Saw Your Face
This is a sad song about being haunted by someone who is no longer in your life — presumably an ex love. It’s probably my favorite thing I’ve ever made. And I started trying to write songs when I was in high school — I was in several bands. None of them good ;)
I’m 36 now. I made an album in my mid-20s, took a long break, and here we go again. I’m not planning to stop this time. Of all the creative outlets I’ve tried — games, visual art, cartoons — music speaks to me the most. It’s the one.
This song was inspired by a relationship that ended a few years ago. The music project led to the inspiration in the first place. I was working on the album cover for So Tired, went to open VSCO to run it through a filter, and hadn’t opened that app in years. The first images were photos of my ex-girlfriend. Even after all this time, the grief hit me.
I think that authenticity made me really want to push to make it good. I had a marathon 10-hour session on a Sunday where I hammered this out. I remember taking a break in the middle to go to Jersey Mike’s and I felt so tired. It was hard to mine that material — like bringing everything back up. Music can be therapeutic that way. You can use a creative practice to face the traumas that are normally buried day to day, even if you didn’t plan to.
I’m starting to take songwriting a bit more seriously now. This one went through several drafts to get to its final form. I’m not sure why i kept revising it, but it kept getting better. I think I just felt a responsibility to communicate the authenticity of the feelings. Like — if I can pull them out in a way that justifies the feeling, it gives the emotion some meaning. I also wanted the listener to feel it. To feel understood in a moment of loneliness.
I really like that it doesn’t follow traditional pop song structures. It basically just loops the verse and then goes into a very emotional outro. The looping is kind of like being stuck in your head — seeing this person in other people’s faces on the street, just being haunted. There’s a repetition to it…starting with saw every time, but only the digital version was actually there — the picture on the phone. The rest was just your mind lying to you — giving the ghost of this person a life of its own. If you’re going through that, I’m sorry. I know it sucks.
A couple of technical things for the music nerds:
The big breakthrough on this song was figuring out how to make emotional vocals when I’m not a good singer. I cracked the code on this and I want to keep using it. I have this OVox voice synthesizer doing pitch correction, but on top of that, in Ableton, I pitch different parts of the vocal clip (directly on the clip). I’ll pitch a line up or down following music theory intervals — 3, 5, 7, or 12 semitones. 9s could work as well, but i hadn’t thought of that until just now! That pitching on top of the autotune can make it sound really emotional.
The song is also always driving down. The emotion in the voice trends from high to low. The synth melody is always going down the scale. It might step up once in the middle, but it’s always trending toward the ground — like being driven down by a mind that won’t let go, ruminating, cycling, stuck in a loop going deeper.
I learned from making games that what makes an art experience stronger is layering different pieces that all contribute to the same feeling. In a game, the art, the music, the story — they should all emphasize the same theme. Layered together, they’re greater than the sum of their parts. They create an experience. I think this song does that well, and it shows how trying different creative mediums can make you better at other mediums.
The most lonely effects are reverb and delay. I used a lot of both. During polishing, I added extra delay on the word “alone” and it sounded great. Those little tweaks at the end are really fun. I also added rain as a background texture. Just to set the mood.
One more thing: I thought I was going to spend a few hours finishing this in the second session. I actually planned to quickly wrap up Marvelous Thing — by swapping out a snare sound and call it done. I ended up rebuilding the bridge, redoing the first verse, tweaking all day. The song (Marvelous Thing) is better for it, but then I was pretty tired from the session and I had the discipline to open Saw your face. It barely needed anything. I added an 808 to the drum and a bit of extra delay and that was about it lol. It was basically done from the first session.
That’s it. It’s a good one. Enjoy.
🩷 Ben
Coming to streaming April 24, 2026
[Saw Your Face lyrics]
saw your face / on my phone / made me feel alone
saw your face / in the street / but it wasn’t you
saw your face / when I woke up / but it wasn’t true
saw your face / on my phone / made me feel alone
saw your face / in the street / but it wasn’t you
saw your face / when I woke up / but it wasn’t true
saw your face on my phone / made me feel alone / lone, lone, lone, lone, lone, lone
I found love / I found you / forget love / but not you / but not you