The Jingle Bells A Cappella Rock

Release date: December 24th, 2021. ISRC: ***. DK UPC: 196397330025. Label: BRAINIAC Records

Original, sort of

If you’re a human with relative knowledge of the world, then you would know that there are songs that European countries sing during the holidays. European countries sing “Jingle Bells” during Christmas. Therefore, if you’re a human with relative knowledge of the world, then you know that there is a song called Jingle Bells.

HwRK → SECS

SECS → JB

——————

HwRK → JB

That’s a little LSAT inside joke for you. It’s been more than three months since my last upload, well, cuz I was studying for the LSAT, the world’s most brutal and dehumanizing standardized test there ever was, and ever will be. However, despite this tormenting little sucker making my life as miserable as possible, I still have to make sure that there is a song coming every Christmas (a little tradition I started since the last one). Indeed, I figured that I should continue the trend that I set with "Silent Night” and press forward with this year’s special.

While I can say that I am the first one to sing Silent Night in all German, Japanese, Chinese, and English, I can’t say this is completely original because I did use the music sheet of someone else’s on Musescore. This time though, I didn’t use one from Musescore. Wanna know why? Cuz there isn’t one lol. It was a surprise, too, since this is such a famous Christmas Carol or whatever people call it, it has to be there somewhere, but it isn’t. That’s when I decided that I should come up with something completely unheard of (figuratively). I knew I am capable of writing up verses that compliment with the original, like how I did with “Hail to the Hills of Westwood”, so I sat down, opened up Logic Pro X, and started creating stuff.

People who spent a relatively long time in China should know that there is a TV show called “I-apartment”, a Chinese sitcom that rips off countless American and British sitcoms. Since this show is to rip off American sitcoms, it has numerous occasions with Christmas in each of the four seasons (I couldn’t finish watching the fifth one cuz it was so bad). During its Christmas episodes, when the protagonists are at the bar, there is often a jazzy Jingle Bells playing in the background. That was my inspiration for this song. Though the finished product is not jazzy, I have to say that the inspiration of my Bass part and my Baritone part came from that background music. There, that is why I wrote such a long paragraph detailing a sitcom that I hated so much because it spoiled Friends and How I Met Your Mother for me.

I spent some time developing the score, and had a finished product I was very happy with. Therefore I started recording. The first draft was terrible, because I overestimated the pitch that I am comfortable singing. When singing for the higher tenor parts, I almost broke my throat. That’s why, the second day I lowered the pitch and started over. Had something I could work with, and added some new stuff the third day. When I was 50% finished with the product, it was only voice, no sleigh bells or any other sounds other than my voice.

So I pitched the song to Professor Li, she suggested that I should add sleigh bells as percussion, since, you know, the song is called “Jingle Bells”, why won’t you add some jingly bells. It was like “boom” in my head. So I ordered from Guitar Center for their next day shipping (came two days later), and added sleigh bells in the background, and bam.

Although I did not write the main melody of the song, since this falls under fair use, and I did write the other 90% of the song, I consider it to be my original.

Since this time it’s an original, I uploaded my background music (again, just me singing) to stores as well, because I don’t have to pay for royalties for original songs. For the longest time I could not name the songs, because I do not want people to confuse it with a regular caroler version of the song, and there is a dude that took “Jingle Bells Rock”. So, I named the song “The Jingle Bells A Cappella Rock” to set it apart from all those songs (maybe alienating a lot of people) and set the album name to be “Christmas ‘21”. A trend that I hope will continue on to next year.

To a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year I will spend alone again this year!