audio: Really, Really Weird
This is an entry in a contest, which is something I usually don’t mess with. I would have done this even without the contest though.
First check out the super cool original pop tune version of this, with aliens and everything, done by Jeff Boller recording as the Simple Carnival:
A wickedly hooky pop tune, with a super-eclectic sort of production aesthetic (the kitchen sink is in there, I’m pretty sure). But the memorable part is the vocals and harmonies. A great melody that will stick with you.
So when I did my “remix” I approached this from the perspective of what if this consummate pop artist was dropped into one of my club date trio gigs? I mean we’d have to hip up his tune some, that’s for sure. It winds up being an idiom transplant actually. Jeff posted the 30-40 tracks he used to make the arrangement you hear in the Youtube video, and I used one. My version is underproduced–nothing’s layered, and there aren’t really any takes. Now since I don’t really play drums, I did have to do some software-assisted editing, but you are hearing a performance where I’m playing all the instruments behind Jeff’s vocal. Like you would possibly hear in a club. Not a production.
club date remix:
Jeff’s melody mostly outlines a G major pentatonic scale, which gives me a degree of flexibility in harmonizing it. He does hit the leading tone once (I kind of pretend that doesn’t happen if you listen hard enough). The hook is just one note–the ninth. So I make the most of the cliche substitute: diminished chord with major seventh and major ninth.
I convert his poppish chord progression to something more circle-of-fifths and jazzish. Mainly this affects the second phrase of the verse, where I play iii-vi-ii-V in place of the vi-iii-IV-ii-V that’s in the original. And I expand his triads into seventh and ninth chords and occasionally beyond.
I solo over a series of modes over the basic G bass vamp. First G mixolydian, then G phrygian, and back to mixolydian with some blues inflections. Then I wind the solo down to a double trill similar to the intro to All Blues. This may be my shortest solo ever. ;)
My bass line vamps a two-bar pattern that includes the dominant seventh–as noted above the major seventh could clash with this, but in the section of the tune with that leading tone, I’m doing a circle-of-fifths progression, so we avoid a clash. F in the bass line is just a tension creator, more of a passing tone than functional. There’s an E in melody that lines up with it, which means I can’t play an F dominant sound there.
And finally this is in 5/4. I played this drum part on my keyboard controller in three passes: hihats first, then kick-snare, and then cymbals. It’s loop-based, but the different layers are at different loop lengths, giving it more of a live feel. The cymbals are almost straight through in one take, but I had to stop before the end of the tune, so there is a portion pasted in that repeats. But effectively the cymbals were performed as you hear them. A lot of the patterns in all the parts deliberately run across the beat, obscuring the odd meter of it somewhat.
Anyhow, comments are welcome as usual.
