The art:

With dat glockenspiel (well it sounds close enough). I was listening to Fhana - Divine Intervention, and there are these sections where there is a glockenspiel being played, and I thought, "it's been a long while since I've last used this type of percussion in my music." So after putting down the pad for this song, I was like, "this is a good place for some glockenspiel."

Also, Kamikaye's artwork somewhat reminded me of the cover of zircon's recent album, Identity Sequence, and as an homage to his style, I also wanted to include a violin section; however, my university no longer has a recording studio on the campus, and I've been unable to get an at least decent mic to record with. The synth for the melody that picks up at 2:43 was supposed to be a violin. If by some miracle I can get a decent recording before the contest deadline, I'll switch out that section and re-upload. Even if I can't get it done before the deadline, I'm still going to try to record that violin section and upload it normally (as a separate submission).

I wanted to give the song something of a mix between an etherial feel, synthetic feel, and a "natural" feel to match the seemingly futuristic harbor and infrastructure in the back that contrasts with the natural scenery in the artwork (also something of an homage to zircon's style, which is where the violin would have fit in). The strings section (synthesized by me) and the glockenspiel (which I was able to make by greatly altering one of the Sytrus presets) are supposed to represent that natural side, despite being synthesized.

I used mostly Sytrus (and mostly custom synths), one 3x Osc (for the lead synth), a Fruity DX10 (for the harp in that one section), and an Autogun synth (for that celestial synth in that one short melodic section towards the beginning). The crash cymbal is from the FL stock percussion sets (which sound good with the right amount of reverb).