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Longshore Foreigner

by Llyona Fang

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1.
Longshore Foreigner (LF) 02:08
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2.
Ocean Light 03:02
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Ocean light Shines so bright Through the night We'll be alright All your might Keep the fight Going, don't give up, one Day we will reunite Ocean light Shines so bright Through the night We'll be alright All your might Keep the fight Going, don't give up, one Day we will reunite
3.
Currents 00:51
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4.
Monsoon Lake 01:27
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Let's go to Monsoon Lake Drown there to feel awake Don't look down at those eyes If you want to stay alive
5.
Ethereal 00:34
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6.
'02 to '20 (Detuned) 01:56
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7.
What a Lonely Afternoon 01:24
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8.
Ripples 00:46
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9.
A Waltz in Deep Water 02:13
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about

A Collection of Melody Rain Jiayin's Leitmotifs from ReversalRain.
Reviving Llyona Fang's 2015 - 2016 music compositions, primarily featuring synthesizers and percussion ensemble.

History:

The idea for the lead part of this track came about on April 8, 2015, when I was trying to create variations on the melody of "Wind-Up Storm." That is why this piece shares similar notes and chords. The original title was "LF_theme_2.mscz" to stand for "Llyona Fang's Theme." Before I adapted Llyona Fang as my own artist name, I used it for the main character's name in my Homestuck fancomic, "Mirrorstuck."

I believe in around January 2, 2016, I wrote the introduction section where the harmonic rhythm is twice as long while bass chords start alternating octaves and a slow crescendo. One of my band friends, Gabriel Dimaandal, told me at the time that the new opening in the draft was one of his favorite things I had written so far, so I appreciate his encouragement and continued working on the song to develop more than just a lead and bass part. The starting half of the song is Musescore-generated audio rather than a real acoustic recording, because I wanted to preserve the essence of that draft.

In 2018, I used a variation of this theme for the "Journey to the West" play in my high school, where I had the role as a soundtrack composer and wanted to put my old song drafts to use. The ending part of this track starting at 1:27 is a live recording sample of LF from one of our rehearsals. I (Llyona Fang) am playing the vibraphone, the piano keyboard is played by Joy Lee, and the drums are by music director Aron Murillo. I worked alongside my friend Leilani Zhang for the production, who was the co-composer.

We had to write a short paper about the vision behind our music, and I realized I probably shouldn't keep the song named as the "LF" placeholder. I haphazardly slapped together a new name using Chinese characters that started with the same letters, and decided on 旅沷 (Lǚ Fā). I don't think it's a real word, but according to the MDBG Chinese Dictionary, 旅 (Lǚ) means "trip / travel / to travel / brigade (army)," and 沷 (Fā) means "to remove evil / to cleanse / to wash away." Although temporary, I wanted a song name that retained the LF initials, but still had relation to the "Journey to the West" story.

Leilani wrote the following description of this song for the CAPPIES award submissions:
"L.F. 旅沷 (travel theme): The key is ambiguous-- it is uncertain whether the last chord of the progression is the tonic, or the dominant, which gives it an unfinished feel that parallels how the pilgrims feel their journey is never ending. Nevertheless, the journey is not boring, as they face many tribulations, reflected by the use of melodic variations based on the same chord progression. It is unclear whether the melody is joyful or laboring, but the beat provides a source of consistency and comfort."

As time went on, LF ended up in my backlog although I still played it on piano from time to time. I wasn't quite pleased enough with the song to release it, and financial barriers kept me from releasing singles at all to streaming services because the cost is a whopping $39 per song, when distributing on DistroKid. I wanted to wait until I had an entire album to release at once with this song so it could be part of a complete set that I could pay one album fee for (used to be $75 but I think is reduced to $49 now), instead of $39 multiplied by the amount of tracks.

I finished the composition on MuseScore around 2019. Although I was able to use a school vibraphone to record "The Midst of Silence" album back in 2019, the pandemic happened and I graduated high school in 2020. Thus, I no longer had access to a physical vibraphone at all for recording. In the end I decided to export what I had on MuseScore and transition it into the only existing 2018 recording sample around March 19, 2022. This constitutes the final draft, but I could not release it until I created the rest of the album set.

I ended up saving up enough money from work to buy my own vibraphone in July 24, 2022. I had the pressing thought of not releasing this song until I had made a live acoustic version now that it was possible, but part of me still really liked the old MuseScore audio and live recording version because it's what I had spent years on and holds a lot of memories. I decided to save that idea for the future and mainly put synthesizer-based music into the album to keep the timbre consistent across all songs, although there are few acoustic sounds.

As for the song and album title, I needed to think of something meaningful that still retained the LF initials. The song has been called LF for over 9 years now and I did not want to part with that. On August 18, 2020, I began planning an album titled "ReversalRain Soundtrack 1" (obviously a scrapped idea today) with 35 songs in it. At the time, albums cost $75 to release so my thought process was it would save me more money to shove everything I make in one big album, than releasing everything as a single for $1365, which I could not possibly afford. On the planning document, I listed: "Longshore / lakeside / lithe Frost / fold / figure / future / freedom / foreigner / forgotten / footprint (LF)" in an attempt to make a better song title.

I wanted to release this album on a date that had the number 2 or 4 in it. As someone with color-grapheme synesthesia, I see the number 2 as blue, and the number 4 as red. Ideally, 2/2/2022 would have been perfect for LF's release since I always envisioned that song in a cold water setting, but I was unfortunately not done with the soundtrack album on this day. However, the arrival of the date drove me to finally decide on the words "Longshore Foreigner." It just felt like the right combination and also aligned with the ReversalRain story.

I ended up aiming for the release date 4/2/24, a palindrome date with the colors red and blue that reverse. I am glad I finished everything in the nick of time. Thank you for reading this far.

credits

released April 2, 2024

Music Composition & Cover Art by Llyona Fang
Composed on Musescore 2 & 3
Mixed with Audacity

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ReversalRain

ReversalRain is an experimental band and multimedia webcomic illustrated, animated, and composed by self-taught hobbyist A. L. Harjanto (方佳音), who is known by the alias/record label, "Llyona Fang."

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