Raph is a student from Montréal who writes songs in-between volleyball practices and produces them in-between lectures. He can be found on Twitter @aphamusic and (probably) has an EP coming out soon (maybe)!

This episode of idol board was hosted, edited and transcribed by BONES, and produced by BONES and Tangereen Velveteen. Find all episodes and transcripts of idol board at fourth-strike.com/podcast and follow @idolboard on Twitter for updates. Check out People Make Games to see the Blaseball video mentioned in this episode!

Listen to “hey goodwin” by the garages on Bandcamp:

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Episode Transcript

BONES:

Hey everybody! BONES here. Just a heads up,“apha lex” has changed his musical artist name to just “apha”. Uh, but that’s it, so… Enjoy!

[musical intro plays]

ANNOUNCER:

You’re listening to a Fourth Strike production.

[The end of the musical intro plays, followed by the beginning of ‘hey goodwin’. The instrumentals continue playing under the conversation.]

BONES:

Hello and welcome to idol board! I’m BONES and I use they/them pronouns. In this podcast, I’ll be interviewing members of the garages about their songs, the creation process, and possible inspirations. My guest for this episode is garages band member apha lex. Thanks for coming on apha lex! Can you tell us your pronouns, your pre-song ritual, and what song you’ll be talking about with us today?

APHA:

Hi, uh, I’m Raph, also known as “apha lex”. My pronouns are he/him, my pre-song ritual is napping, and today I’m going to be talking about “hey goodwin”!

BONES:

Awesome! So first off, when and why did you join the garages? Uh, the band, not the team.

APHA:

Um, I joined Blaseball like a month before, in uh, early October, but I didn’t really know anything about it… and then, uh, like a lot of people I think I discovered all the extra lore and fanart and music that was made from the People Make Games, uh, video.

[Music fades. A clip from People Make Games’ video “What is "Blaseball" and why is it taking over the Internet?” plays.]

QUINNS (PMG):

Development of one of Blaseball’s simulated players often starts with the community of fans in the team’s Discord channel using the player’s name as a springboard to discuss who that player might be. And yes, Blaseball athletes have even inspired musicians to write songs.

[A short excerpt of “mike townsend is a disappointment” plays.]

And he pitches the ball in the same way to the same place every time like an ass****...

[The People Make Games video quickly fades out, replaced once again by the “hey goodwin” instrumental.]

APHA:

So from the video I discovered that it wasn’t, like, just a simulation game, that it was all this lore behind it… And uh, in the video they talk about the garages - They show an excerpt from, uh, “mike townsend is a disappointment”. And uh, from watching that video I just wanted to be a part of it. Uh, it sounded awesome. So I joined the Discord, I joined the band in uh, late October? Like, just before the Siesta. Yeah, there were like a few projects that were going on. Nobody really knew what to do during the siesta, uh… people were talking about doing a lo-fi album so I made a lo-fi song. Um, that project picked up and I made a few other ones and I just fell in love with it, and then I just kept going for other projects.

BONES:

That’s awesome! What was the uh, what song did you do for… that was “percolate”, right?

APHA:

Yup! I did, um… “empty stadiums”? That was the first track that I made.

BONES:

That is such a, like… It’s such a good opener for the album too, which is… awesome. I love it so much.

APHA:

Yeah, it’s cool that it was the first song that was made overall for the project I think, and that it’s also the first song in the album. It kinda blew me away when I saw the tracklist and I saw my song was the intro for the album, but um… I’m really glad it is.

BONES:

So what are your… What are your musical and compositional backgrounds?

APHA:

I’ve been playing music for a while, but not really seriously. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a little kid, I took lessons when I was younger. Uh, didn’t really like it, so I took a long break. Then I got back into it, uh, towards the end of high school, but not really seriously, like just playing covers. And then like a year and a half ago, before quarantine, I decided to get serious about it and started learning all of this stuff about production and writing. The serious part has been very recent, and then with quarantine I had a lot of time on my hands to try new stuff and learn how programs work, and get some experience and practice, and that’s been really great for me. So yeah, I’ve been noodling around for a bit, but as a serious musician it’s been very recent.

BONES:

That’s really cool. For “hey goodwin” off the, uh, album ROSTER… How did that song start?

APHA:

Yeah, I had this riff, uh, for a little bit… I think I posted it in the first few days that I joined the Discord, like the arpeggio bit, uh, which came from pretty much just uh, playing the chords from Blackbird by The Beatles.

BONES:

[laughs]

APHA:

If you know the chords to Blackbird at home, and uh, you kinda just play just the arpeggios of them and switch around the order you’ll probably get “hey goodwin”.

BONES:

Huh!

APHA:

So I had that riff with, like, the first drum beat and I posted that on Discord, and people liked it so I decided to save it in a folder to revisit at some point. I think when we decided to do ROSTER, Goodwin was a very new addition. Uh, just came out of the shadows. And like, since I was a new member I wanted to write about a new character that didn’t have, like, that much lore established yet. I thought that was easier for me than, like, picking a super established character that I didn’t know everything about.

