Rice: As stated in the description, I wrote this song 3 years ago. I wrote it originally for my favorite SynthV girl, Shi’an, when I thought she was going to get an English-capable voicebank….. This still has not happened lol so I ended up giving it to FLAVOR FOLEY, and they made it into something absolutely spectacular.
In terms of love, this song reflects one that’s unrequited, yet persisting.
I actually think I initially put forward Feng Yi for this song (because she has a very pretty soft tone), but Jamie pitched Eleanor and I was like true.... We can’t not use Eleanor. First of all, because we have to pay homage to the first English SynthV, second of all because she sounded great and we love her, and third of all, because she’s grey. I know Vocadb has tagged this song with “blue”, but “greyness” was always intended to be the secondary theme of this song. I wonder if people noticed the importance of the color motifs in the lyrics…?
Jamie: She's grey!!! I also just really like Miss Forte's voice - her standard voicebank is very powerful in a way her AI voicebank isn't, but I think it's well suited to a moody little song like this. Very fun to tune, too.
Rice: A fun fact for you: A lot of people have pointed out how Eleanor’s voice in the quiet part before the last refrain sounds much more human… because it kinda is! We used SynthV’s voice-to-midi function over a recording of me singing that verse, so all of the voice wobbles and rhythm/pitch imperfections are genuine from me.
It’s kind of hard to distinguish because SynthV autotuning already sounds very human, but if people noticed it, it clearly achieved the subtle effect we wanted.
And a second fun fact for you, the voices reading the weather reports in the bridge are also us! Jamie was like, really good at it. I think if this music circle starts flopping she should become a weather reporter
Jamie: Thank you, Rice. If we head over to the map here, it's looking like Houston's having another chilly day with temps around the low 40s, so make sure to keep your jackets on, folks. Southeast of the loop, down by I-45, we're getting some light showers later in the afternoon, before more widespread rain rolls in a little after midnight
Anyways sorry welcome to the Jamie Paige Self-Indulgence Corner for a bit. We first started working on this song together when Rice sent just the vocal melody and lyrics to our group chat, and I ended up sketching out what would become the final progression. This isn't really that interesting of a fact on its own, but I'm ready to reveal some twisted and fucked up lore: I was writing those chords instead of going to sleep for a flight I had to catch early the next morning. That flight, and its subsequent myriad layovers and delays, was also what got me to write ROT FOR CLOUT
^ sorry for using light mode also.
As an addendum before we leave the Jamie Paige Self-Indulgence Corner - My album, Constant Companions, contains a followup of sorts to weathergirl. It's yuri, folks.
Anyways, not too long after we finished this song, Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, and ended up knocking out power for me for a whole week. My little bit of prose in the video's description is just my poetic retelling of driving up to stay with my girlfriend while my power was out.
Vane: I focused on sound design and arrangement for this one! I wanted to really evoke the vision of clouds/rain/storm through the instrumentation, so I was very intentional with the way I arranged things. The first thing I added when I got my hands on the chorus was add a descending arpeggiator with a bell synth. The thought was to emulate pelting rain to match the emotional intensity of the chorus.
This was the first render I sent back but for some reason the kicks turned into snares and I couldn’t be bothered to fix it. It’s pretty funny.
I’m going to be indulgent and show off the tracks I’m really proud of real quick. I am super proud of the chops here came out (I did them all manually hehe)
I used my EWI to record alot of the ambient textures in the verses, along with the solo in verse 2! I did further sound design in logic based off what I wanted, but it was a really fun process to explore. Here’s an isolated clip of what I did.
Rice: You guys went crazy on the sound design for this one. It was giving that one viral weather channel JRPG theme. I loved it so much. Did you guys know that Vane and Jamie went crazy on the sound design for this one. Like this should be in the Louvre