This page was initially created in July of 2022, and just now I realised it was missing from the new site. So I found it again, touched up the text here and there and redid the styling. That's basically it. The rest of this page is narrated by 2022 Murumart.
Greetings. Felt like talking about this...thing...
So, basically: gubufo is like an album that I made. I call it "like an album" because it kind of sucks based on my standards today, and it also sucked when I posted it. Yeah.
It's more of a gimmick album really: I used this one Python script I made to spew out some directions for making music on Jummbox - the song tempo, the song key, the song time signature and also the song name, composed from a mess of syllables. So during the summer of 2021 I opened that script every once in a while and made something based on its directions.
I decided pretty early on to make sixteen songs and then, once finished, post them online. I initially made "cover art" for each of the songs, so I could post them on Soundcloud, but at some point decided to post them on Bandcamp instead. So the album cover is like a collage of all the song covers in order.
In case if you for some reason decide to listen, note that it's very "Jummboxy" sounding and also very 2021 Murumart music sounding, also known as "bad". The crappy default drum preset is used everywhere. Most instruments were just made by spamming shiftR enough times to create something that sounded interesting. Some songs have ear grating resonant parts and one song has a weird high pitch glitch that I didn't notice at time of posting and only noticed after I sampled an instrument from that song in my newer projects and noticed that the high pitch can be heard if I export those at 48000Hz. Some songs have audio crackling due to cutting off without release. Some songs have some parts that don't suck leading you into a false sense of security.
With all that in mind and all the warnings out of the way, here is the embedded album.
I'll now talk a bit about the individual songs...
"gugugocofubebocu" is the first song I made for gubufo. The album order is exactly the order of making them. I got lucky with the shiftR on that base wub wub thing. And the drum... beat... is pretty, uh, alright I'd say. Otherwise a very repetitive song.
"budifacu", the second song, heavily features the workflow that I used extensively at the time: make something and then keep adding elements on top of it as the song progresses. Just add elements. That substituted for any sort of harmonic progression. One of my least liked songs to be honest... Leaves a weird sickly feeling. Like a lot of the album, actually...
"gugicudabo" started a bit of a pattern of a more intense song followed by a more chill song. This is the chill song. It has a melody! It also has weirdly resonant pads. Or whatever those things are that are substituting for pads there...
"degacogofegodo" is strangely competent at places, especially when the atari bass instrument comes in. It very long, which is out of place in the first half of the album. It is rather unremarkable in most other aspects.
"budubo" is another chill song, but it's barely listenable to due to the resonant main instrument... Aghhhh... Thank god it's the shortest song on the album.
"bofo"... He he he... I'm not going to lie, I quite like it. It's got a B-section to it and a pretty nice feeling of progression overall I think... Yeah... The B-section is the best part of the song, especially at the end.
"go"? I would consider it the worst song on the album. It was so bad I had to edit it after initially exporting it, which was unheard of at that point in time. (I later also edited gugugocofubebocu, the first song, when I realised there was crackling audio in it. I could not fully fix it) The first version was literally just a dissonant mess. Yeah.
"codacufifa" has a bit of history. I first made that main looping thing. The ostinato? Not sure. Anyway, I really liked it so I threw some half-assed bass and some other instrument on it, looped it three times and exported it. And it sucked royally. So I went back and edited it, this time adding pads and drums and the extra melody at the end... So now it might be my third favourite song on the album. I still really like the main looping thing very much... I even use it sometimes in my modern music. It's a melody that kind of just slips into music that I make. Very, uh, meaningful.
"gobabufe" is very similar to degacogofegodo, especially with that atari bass. I couldn't tell those apart if you played them next to each other and asked which was which. Notable for its use of volume modulation? Also notable is how starting with this one, almost all songs are at least 4 minutes of length.
"fi"... The pattern of ambient -> more excited -> ambient songs has been broken for a while now, but this is probably the most ambient song on the album. It is very stretched out, long, and pretty boring to listen to, at least to the first part. Notable for being the first instance of me making these synth kicks in Jummbox, back when there were no effect modulators attached to the instruments themselves and we had to make kicks by dragging a sound to suddenly drop in pitch. I of course put reverb on the synth kick.
"dufu"! My absolute second favourite song on the album. I noticed while making it that the declining-pitch brass melody thing was beautiful, and I still think that. It's got a lot of variety if you ignore the base pads. And the rhythm? Is interesting too, I think. There's nothing like it on this album ever again. Sadly the kicks have SO MUCH reverb on them... It bothers me. But still, kinda beautiful sounding...
"duco"? Well... it has that somewhat poignant sounding melody that repeats a lot. And that fast-paced B-section. I think this is my first attempt at adding, like, ear-candy? Dufu kind of has it on those break sections. But duco has that weird wowowyowywowy going synth in the background consistently going wooouuuOOOOOOOOuuuuu..... Yeah. Okay, listening to it right now, the melody at the second part is good. I wish the song didn't end abruptly like that.
"cugocugo" uses modulators heavily in the first part. They're still used in the second part but you can't hear them all covered up by everything else. I like the part where the bass and pad come in, but it only goes downhill from there. The curse of adding elements and then adding more elements... It hurt this song the most.
"bigubu". I thought it was funny how the song with "big" in its name is the longest one on the album. It's also the one with the GRRRR high pitched dog whistle nonsense. The bass sounds pretty cool when the filter goes up. Otherwise it's awful... And the guitar-sounding thing melody, I kind of like it to be honest. The part where it's overlayed with the slightly off-tune similar sounding instrument? Nice. Otherwise not a good song...
"facoga"? What the hell is this? This song sounds ridiculous to me, honestly. The second part sounds like clown music... I kind of like this song for that. But it's the kind of, ironic liking, you know? Actually, the melody at the clown music part sounds nice. Fine, this song gets a pass.
"go". This is the best song on the album, probably supported by the fact that it's the last song between you and salvation in the form of silence. I selected this song's prompt based on its name: I wanted something concrete and important-sounding. I prepared for this for a while. It pulls melodies and elements from other songs on the album, for example... The bass is from bofo, the first melody from dufu, the first drums from gugugocofubebocu, the second drums from budifacu, the second melody from codacufifa and the third melody from bofo. I think I might've brought out all the melodies as an example. Alright. But this song makes me, like, FEEL things. gubufo, despite everything, is pretty important to me... A music project fully completed... Memories of that summer... Every time I start talking about gubufo, I'm dismissive about it... Oh, it's bad... I made it having no idea about making music... It's so old... But I always end up with a warm feeling in my soul. If gubufo was huggable, I'd hug it, you know?
And we end it on that note. Actually feeling kind of sad right now, in the good way... I really wish my first album with these feelings attached to it was of music that's actually good! I can't really show it to people... But if you're here... Well, my master plan worked. You have been informed.
Goodbye.