This originally started as an attempt at making a new chillstep song.

It sounded kinda unpleasant and didn't have a good structure (even for my standards). So... I just scrapped everything but the lead - and that's what you're hearing at the beginning.

Now it's not as obviously chillstep as Starry Sky, but it's still got a bit of that "dubstep" abrasiveness...

But... what genre is it then? Yeah, yeah, I've been ranting about struggles with classification before... but this time, I kind of have an idea? Well, in my mind I've been calling this and a few other similarly sparkly WIP songs as... "brony music". Because, that's just the only thing that seems at all similar to me. But really, that isn't a good label either, as there is music from a large variety of genres in that fandom, even some that wouldn't seem fitting at all to the original.

So, maybe we should have a new genre? "Sparklecore", perhaps? ...It's the only name up with. I'm not familiar with EDM genres and culture, so I don't even know what "core" is supposed to mean. But there doesn't seem to be much of a standard for this, so I guess we're fine?

Well, regardless, I really think we should have a genre like this... and now that I think about it, the Celeste soundtrack also seems to have a similar vibe and instrumentation and would fit this new genre... What's it categorized as anyway?

...Don't tell me it's "video game music"...

Well, let's talk about something else. This song has a fairly unusual, symmetrical structure. Which... was actually inspired by the structure of prophesies in the book of Daniel (yeah, those again). I don't remember their names, but I remember that in ABCB'A' the center (C) is the most important, meanwhile in ABCC'B'A' it's the edges (A, A'). I think this song is leaning towards the latter interpretation... but either could work.

This is also the first song where I've properly separated creating the song and mixing it, and also the various steps of mixing itself. I've already jokingly claimed that "mixing clicked for me", but after taking a course on this and watching a bunch of Dan Worrall videos I realized that this is one of those fields where you just slowly and imperceptibly get better at it, and mostly only from practice. But at least knowing some structure of the process does help. ...and a busy arrangement does not.

That kinda leads into the themes of this song, as it's kinda about perfectionism? At the start, we might have big plans and ambitions, but reality might turn out to be more complicated than anticipated... until anxieties kick in. "Can I even finish this?" "What will other people think?" "Will it be perfect?" Well, it probably won't be. We're flawed human beings. But we can try to be better bit by bit. Try to strive for perfection.

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-621585144/perfection

DAW: Caustic 3

Mix DAW: FL Studio

Notable mixing plugins: Neutron Elements, Filter MS-20, bx_opto, Transient Processor (the FL one, my fav of its kind), VintageChorus, HyperChorus, Replika, R4, MPXReverb... And of course, Raum.

"Mastering": Bandlab Mastering

Artwork: DALL-E 3 through Bing Chat. Yes, it's "AI art". (though I too would rather have it called something else. "AI-graphy", maybe?)

I do respect the work that you artists put into your craft (I dabble in it myself), but I simply needed something random quickly, just to accompany the actually important work, that being this song. Which, is released for free. And isn't made by AI. Well, unless I myself were an AI?

Though, if use of AI for a song's artwork still happens to be against the ToS, please let me know, I'll remove it.

And of course, I wouldn't put it on the "art" section of the site.