For the penultimate song-write up from Virtual Virgins, I’m going to say a bit about the title song.
The music began as a piano part – the one which plays throughout most of the song. As you can just about make out in the accompanying video, I played it by crossing my thumbs over so the notes that the left hand are playing end up sounding like they are part of the right hand part, and vice versa.
It mixes up the patterns and rhythms you are used to playing which makes it easier to come up with new ideas. I recently saw on a documentary that the Genesis keyboard did something similar, although I don’t think I’ve gone full-prog yet.
Virtual Virgins imagines finding love in virtual reality. When I wrote it I’d never experienced virtual reality, and I didn’t really have any idea what it would be like. I don’t mind admitting that I thought the technology was a bit more advanced than it really is. After writing the song, I bought a second-hand Oculus Quest for my boys. It was amazing at first but the novelty wore off pretty quickly and I found it left me feeling slightly sick.
I can see why so many people sell them second hand online. We also didn’t do much interacting with others. I met up with my friend for a game of virtual crazy golf and he encouraged me to join in a more popular game I forget the name of. That ended up with me getting shouted at by pre-teen players for not understanding the rules of the game. So my first shot of VR wasn’t as sedate as the song.
See the Virtual Virgins music video I made using Snapchat and Instagram filters above.