Evil F$#@ng Wizard: a song about an evil wizard

Wizard song.
*EVIL FUCKING WIZARD IS ON SPOTIFY!*
https://open.spotify.com/track/6UBhFytn4GvP9fwHRL9Nsq?si=301ee97881ac456e

Some story and fanfare because I’m a self-indulgent prick:
I apparently came up with this entire song at 1 AM on December 29, 2023, transcribed in a Tux Guitar file named “Goofy Wizrad Song”. There was no song structure but I came up with every main part of the song right then and there, apparently. I don’t really remember writing it, perhaps because it was 1 AM. I think I was messing with triad arpeggios and I played it with some rhythm and then went up a half step and I got the opening riff. The verse riff changed a bit (for the better) compared to what I had written down initially, and the bossa section existed in concept but was completely reworked to (in an incredibly basic sense) follow actual jazz theory that you’d find in bossa. Being a music student has its perks, at least when it comes to writing songs about wizards, not much else. To a greater extent, I have no clue where this song comes from, like, from an inspiration standpoint. Verse riff might’ve come from Stranglehold, chorus from Frayed Ends of Sanity? Or something else from Justice, probably, at least in terms of using E and F. And speaking of which, E and F are the only chords in the song, save for the bossa section
I recorded every track a billion times except for the bossa part, actually, I was just fooling around with it and recorded the three guitars before I was even ready to use it, before the song even had lyrics. The rhythm parts for that section were both done in one take and the lead apparently took four. I just decided they were good enough and slapped them in when I was ready to use them.

Everything else took way longer than it should have to record. I had to split the verses into different tracks because there’s no way I could have possibly sang all of that without having to breathe. I probably rerecorded the rhythm guitar tracks like 50 times just to make sure I wasn’t fucking up and getting offbeat and making sure I had matching amp tones (protip: don’t touch any of the knobs on your amp EVER!) The obvious solution is to record direct (which I did for the bass ♥) but I didn’t want to because I found amp sims were either too harsh sounding or too dead sounding.

The guitar solo was a pain in the ass. Initially the idea was to just improvise something over that opening riff and I’d call it a day. But something silly happens when you have a stupid riff that changes keys every two beats! The solo also has to change keys! I really thought I could just improvize something, I thought “I spent the past nine months playing jazz, I can change back and forth between two keys!” and then failed to do so. Very glad it didn’t work out because I think writing out a solo was the way to go. And the double tracking. Is so. Fucking. Clean. I probably popped a boner when I listened back to it after 40 takes (that were actually very close with each other in terms of double tracking, I just was messing the notes up) to hear two guitars playing perfectly in sync until that harmony part comes in.

Aside from a general long recording process (between spending hours recording guitars and vocals and getting burnt out and not touching the thing for weeks) everything else went really smoothly. Ideas were flying, I felt like a fucking genius writing the lyrics and adding all those little details like adding a stupid measure of 5/4 for that drum fill right at the end of the bossa (which would fuck me up numerous times when I failed to come in at the right spot for the third verse) and magic lightning and the screaming. I had a good time.
Massive thanks to my pal Felix who helped me out a lot with the lyrics (including rewriting the last two lines and making them FAR better) and hyped me up in general. Slightly smaller thanks to my friend Lil who, after I hopped into a voice call and said “I need to write the rest of my wizard song, what should the lyrics be?” immediately told me to say “I’m Merlin, bitch!” with no other information on the song.

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