Breakfast with Amber

January 2022: New Variant Just Dropped

We continue our story during winter break, or should I say extended winter break because Trinity added another two weeks to our winter break due to a little something called the omicron variant, or as I called it during Christmas dinner, "new variant just dropped." I almost made Dad snarf his food. I didn't really think it was that funny, but I'd soon learn that karma comes quickly.

It must have happened right at the start of January while I was deleting every single episode of 21 individually because it was the start of 2022, and YouTube has no way to delete videos in bulk and setting up my new Animal Crossing daily calendar that I forgot that I had gotten that Christmas. Anyway, that must have been when I felt the first sniffle. It might have even been on New Year's Eve. What I'm trying to say is that I started 2022 with a cold.

At least, I thought it was a cold. It was a pretty convincing cold, too, with the sore throat and the stuffy nose and everything. Mom was also getting sick, but we really thought it was just a cold. After all, COVID looks like the worst flu you've ever gotten, and we just had stuffy noses. Then Dad came home from work and said that he tested positive for COVID. Mom and I took one long look at each other that confirmed that we both knew exactly what happened.

At least, that's how I imagine it happening. It's definitely how it would happen if this were a movie (any film execs who are reading this, call me). Mom probably said something like, "Welp," because that's definitely how we were feeling. Mom and I had just caught COVID, and it was probably the same omicron variant that had been going around. The symptoms weren't that serious, but it was optimized for maximum contagiousness. When I said "new variant just dropped," the new variant dropped into my body.

Amazingly, Dad wasn't sick. He's just special like that. More importantly, I could no longer relate to those memes that are like "People who still haven't gotten COVID be like:" and then there's a picture of Keanu Reeves dodging bullets in the Matrix.

Up until this point, Mom and Dad had been joking about how if I tested positive for COVID, they'd lock me in my room for two weeks and give me food through a slot. The way it actually turned out was that we were basically sharing each other's germs. Dad got it. Then Mom and I got it. None of us were being locked in our rooms. Nevertheless, I still holed myself up in the game room because that's what I do whether I'm sick or not.

I had started watching some videos lately on music theory by this guy named David...Beckett? David Beckham? No, that can't be right. Let me look it up real quick.

David Bennett! That was his name. Back to the story at hand. I had been watching a lot of music theory videos by this guy named David Bennett, and I came across one on tempo changes. That got me thinking of this song I had written in my head called "Pay Up" where the first verse starts out at 60 bpm and gradually speeds up to the tempo it stays at for the rest of the song (I can't remember what exactly it is. I think it's 114 bpm). After watching that video, I decided I needed to make that song right now, and I still had Waveform on my computer, so I could.

The tempo modulation went just as smoothly as I had hoped. Waveform had the option to gradually increase the tempo. Just click the point where you want the modulation to start and the part where you want it to end and slide them up and down however you want. The tempo increased in a straight line, each measure the exact same bpm faster than the last one. I also added a couple of percussion instruments that alternate, making a "tick-tock" sound, and it doubled as a metronome so that I didn't get off-beat while I was singing.

I got the entire instrumental ready. I put in the bass line and the chords and the key change and the lyrics written about how pissed Raymond from Animal Crossing must be that people are paying real-life money for him, and I used the melody for the 21 theme song for the bridge, and then I get to the vocals, and my voice sounds like I haven't had anything to drink in two days. I must have waited, like, a week before I actually got to recording. I hate being sick.