enigma. I love reverb so much.
On vocals, I use a lot of fake vocal doubling: making duplicate vocal tracks or sending the melody vocal to a second mixer track, then running full-speed auto-tune over it to generate this fake double. I’ll then phase the stereo on that second vocal to thicken the entire result.
Do you have a method for coming up with your rhyme schemes? Do you use a rhyming dictionary?
Sometimes I don’t care. (Laughs) It usually just happens, and that comes from experience. When I’m writing a melody to sing, I’ll be writing the lyrics at the same time, improvising on the spot for the most part while writing down the things I like. As a result, through trial and error the rhyming schemes sometimes just work, and that is really awesome. When they don’t, I first turn to rhyming dictionaries, looking up words to see what they rhyme with, making sure what I find will make sense. If nothing does, then I rewrite… To put it simply, sometimes you just have to rewrite a whole line because nothing rhymes with “orange”.
I’m curious if you have any advice for someone who might want to explore their own fears in a similar way.
When you’re exploring your fears the way I did, the goal isn’t to overwhelm yourself. The goal is to find a way to talk about them with yourself so you have a better experience dealing with them in practice, and how that gets accomplished is going to be different for everybody. For me, it depended on the topic. Some people will need to fictionalize an aspect of their fears in order to confront them better, and some people will need to fictionalize them just to think about them at all. Sometimes you’ll need to have someone else around to work through them with. All that said, my best advice is: they’re fears, of course you’re going to be scared to confront them, but being scared is one of the first steps of being courageous. The point you’re trying to get to is when your courage overpowers your fear, allowing you to learn from and deal with them healthily.
Arrive at your copy of specters via Bandcamp (with digital as well as physical editions while supplies last) or wherever digital music is sold.
