Why Write a Song?
In this blog post I share how I created my PopsPlaysToo Fortnite Camping Song. I’ve always wanted to write the lyrics to a song so when the idea hit me to turn my journey through Fortnite into a melody, I pounced on it!
The song’s content would focus on how I started off playing Fortnite and describes the strategy and tactics I use when ranking to Unreal. I wanted the song to be light, campy (pun intended), catchy, and of course a tad corny. A real anthem for PopsPlaysToo! It needed to be something when played in it’s entirety would convey my story, strategy, and essence. Lastly, I wanted it to have excerpts that I would turn into Viewer Rewards for my fans. This means fans could play fun applicable parts of the song by redeeming their Viewer Rewards points whenever I stream.
With all that in mind, I sat down and typed out the PopsPlaysToo Fortnite Camping Song.
The Lyrics
It was 2018 and the month of December.
Clear as day, I can remember,
Sitting on the couch with my college aged son,
Who was asking to give Fortnite a run.
We bought an Xbox and began to play,
These kids are good, what can I say,
They build impressive forts quick as can be,
They shoot at targets I can’t see.
Decided I’d need a strategy,
To not become an early-game tragedy,
Remaining unseen for as long as I can,
That’s the strategy that became Pops plan.
Make them wonder, where could Pops be?
High atop a tall oak tree?
Is it possible to get down easily?
The answer’s usually, probably.
Start a fight? Occasionally.
Picking battles carefully.
Ranking to Unreal rapidly.
Camping out. Safely.
Trees leafy canopies provide great cover,
A camouflage outfit blends in like no other,
Beware of players that are harvesting wood,
They can leave you crouching where the tree once stood.
Far from shore can be safe afloat,
Unless the season contains speed boats,
Hunters search for campers at sea,
If found, we’re eliminated easily.
Make them wonder, where could Pops be?
Is he high atop a tall oak tree?
Is it possible to get down easily?
The answer’s usually, probably.
Start a fight? Occasionally.
Picking battles carefully.
Ranking to Unreal rapidly.
Camping out. Safely.
The storm’s my friend. It doesn’t shoot back.
Surviving in it, I have a knack.
Campfires, medkits, and chug splashes restore health.
Fish for a while in the storm’s cover stealth.
Now it’s near games end and only a few are alive.
The storm’s grown powerful, escaping it’s essential to survive.
Back out on the visible playing field with the storm to thank.
Time to fight and see how high up we’ll rank.
Make them wonder, where could Pops be?
High…
Turning Lyrics into a Song with AI
Here’s where the technologist in me had fun. AI song generators convert lyrics into full blown songs with vocals and music. After looking around at a few AI song generators, I settled on a service named Mureka. It has a good intuitive interface with just the right amount of options.
The process of creating the song was fairly simple. Pick a genre (e.g., rock and roll, country, etc.), select a male or female voice, choose one of their artists, and pick a mood for your song. Lastly is what I believe is the song’s secret sauce. The song creator software has a large empty text field where you can enter extra information. I’m not going to share exactly what I entered here, but I provided some guidance that I knew would be used to instruct the software what I was looking for. When filling in this text box, I pretended I was talking to the artist that would be creating the music for and singing my PopsPlaysToo Fortnite Camping Song.
A minute or two later, voila!, I had a song. It wasn’t what I wanted though. Actually, I was quite disappointed. Some of the words were out of order and I wondered if this would really work out but it took me only two more attempts to hit gold. The results even greatly exceeded my expectations!
Giving the PopsPlaysToo Fortnite Camping Song Life
I thought adding a slide show to the song would help round out the story so I used Canva to create one. Images for the slide show were a combination of AI generated images from Dall-E (an Open AI product), in-game images and video clips.
It took a fair amount of jockeying and editing to synch up the right images and video clips with their appropriate song lyrics but in the end it all came together beautifully. The fact that I have a good laugh in the final video clip couldn’t have been scripted better. I had tremendous fun creating this song. Hope you enjoy it! If you do, please give the YouTube video a thumbs up and leave a comment. I read and respond to all comments.
View the entire music/video “PopsPlaysToo Fortnite Camping Song” here.