BONES:

Yeah.

APHA:

At first, like, before using that riff and everything, uh, I kind of wanted to do a “mike townsend is a disappointment”. Because uh, Goodwin was like a five star pitcher that had, um… pretty horrible stats in her first season.

[BONES laughs]

APHA:

Uh, but then I decided to do the complete opposite of that, you know, that it was her first season and that I believed in her, that she could do better. So I decided to do a super positive song and I used that riff because, um, it sounded, like, twinkly and bright, and happy.

BONES:

Oh yeah, because five stars especially is like a lot of… like, a really high stat just for, like, a starter character, basically. [laughs]

APHA:

Yeah, uh… expectations were high. Uh, I didn’t make that up. Uh, people on the Discord were very hype about her coming on. But then, uh she had, I think, the second to last worst stats in the team for pitchers.

BONES:

[laughs] So did you have any particular inspirations for this track, musical or otherwise? I know you mentioned Blackbird.

APHA:

I think like for the build up at the end, right, with like the, uh, “I believe in you” that’s repeated, I, uh, probably subconsciously took that from, uh, “Fuzzy Brain” by “Dayglow”... the song “False Direction”. I’ve been a fan of that album for a while, but hearing it after making “hey goodwin” I realized how similar it sounded, so uh... I probably did it without noticing. ‘Cause that build-up at the end with like, uh, he says “It’s not new to me” over and over, and it’s pretty much the same thing, so uh, I probably took that from him.

And also, uh, Blone from reviewing the song said that it was, uh, very reminiscent of early 2000’s indie music… [BONES laughs] ...Which I didn’t explicitly try to do, but uh, it is true that it does sound like 2005 MTV.

BONES (laughing):

Yeah. It’s funny because we also just had Blone on for an interview and that was one of the things she talked about, was like, early 2000s indie rock. So that’s really funny that you mention that.

APHA:

I think that’s all the direct inspirations I had. You know, I’m sure there’s thousands of other songs that influenced me indirectly without noticing. But that’s the way music goes, just ripping off people, uh, until it doesn’t sound like any of them.

BONES (laughing):

If you rip off enough people, it stops being a ripoff, like…yeah.

APHA (laughing):

Yup.

BONES:

So this song especially, like, one of the really defining things of this song is the way that there are like these vocal samples of, like, encouragement layered throughout? So there’s the “hey goodwin”s as, like, a greeting, there’s the “I believe in you”... I think there’s a “go for it!” in there somewhere… How did you come up with that, and like, what was your process for, like, getting the clips and like placing them throughout the track?

APHA:

Yeah, when I first had the idea for that I tried to do it, like, all myself by like stacking up vocals but it sounded really weird… So I wanted to have other members of the band do it so I DMed like 30 people… Uh, maybe got 10, 15 responses, I don’t remember. [BONES laughs] But yeah, I was a new guy just randomly DMing people who didn’t know me like, “Hey, can you say these lines”... Yeah, a lot of people went along with it and believed in it, and I got some great samples. That’s also another inspiration, I don’t know if you’ve watched that, uh, the Tiny Desk concert from Phoebe Bridgers.

BONES:

Okay!

APHA:

Uh, it’s not really the same. Se plays “I Know The End” at the end and um… There’s like a bunch of fans in the recording themselves screaming, and it’s all layered on the song. And I thought that was really powerful.

BONES:

Yeah, I think the, like, the one... tether that I could think of that, like, was a relatable metric for me - And I - It’s probably not connected in any way, shape or form but it was like… I know Capital Cities has “Farrah Fawcett Hair”, has, like, a bunch of fan submissions in it too? But yeah, no, it’s really cool to have, like, that level of collaboration especially on… especially as such a new person, because there’s such, like, terror of reaching out to people.

APHA (laughing)

Yeah.

BONES:

But yeah, it’s also very, like, a welcoming space, so…

APHA:

No, I think it works great! I think hearing all of these voices in stereo imaging all around your head, saying they believe in you… I think that’s a great feeling.

BONES:

[laughs] It’s such a good vibe. Like, the whole track. Especially with the, like, arpeggiated guitar… It sort of comes in at the beginning with this little bit of lowpass. It just feels good to listen to.

APHA:

Yeah, uh… I’ve been known to write overly wholesome songs and then the next day write a super depressing track. I think I work in extremes like that.

BONES:

So can you talk about the process of recording the “The Garages Can’t Play Live” version of this track?

APHA:

I had a little bit of live show experience from before, in real life and with the garages, so it wasn’t too hard for this one. There was a vote for the next songs for the live show and it got picked out, and since I was the writer I could decide who was doing every part. I didn’t really want to sing on it, because I’ve never had anyone cover my songs so I wanted to, uh experience that, and Erica did such an amazing job with it so I just wanted to keep playing the original guitar part from which the song was built on.

BONES:

Yeah.

APHA:

And yeah, uh, something happened after that and “number 14” needed a new guitarist, so I took on that one too.

BONES:

Yeah, there’s this really interesting transition between “number 14” and “hey goodwin”.

