Here is my second attempt at the Album-A-Day challenge! This one went slightly better despite still not being a successful one, having made one more song and three more minutes of music than found on Feelings, from just after 11:00 PM Eastern on the night of November 4th, 2022 and ending on the evening of the 5th. I would have been able to complete even more music had I not spent a few hours out and about with my father right after completing the last song, and unfortunately, taking another sleep break. Oh well, at least I can say that not only did my productivity level increase with this attempt, but in my opinion, the music itself is overall better than the first. I was expecting a lot more of the songs on this album to be super short like "Inspiration from the Randomest of Places" on the other one was than there actually are, but two of the songs managed to exceed 2 minutes in duration, and the average song length on this album is higher than on Feelings overall. I hope you will enjoy the fruits of my labor this time around, and I will try again next week (as of the publishing of this AAD).

Tracklist and post-production reflections:

I. Rush Hour Metro Traffic (0:00)

Starting off strong with one of my personal favorites of these tracks. I will say that I did get a bit lazy with writing the guitar solo but listen to that BEAT, man! Maybe not the best composition I've ever done but still a very headbangable track :P

II. Firing Lasers in Space (0:58)

Something of a spiritual successor to "Motivation" from the previous AAD I did, the main thing I wanted to experiment in this song with was a kit in one of my drum plugins which is metal-oriented but the snares sound oddly electronic, hence its name, Wanna Dance. If you're at all familiar with my music, you might think this is a pretty generic track of mine, but as I said many times in my commentary on the Feelings AAD, when you're crunched for time to make so much music, you kinda just have to throw whatever you can at the wall and see what sticks. And I think it did pretty good in this case :)

III. Forest of Magic (2:27)

This track was inspired by TheJayJay's song "Mushroom Village" from his own Album-A-Day attempt, Something Familiar. I really liked the main riff in that song and wanted to make something that was similar to it. Not the best track on this AAD composition-wise by any means, but in my opinion, it's one of the most "aesthetically" pleasing songs on it. Especially if you don't have a taste for what I had to offer next.

IV. Caffeine Juice (3:20)

After I went to bed the night after finishing up Feelings, I found myself unable to sleep, when an epiphany struck me. You see, I love the soda by the name of Mountain Dew. Dangerously much so to be honest. So, I realized that the reason for my insomnia must have been because I had so much energy stored up from having drunk some earlier that day. And so the question came to my head: Why don't I drink a glass the weekend after to try and stay awake longer so I can complete another AAD attempt all in one sitting? Well, the plan ultimately failed, but it still did at least yield the idea for naming this Drum and Bass piece, and it's because of that epiphany that this album was made at the time it was. My original plan was to wait until the 12th of November to do another Album-A-Day attempt, but I worried that maybe by then, my precious soda would all be gone and I wouldn't have any to be able to execute my idea.

V. Raceway (3:45)

Chiptune! This is another of those tracks that could be considered a "generic" one of mine, but it's not often that I try to do something in this style, so for what it is, I'm proud of it. Not really much else to say about this one.

VI. Limbo (5:12)

An ambient track featuring only a synth pad and a bass. This is by far the shortest amount of time and least effort I have put into making two minutes of, well, I don't really think this counts as a "song" by any sort of traditional means, so let's call it "organized sound." From starting a new FL Studio project file to 20 minutes of just making simple chord progressions and copy and pasting bunches of 8th notes later, and this is what you get. It almost shouldn't even be allowed to be featured here, honestly, but TheJayJay has tracks like this on his AAD attempts, so I can only see this as fair game :P

VII. Rendezvous at the Café (7:18)

This is the "Inspiration from the Randomest of Places" of this album, and it was actually the last track that I made in only half an hour right before heading out with my dad as mentioned at the beginning. Believe it or not though, it was actually sort of difficult to write this little saxophone ditty because I just didn't really have many ideas for how to go about composing it, so funnily enough, the fact that it's even as long as it IS is sort of a miracle. But hey, it got done, and that's all that matters. Plus, the way this ends is rather humorous to me XD

VIII. Heaven's Ballad (7:39)

Honestly, I wasn't really sure what to call this song, but after deciding on a theme for this album about halfway through production, I came up with the name. I felt it rather appropriate considering its soothing nature and relative simplicity. It's ironic, at first this was another one I didn't really know how to go about writing, but by the end of making it, I felt that I actually had too MANY ideas for how to go forward with it and decided to just pull the plug on it before I got too carried away. I don't know, it doesn't really make sense, but my brain works in mysterious ways.

IX. March of Redemption (8:39)

The "redemption" in the title is the fact that this is the first song I made on an Album A Day that managed to exceed two minutes in length ("Limbo" was made after this but I decided to put it earlier in the album), after the longest song on Feelings only lasted 90 seconds. It would have been even more fitting had I managed to actually successfully complete this AAD attempt, but the fact that I even made a song that was nearly a minute longer than "Marching Forward" on one of these was reason for celebration, considering that I expected to make like, ten of the kinds of songs in the vein of "Caffeine Juice" and "Rendezvous at the Café" on this album. This one is really interesting, as I decided to try and use as many different orchestra instruments in one song as I possibly could, because normally when I do orchestral music, it's only a few different ones that I use, like using strings for atmosphere. The intro features a glockenspiel, with brass, pizzicato, and a harp all joining in on the fun later, with the climax of the song featuring a synth because I couldn't really find a good instrument to use for the riff that I wanted there. A fitting way to close out this album if you ask me :)