This page touches and elaborates on the official QnA that was hosted by the heads of the CJFS (Chonny Jash Fan Server) and answered by Jash himself, with my own explanations and original points during this. This QnA covers things from personal questions and casual ones, but also talks about the process for his music creation, story writing for the album, and other stances and opinions he has on the subject, compared to his fans.
Character and trope inspirations, and the direction taken:
Jash has taken the active juxtaposing ideas and conclusions that he’s experienced throughout his life so far, and has used that as fuel for this creative project, branding it as a ‘manifestation’, as if it formed on its own without much conscious effort or choice from his own mind.
He’s also taken a good number of pre-existing examples of tropes akin to the ones put into action, like the personification of feelings and concepts, along with an argument-filled trinity dynamic.
He has also acknowledged, and welcomed, the growing amount of people who suffer with mental disorders such as BPD and DID, who have taken comfort in relating to the theming's of the album itself. Even if it wasn’t a main intention during the creative process, he’s expressed clearly that he’s glad it’s become a side effect of the project.
On top of this, when touching on deciding the identities and representations of the main characters, he claims that the character people refer to as ‘Whole’ is not officially part of the album, and is instead just Chonny himself.
In terms of in-community inspiration, not much was incorporated directly and knowingly, but possibly quite a lot of fan content could’ve subconsciously been inspiration for further character building and detailing, Chonny admits. Direct intake only stems from lyrical references for Soul in Taken for a Ride, and personal interpretations for visual designs for the instrumental album’s cover art.
Album order and inconsistencies:
When it came the chronological order of the album, the songs were not done in the order they’re shown in on the final release, nor were they done in Tally Hall’s order either. By looking at his Youtube channel, the order is quite hap-hazard, and doesn't correlate to anything in specific, aside from most likely just being what ‘felt right’ to him when choosing what to do.
This leads to noticeable objective spikes and dips in execution and quality, such as covers like ‘Spring and a Storm’ and ‘Never Meant to Know’ coming into being much earlier on (Late 2021). Due to this, they have less direction to the over-arching concept of the project, as it wasn’t fully developed at the time, evident by things such as purposes for creation, title formats, and lack of topical lyrical changes. He says himself that the idea to cement more of a theming into it came to him around the time Haiku and Banana Man were being made (Released around the April-May of 2022).
The change is noticeable through other factors too, such as the formatting of the description’s lyrics. The older covers would show changed lyrics through [square brackets], which tended to only take up around half of the song in some cases, whilst later on the brackets would be converted and utilised to differentiate HMS specifically, with rounded, square, and curly brackets respectively, since multiple voices was a concept that took centre-stage at that point. This can be seen through songs such as ‘Light & Night’ and ‘The Bidding’.
After a certain point even later on, (with songs such as ‘Taken for a Ride’, ‘Mucka Blucka’, and ‘Dream’) songs had no original lyrics left over, and started getting no extra notation for the lyrics, mostly moving to the music videos themselves to discern characters, as the individual songs become more and more precarious, and due to this, a bigger undertaking each time, requiring more intricacy, thought and care than usual.
One more way the out-of order changes are noticeable is through the flipping of the background colour-coordination of Heart and Mind. Good examples are tracks like ‘Variations on a Cloud’ and ‘We’re Gonna Win’, where they switch black and white between each other, however this has since been passed off as a by-product character development, where they’re more willing to see from each other’s perspectives.
Fan interpretations, and lack of official answers:
When it comes to Vol. 1, a specific narrative is set in place, with routes stemming from it for Vol. 2. However, Chonny himself has claimed that the narrative itself is more subjective than it may come off as. Since he wants to encourage theorizing, and doesn’t want to write off anyone’s own ideas of the story and its progression, he’s held off on giving concrete answers for anything that takes place in the album, or it’s reasoning.
He has said that it’s ‘no longer up to me to decide what it’s about’, as the release of the content - and setup for a continuation – intrinsically welcomes an element of audience-based influence, where he cannot keep with any concrete plans, lest he discards any other possibilities that he wants to let people take comfort in whilst enjoying his work.
Musical process and origins:
Jash’s inspiration and spark for music has been rooted in his life for the majority of it, starting extremely early on through school, which encouraged the idea of picking up drumming, and experimenting with digital music composition.
