musical thoughts

This is one of the first actual online collaborative projects I’ve done. I just never posted the completed product. A fellow YouTuber reached out to me and asked if I’d like to collaborate on some Deep House kind of things. I said yes, and here’s what ultimately happened.

First, here’s the goods:

The starting point of this project was this concept:

The first project I have is for a friend who has provided many gigs for her clubnight called Peg. It’s largely based around underground dance music but she has said that our choice of style is up to us as long as it stays within the boundaries of what one would normally hear at a Peg night (see excerpt from mail).

“OK i have a theme now too

it’s going to be called PEG SOUNDS – a bit of a play on words and a respectful nod to PET SOUNDS – one of my favourite albums ever and a true landmark in production values and also cover art

http://www.discogs.com/release/390866

for track names – please make a play on words of any of the track names on that album – so for instance your track could be “Sloop John A” rather than “Sloop John B”

please submit your track names first so we don’t get repeats – and it would be really nice if we could actually get 12 tracks – just like the original Pet Sounds. “

The track I have chosen is “God Only Knows” but will be titled “Buddah Knows Best”, not a religious view in the slightest but needs to be play on words and figured that I could use a sample with some chanting in it to make it relevant. Hoping to keep it around the 123BPM mark, will be four to the floor and intend on make it a bit jazzy.

Yeah, so if you know me, I know just about nothing about dance music. But the “bit jazzy” part I can probably cover. So what you have here is a rhythm track prepared by my collaborator Ryan, quite capable of meeting or exceeding all your underground dance needs I imagine, with some Rhodes and synth noodling on top contributed by me.

With no prior preparation, I loaded the track into my DAW and armed my Rhodes for recording, and just let it rip. There’s some massive sub bass going on, which established a key center for me. I recorded three takes–two with just Rhodes, and a third where I play synth with my right hand and Rhodes with left. What you get here starts with the third take, and ends with one of the first takes.

I created a breakdown by dropping the rhythm track out entirely at about three minutes in. You get to experience some crazy chord progressions along with a sound I created by filtering pink noise and modulating the filters a bit. After the break, I come in with a bass line of my own devising (which was recorded during mixdown when I felt like adding it).

I’ve got to say, this has nothing to do with the Beach Boys, so we stretched the concept to its thinnest I guess. But it was a lot of fun and I think we made something people will like to listen to. Remixing is kind of enjoyable. I guess eventually I will be a producer. Programming note: this was originally completed April 27, 2008 but I never posted it anywhere.