Porter Robinson
Sea Of Voices - Commentary
""Sea Of Voices" was an immense effort. That song has gone through so many iterations. "Sea Of Voices" first had this weird, weird structure - it wasn't called "Sea Of Voices" then - um... but it was a totally different chord progression, totally different sets of sounds, it was still kind of a long builder but it was more... the sounds were more contemporary, I think. It was less of a vintage-sounding thing. And... the chord progression was much longer, and less simple - and in my opinion less beautiful - and it builded and builded and builded, built built built, until it played this tiny little sine melody, sine wave synth melody. And then, that actually had a Vocaloid vocal on it, originally, and the... the lyrics was, if I can recall, I believe it was... it went into this like, bass guitar, and it was like *imitates bass guitar chord progression*, and then over that it was "We’ll stir our spirits 'til we're one", uh "And lacking borders, we’ll become" and then, yeah, "We'll stir our spirits 'til we're one, and lacking borders, we'll be gone". That was the lyric originally, and it was an AVANNA Vocaloid, it was a Vocaloid vocal, like "Fresh Static Snow" or "Sad Machine" or something. And, y'know, that version is still kind of dear to me, but I think, you know, Breanne came in and she sang it and absolutely blew it away and uh, I think the way "Sea Of Voices" ended up is much more touching. But I still, I still remember the original version."