Due to this pique of interest, he had taken up school bands, enrolling in every music-based opportunity given, and leading to various university courses, which he has since dropped out of to pursue more personal creation for himself (shown in Welcome to Tally Hall).
Along with the obvious reasons for making this cover album, he’s given a list of other creators that have inspired his own sound, and way of composing. Artists such as That Handsome Devil, Will Wood, Tim Minchin, and Streetlight Manifesto have been good waypoints for the area and genres he dabbles in, but other prominent creators in the internet sphere have given him aspirations, such as Louie Zong, Toby Fox, NateWantsToBattle, and FamilyJules.
When it comes to brainstorming for the topic and subjects shown in a song, he uses a fairly wide variety of process specification-levels for coming up with a way to tackle the project. Whether it comes down to “This is a Mind song”/”This song will be separate parts”, or “as hyperspecific as “I want the start of the song to be this specific length and tempo,” he boils it down to the mindset of ‘Make Music’, where he tends to wing it without too much pre-planning or hyping up. If it’s bad, he’ll scrap it straight away, if it’s fine, he’ll keep moving on without much thought.
When it comes to the ACTUAL process, he lists it as:
“Get Idea > Write Down and Extrapolate Idea (usually where lyrics happen) > Create Outline of Song (full structure with one/a few instruments) > Fill In Song > Record Vocals > Export All Instruments Separately > Create Mixing File > Mix > Export > Master Album”.
his process can be seen referenced swiftly in ‘Taken for a Ride’, where he skims over each aspect quickly for comedic emphasis of his unusual dedication towards his workload. Along with this, he gives the disclaimer that he doesn’t always harbour a consistent amount of intricacy in his creative process. This even stems over to the mental process.
Tools used and equipment:
Chonny uses Fl Studio almost exclusively, along with Melodyne occasionally for vocal work. However, he states that he tries his best to keep it all in one workstation, to keep it concise. Most of his physical musical equipment is fairly mashed together, only having a few professional-level things, such as stereo pair microphones, and a Behringer U-Phoria Audio Interface. Most of his other tools and instruments were second-hand, gifted, or put together through various sources, like his drum kit.
He has rudimentary knowledge and experience with the piano and bass, but only really used for theory visualization. His main instrument is obviously drums, but he doesn’t seem to use them primarily in a practise-based nature nowadays, stating that he doesn’t have the time or reason to continue seriously with them, delegating them to his compositions exclusively.
Most of Chonny’s audio generation comes from VSTs, synths, and other various digital samples sourced all in Fruity Loops, where MIDI writing shows up as the main chunk of content in his songs, giving his music a less realistic, yet more intense and complex nature in arrangement. He even lists off the main synthesizers he uses, such as Harmor, Vital, and Nexus. He also frequents music channels online, in search of new presets and new instruments.
Another token aspect of his music is the amount of layering he puts on the arrangements, where harmonies and unison vocals use multiple takes on top of each other, and orchestration can use tens of instrument tracks to create as full a sound as possible. Utilising many different distortions and autotune effects, he often shapes the voices seen in the tracks to create an iconic timbre. The most unique utilisation is the method of creating Mind’s voice, where the voice is pitch-shifted an octave lower, formant shifted even further, and given grain and almost synth-like properties to emphasize his intimidating and mechanical demeanour.
Motivation, and reasons to keep working at it:
Chonny makes it clear that overthinking and overplanning leads to disappointment when faced with your own efficiency, so he tries his best to wing most things, and not ponder too long on one specific thing. By making the songs in separate nature, he utilises the nature of immediately moving on and focusing own something new, avoiding any potholes he may stumble across.
This stems over to the mental process, more intrinsically, where it does contain its own ups and downs alike. He describes it as hours of distain and hesitation, followed by a burst of realisation and breakthrough, lasting only a few minutes, yet still being enough to keep him moving.
Another main motivator is obviously having a finished product that he can finally upload. Having the clarity that he doesn’t have to obsess over a specific song anymore, followed by the outpour of support he gets from comments, he possesses enough energy to move on and keep going at a consistent pace.
Practical performance capabilities, and a retrospective on them:
Stated before already, he only really uses instrument performance for recording purposes, mainly drum patterns. His piano and bass playing even less, usually delegated to mock-ups in the music video footage.