APHA (simultaneously):

Yeah.

BONES:

How did you figure that out?

APHA:

Yeah, I got assigned to “number 14” and then I noticed that, uh, the two songs were right next to each other so I proposed, like, doing a transition between them. And people were intrigued because that’s not really something that we did as a band before, and I’ve always been a fan of transitions between songs.

BONES (simultaneously):

Yeah.

APHA:

I also put one in “percolate” between “electric kettle” by VB and “liquid friend”. Two parts I was assigned to were kinda similar, like the songs don’t sound similar at all but the specific guitar parts are.

BONES:

Yeah.

APHA:

So I tried to figure out a way to merge them. It was pretty easy at first because you don’t play with a metronome, you just go from one song to the other and it’s great, so I posted that in the Discord and people loved it. But then uh, recording it live and, like, matching the two tempos was so hard. I wanna say it took maybe 60, 70 tries?

BONES:

Oh my god.

APHA:

Yeah. I could’ve just done like a lot of other people do, and they’re probably doing the right thing, which is mime for the live shows and then record a proper version after…

BONES:

[laughs] Yeah.

APHA:

But I don’t know why I inflicted that upon myself, but… the… I really wanted to have the, the take on camera be the right one that you hear in the song, so I just grinded it out until I had a good one. It’s not perfect because I had to, like, take a little break for the metronomes to match up, but I think it sounded pretty good.

BONES:

Well yeah, I mean I was like... I was uh, actually the editor for video for both of those tracks. And so, this is I guess a little behind the scenes on that, it’s like... It literally was one seamless take that I transitioned, like, I literally just like cut the video file and then moved it over into the other project, like… It was incredible, I was blown away.

APHA:

Not all my takes got that far, but like, playing two songs worth of guitar straight without mistakes, and pressing “start recording” and then making a mistake and then you stop the recording and then you start again… It was a long night, but I did end up with a six minute long video with the two songs back-to-back.

BONES:

[laughs] Yeah, that also let us kind of continue that theme of, like, having some of the background audio continue through too. Was there any particular techniques that you did in that song that you are, like, really proud of?

APHA:

Yeah. I think it’s a very catchy song. I think the chorus is quite an earworm, and that’s great. [laughs] Yeah, and I think the build up into it, I really love how it turned out. It’s still one of my best songs, and I think the chorus is very strong. I’m really proud of all the layering, I think it really works for the song’s message, so I really love how it turned out.

BONES:

Did you get to see the group reaction to it when it came out?

APHA:

Yeah, we always, uh, hang out in voice chat for releases and type in the chat, it’s always great… And seeing Twitch chat is terrifying. [BONES laughs] But it’s very very cool to see, like, so many people experience what you worked on at the same time and post their reactions, it’s uh… As if you were playing a live show and seeing their faces. It’s always a great experience.

BONES:

It’s interesting, the idea of like, seeing the internet - which is a very different platform - Still be able to find ways of like, having that same feeling, you know?

APHA:

Yeah, uh, it’s very different, but somehow it gives off that same feeling of playing a live show. Even though, like, maybe you recorded that video two weeks ago, it’s very similar to seeing their reactions, only like this time it’s names uh... posting dancing emotes.

BONES:

So lastly, outside of your own work, what would you consider the most underrated garages song to be?

APHA:

I read that question beforehand, and it’s such a tough question… [BONES laughs] ‘Cause there’s so many garages songs that I love, and… Also they’re like, all underrated in my book, right? Like, they all deserve at least a million streams.

BONES:

Yeah, absolutely.

APHA:

But the one that I thought of when I read that question was uh, “solar eclipse” by jen cat. I don’t know if it’s the most underrated, but I just wish more people heard that song. I think it’s so great.

BONES:

[laughs] Yeah. We also just did an episode on that-

APHA (simultaneously):

Oh really?

BONES:

By the time this comes out it’ll have been I think a couple episodes back, so if you haven’t listened to that episode and listened to especially the song, like, feel free to go back and listen to that, ‘cause… Especially with Jen talking about the process of creating the song and also like the lyrical themes was really powerful.

Well cool, thank you for coming on the show!

APHA:

Thank you for having me! It was a pleasure to be here.

BONES:

And thank you so much for joining us on idol board, a podcast where we interview members of the garages, an anarcho-syndicalist Blaseball band from the fictional location of Seattle. We make songs about being gay, the apocalypse, and fighting the gods and you can find our music at thegarages.bandcamp.com, on YouTube, or on your favorite music streaming service. We’ll see you next week! Now, here is ‘hey goodwin’ by apha lex of the garages.

[‘hey goodwin’ plays in its entirety]

ANNOUNCER:

idol board is edited by Ada Quinn, BONES, Jennifer Cat and Nuclear Tourist. Hosted by BONES, produced by Tangereen Velveteen, transcribed by Astrid D, Sigilcrafter Aya, Merry, and VigilantBaker, and created by Aoife and Tangereen Velveteen.

[outro music plays]

ANNOUNCER:

That was a Fourth Strike production.