~ Afternoon Tea With Teddy Bears ~

29.03.2023 (YouTube: 01.04.2023)

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#	Title	Length	File Size	Link
1	Lady Hummingbird	02:14	3.1 MB	Audio
2	The Mermaid, The Raccoon, And The Baby Elephant	04:57	6.8 MB	Audio
3	Graveyard Of Broken Lawnmowers	03:08	4.3 MB	Audio
4	Fried Chicken & Frozen Treats	02:14	3.1 MB	Audio
5	Queen Of Faeries	02:49	3.9 MB	Audio
6	Our Forest Friends Are In Danger! Let's Help Them Out!	02:52	4 MB	Audio
7	Pegasus Pop Star	03:00	4.1 MB	Audio
8	Emerald Amulet	03:02	4.2 MB	Audio
9	New Snowy Town	03:24	4.7 MB	Audio
10	Crystalline Crayons	03:18	4.5 MB	Audio
11	Strawberry Red Typewriter	02:33	3.5 MB	Audio
12	Autumn Birds' Memories	03:24	4.7 MB	Audio
13	Young Girl's School Sneakers	03:37	5 MB	Audio
14	Beauty Of Star-Shaped Flowers	04:48	6.6 MB	Audio

Exclusive Trivia!!

The album cover is comprised of a few notable elements. The 'Listen, Watch, Taste, Enjoy!' box is from the album cover of 'Tadaima' by Akiko Yano. The boxes that contain the text 'キューティ・テクノ' and 'CDで' are from this page of a music magazine (?) advertising the release of Kidorikko's album 'C'est L'elegance Na Tanoshimi' on CD. The photo in the background is of a teddy bear I own, and it was taken with a very bad camera.
'Lady Hummingbird' was the last song to be composed for this album, but I really liked it, so I put it right at the start. The strange, 'sparkly' sounds are made from a looping marimba sample, and it's really high-pitched, so it repeats very quickly. There's a similar sound a bit further in that's made using a similar effect, but with a xylophone sample instead.
'The Mermaid, The Raccoon, And The Baby Elephant' got its name from a trio of small figurines I used to keep on my windowsill. The song contains a bassline intentionally similar to the one in 'Aquatic Base: Level 2' from the Sonic '06 soundtrack, and I believe the song itself started as a cover of this song before I realised that I didn't know what I was doing. The distorted instrument heard a few seconds in and throughout the rest of the song was meant to sound similar to the instrument used in 'Infected Wonderland' from Distorted View Of Our Future. While I only noticed it afterwards, the drum pattern is similar to a section in 'The Body Of Earthling' by Serani Poji.
'Graveyard Of Broken Lawnmowers' is named after something that I just... Overheard my parents talking about, but it sounded cool? The piano sample used is, I believe, from Earthbound.
'Fried Chicken & Frozen Treats' got its name from a bizarre sign I saw at a park once, near a little stand that, apparently, sold fried chicken & frozen treats. I leaned into the 'frozen' part of this title, because the bitcrushing and lonely atmosphere felt like it would be right at home in an ice level in a video game. Alongside the default drums, I also used a generic snare sample.
'Queen Of Faeries' contains chopped-up amen break samples, as well as sampled drums from Sonic The Hedgehog 1.
'Our Forest Friends Are In Danger! Let's Help Them Out!' was the 3rd song I composed for this album, and it was after 2 cute and delicate songs. It was an attempt to make something that felt fitting with these two songs, but also felt dangerous and urgent. The name reminded me of the name of a level in a video game or something, so it stuck.
'Pegasus Pop Star' was one of my first attempts at using samples in a song, and, in my opinion, it's pretty weak as a result. Contains record-scratch samples from maybe a Sonic game, a 'come on!' sound effect that's definitely from a Sonic game, and a 'hello' voice clip used in ice cream trucks or something.
'Emerald Amulet' got its name from how my synesthesia brain perceived it: an overwhelming colour of green. Was also going for a sort of... Video-game-jungle-level feeling, so I used flutes, steel pans, and some drum presets that I probably wouldn't have used otherwise.
'New Snowy Town' got its name because I think it reminded me of Snowdin's theme from Undertale. I also used some idiophone presets, bitcrushed drums, and violins, because they sounded appropriately 'ice-y'. Whatever the hell that means. By the end I came up with a fun drum pattern and you can hear me trying my hardest to use it as much as I could.
'Crystalline Crayons' got its name from the aforementioned 'ice-y'-ness that comes from bitcrushing, but I went a little wild with it in this song, and it reminded me of pretty, pastel-coloured crystals. It's intentionally very echo-y and loud, and you can hear how I tried to separate bars with a bit of silence so the echoes wouldn't overlap and become kinda unbearable to listen to.
'Strawberry Red Typewriter' was an early example of me going full chiptune mode and using nothing but basic chip waves (maybe just sine waves, but I'm not sure) because I was inspired by Strawberry Machine's work, which is mostly chiptune stuff. That's where the name comes from, too.
'Autumn Birds' Memories' was originally called 'Precious Memories', but I wanted the titles of songs in the album to not have the same first letter, and the later 'Pegasus Pop Star' had too good of a name to change, so I changed this song's title instead. I also used a preset called 'bird tweet', so that's what inspired the new name. Hey, at least 'Precious Memories' wasn't completely wasted...
'Young Girl's School Sneakers' was the first song to be composed for this album. The name was originally the name of an album I wanted to work on, but it seemed better as a song title than an album title. I was going for a delicate and sweet feeling, with harps, music boxes, and fretless bass, but I never really felt like it captured what I was wanting. This introduced a breifly-used motif for a few songs in the album.
'Beauty Of Star-Shaped Flowers' was originally just called 'Star-Shaped Flowers', but due to the alphabetical naming rule, I changed it to what it is now. Being the second song composed for the album, I tried to make it even more calm and pretty than 'Young Girl's School Sneakers', slowing down the tempo, but maybe the usage of proper drums and the strange FM organ was a mistake? The pitch-bending instrument further in was used because it sounded like a similar instrument used in music by In Love With A Ghost.

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