Yellow
Context
Yellow was the 4th Neon Buffalo song I produced after Saw Your Face. It sat for a while as other tracks moved ahead of it in the release queue. On 4/26/2026 I did the first total rewrite I’ve shipped — new lyrics, new production.
The Story
I wrote yellow in early spring. We’d had a snowstorm in Oklahoma City and I was using the time to finish up working on an app — snowed in, using it as a work excuse because I had a to-do list. Then the seasons were changing. The sun was out. Trees blooming. Birds back. The song is about seasons of life — going from a winter where we’re hunkered down, heads down in study mode, finishing an art project or coding project. I could finally see the end of the tunnel working on my app. It’s a relief being out of the dark middle of a long project.
I had the idea for the hook. It was just hello yellow. I was picking up a pizza at Hideaway and it was just like — here’s a nice song. I was in a good enough headspace where Sunday is a rest day. I could just go home and figure it out. It came together quickly. It’s very satisfying when you can implement on an idea instead of making it wait. That’s probably the best way to kill an idea — to make it wait to get made.
There’s a thread of melancholy in the song that I really like. It’s a Spring song, but there’s still melancholy in it. I think melancholy is just part of life for some people, and it can be part of the good life and the positive shifts too. The metaphor of going out really drives this song — after being stuck inside all winter long, with a new relationship, new possibilities, new exciting things to explore. I used birds chirping in the background as a kind of background noise for the track. And I had a lot of fun pitch shifting the hi-hats — a sound effect that gave the drums energy. This one came out a little more synth pop.
This was version one:
hello yellow
You are beautiful in that dress
No one I’d rather be with more
I’ve been snowed in all my life
where were you when i was stuck indoorshello yellow
hello yellowYou are beautiful on my arm
Spring is here again
We are going out
Nothing can keep us inhello yellow
hello yellow
A 30-second snippet of v1 — for context on what got rebuilt:
Then it sat for two months, buried by other songs. I learn and improve with every release. My song quality level went up while Yellow waited, and the version I had wasn’t where the bar was anymore.
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”
— Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario creator (attributed)
I decided to apply this principle to my release process. I was tempted to open up Dancing Man, Saturday Morning, and Not About You too, but those are stamps of where I was in my production journey when I made them. This is the weekend I was supposed to be posting all of them. They are sitting in the done and ready to release queue. Watching someone evolve their craft over time is the story of this blog.
Yellow quality issues were bothering me enough to hold it back. The original was about going out. The rewrite is about staying in. That feels more authentic to me right now.
What Worked
The lyrics rebuild.
I wasn’t happy with the hello yellow hook and the entire original version sounded flat dynamically. This is coming off Dancing Man which is the most passionate I’ve had to sing on one of these tracks.
I dropped the verses and started by stating yellow things, then rhyming yellow things, then picked the ones that felt right. I wanted to order them thematically somehow. It ended up as a soft, dreamy flow.
The most important lyrics were added later.
“smash the clocks to freeze time”
The last line I added was probably the most important for the song.
“finally satisfied, wide open state of mind”
The production rebuild.
This is where the rewrite is stronger.
I chose this song to be the first in a new sonic direction. I’ve been exploring hyper pop and listening to artists in that genre.
Simultaneously, I was feeling like my synth patches were stale. I like to grab them off the shelf and tweak rather than do my own sound design. So I went on a synth patch shopping spree on Arturia’s site. New sounds and new techniques / inspiration collided in Yellow v2.
An aggressive bass has the melody — bass carries the hook, not the chord work. More aggressive drums to match. Three distinct sections, and I built each one with bass and drums first before anything else went on top. I added layered vocal harmony parts, with a strong upper harmony on rather be.
Production Hurdles
OVox. OVox is the vocal synth I run my voice through, and getting it to sit right takes work. If you boost gain on a vocal track with a weak signal, that can easily turn into artifacts, especially on S sounds. I cut the highs with EQ (over 5khz). I spent a lot of time cutting out ambient noise in the silences that were producing random artifacts.
Verse clarity. I want the lyrics to be heard and understandable. That was challenging on the verse part. The fix was creating higher melodic lines in the verse so the words could punch through. I really liked how it sounded in the “no where I’d rather be” in Yellow. It started with the harmonies I added in Not About You.
Synth exploration. With over 1,500 new patches in the library, finding the right sounds in session 1 took much longer than usual despite spending a couple hours browsing the night before the session.
One Thing Learned
From the second I sat down with the new beat and bass line, I was locked in. Nine hours straight on a Saturday afternoon, despite starting tired — when the bass and drums clicked, I looked up and it was past midnight.
The takeaway for Yellow was trusting myself to hold a song back. It’s the tension I’ve mentioned in other posts between quality/perfectionism vs shipping good enough tracks and rolling the learning into the next one. In this case, holding back paid off! The fact that I had already created the album cover and really liked it helped ensure “Yellow” got a second life.
🩷 Ben
Coming to streaming soon
[Yellow lyrics]
hello, yellow
hello, yellow
finally satisfied, wide open state of mind
dawn break
bright eyes
lazy Sunday
spring timewindows open
sun shine!
smash the clocks
to freeze timehoney drips
coffee kiss
butter melts
waffle blissbare feet
sun dress
sweet dream
nothing nextno plans,
no where,
i’d rather be
no where,
i’d rather be
no where,
i’d rather be