He’s also admitted how his natural AU accent isn’t very well suited for his usual work, so he has learned to separate his talking voice from his singing voice, or sometimes blending them together to fit certain contexts on his other projects/albums.
This extensive practise that has enabled his potential and capabilities, along with the various artists that feed his inspiration, helped shape his sound, and trademark qualities when covering other artists. For example, taking high energy songs like ‘Time machine’ and re-envisioning its purpose, for a calmer track, or taking ‘The Mind Electric’ and stretching it three-fold with varying instrumentation to separate them, or even taking songs like ‘Dream’ or ‘The Bidding’ and extending them considerably, giving them entirely new verses and sections with all-new chord-progressions, vibes, and contexts.
References, and hidden components:
Chonny has noted that any lyrical references have been extensively eaten up and found out by his more eagle-eyed fans, leaving not much that’s still uncovered writing-wise. From the simple things like layering other TH songs over other songs in the vocals, to references to completely different artists’ works, like Tim Minchin being brought up in ‘Mucka Blucka’.
However, instrumentally, that’s a different story. A token aspect of his work is utilising the complexity of his arrangements to sneak in little things, like little thematic instruments that could call back to other moments, blending vocals and backing together to give a unique feeling at points, and of course filling songs with tons of subtle leitmotifs.
A fun fact that I love is how the entire vocal performance of the original ‘The Mind Electric’ is layered deep underneath the length of the instrumental of ‘The Soul Eclectic’, requiring you to take a trip to ‘Instrumental Anarchy’, the instrumental partner album to CCCC in order to catch it out, intermittently increasing and decreasing in volume through the mix.
Music video production:
His music video style has changed pretty drastically throughout the creation of CCCC, which you can easily see by comparing the early video releases to the late ones. The earlier covers’ visuals usually just consist of plain or textured backgrounds, usually black or white to discern characters, along with his ‘head logo’ and the lyric text. Maybe even an audio spectrum visualizer here and there.
(Fun fact: The channel logo was originally Steve-o's head from a meme he saw that stuck with him, but when faced with having to rebrand it for moving to other platforms, he wanted to keep some form of it in the new iteration)
For the later songs, he started using more and more live footage elements, starting with the drumming in ‘Special’, moving onto the bass in ‘Two Wuv’, and then debuting the iconic facial lip-syncing in songs like ‘The Bidding’ and ‘Mucka Blucka’, helping colour-code the characters when they’re taking in turns singing.
This was fully evolved during songs like ‘Light & Night’ and the TME trilogy, where he’d feature his whole body being shown off, with different outfits and real background sets to boot. Finally, it ended with ‘Taken for a Ride’, with his music making process/daily life featured along with time lapsed footage of the Tally Hall crew.
Along with this, most of the music videos were made after the songs had been finalised, and Chonny only started planning the video making ahead of time for the final few releases.
When it came to recording instruments visually to sync up to the audio, he only chose specific parts he was confident in pulling off, since he’d need to execute them 1:1 in order to end up with smooth enough footage.
General online presence, and reception:
When asked, Jash said that personally, the songs/videos he had most fun making were: ‘The Heart Acoustic’ for the instrumental, ‘Light’ all-rounded, the challenge of innovating ‘The Mind Electric’ three times over, and the refreshing feeling of starting his next original album. However, when asked for his favourite song of his overall, Chonny says it’s just whatever he’s made most recently.
When it comes to motivation for aspects outside of music, he states that he mostly is fuelled by the “intense demotivation to do literally anything else as a career path,”
Touched on more in the Non-Fiction Mix of a song in his newer original album, ‘The Novel Lyric Hunt’, he explains how his spite towards surrounding people’s attitude towards him at a younger age helps him avoid aiming for a more conventional “normal-ass job”.
When asked if there’s any songs he wishes to go back and improve, he reinstates his preferred process of moving on completely when finishing a track, and usually keeps any distain for earlier work as proof that he’s improved. However, there are a few cases in the album specifically that he really wants to revisit and fix up, but are not stated by name, as to avoid changing public opinion of it.
Finally, it’s made clear one last time that he 100% enjoys what he does, and doesn’t want to come off as pandering to certain audiences. He’s fully invested in what he works on, and finds it fun. He states that if his goal was to just make numbers go up, and earn money, he would’ve given in early, and ended up with a worse product.