lyrics:

you’ve got a lot on your mind
you’re sad and lonely
your thoughts are racing, spinning by
even when you close your eyes
you have to get through this day
the minutes slowly pass you by
you can do this

fake happy
say cheese
smile
smile
show teeth, smile
turn off your mind
muddle through
smile, smile, smile

breathe
just breathe
in and out
breathe

chorus repeats

lyric discussion:
first of all i think it is interesting that in this song i automatically went with the pronoun you instead of i like i did with floating by. i think that is because the feeling i am capturing in this song is something that i have dealt with by coping the way described in floating by. this is more me talking to my past self especially in college when i was very stressed and had to work really hard to get through bad days. this is all pretty self explanatorily describing that life is hard and you feel bad but still have to do things and sometimes the only way to do that is faking it till you make it. putting on a happy face and getting through the day even if it is painful. this song is also kind of satirically making fun of songs telling you will be ok. my vocal delivery in the chorus is purposefully strained, and sounds especially so on the word smile (which is a horrible word to sing on as english speakers naturally swallow the word because of the l consonant). i think the way i did this is kind of both making fun of songs that try to give out this advice in a very vapid way, and also making fun of myself for really thinking like this in my past and sometimes now when needed. it was also fun to add in the little meditation section. meditation is powerful tool, but when you are struggling mentally a lot of people will just ask if you have tried meditating as if that will fix all your problems. while it is very helpful, especially with keeping mentally well, when you can connect and be in your thought it can come off as very annoying which what i am trying to convey here.

theory discussion:
i started this project by deciding i wanted to play around with some modes though my next couple of exercises. for no particular reason i decided to start with lydian mode. i chose to write it in f lydian as the i want to stick with keys in the modal system that would be played on all white notes. lydian mode is an alteration of the major scale that raises the 4th degree in this case b flat to b natural. this forces the scale to include the tritone of tonal center which causes some additional tension. that is where i got the idea to write a song called fake happy, as lydian mode to me sounds very happy the raised scale degree even making the listener feel more uplifted, but it does have the underlying darkness of including the tritone aka the “devils interval” as it was referred back in the day. i went with a I iv vii I chord structure to emphasize the altered scale degree and add some tension. in the bridge i wrote out the lydian scale up and down with chords only on some of the more important notes to try to disguise the straight up chords and added a swell on f on the off beats to try to replicate the kind of music you would hear at a spa or in the back of a meditation audio. in the chorus i emphasized the tritone with the little beeping sounds alternating from being based around f to based around b to add some extra tension and really focus on how something is wrong even if things may sound like they are moving along and working.