Recorded On: Ableton Live 9
Instruments: (In Order of Appearance)
House Bass
Kick Jump (Part of 16 Kicks Pack)
Snare KW (Part of 16 Snares Pack)
Drum Synth Clap (Part of Drum Synth Pack)
Trombone Section Legato
Strings Ensemble Staccato
5ths2 Filter Sweep Pad (this is a synth pad)
Snare Evil (Part of 16 Snares Pack)
Written and Recorded: May 31 - June 2, 2013.
Uploaded to SoundCloud: June 2, 2013.
Number of Plays in first 14 Hours: 2 Plays, 1 'Favorite', 1 Download.
I have not written an entry about them, and I will, but I will briefly mention my "3 Goals of Songwriting" here. You may remember that I've written about my "3 Rules of Songwriting" and my "Motto of Songwriting" but I've never listed the three goals. The first one has always been:
1) Write a summer song.
Now by that I mean a good pop song that gets pulled out year after year. I use Summer Songs as a yardstick because when kids are out of school and heading to the beach/mall/vacation/whatever they have a soundtrack that they share with their friends and whenever they hear that song as they get older they always remember that summer. So what I really mean is I want a perennial, a song that gets played on the radio even years after it came out.
Yeah, I would be fine if I were a one-hit wonder. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a string of hits and am struggling to learn how to write good pop music (club style, that is.) But some bands (and some of them very good bands) only have That One Song that people know, even if they don't know the name of the song or the band. Exhibit 1 would be "The Way" by Fastball. I'll bet that most people reading this are going "Huh?" but as soon as you hear it you go, "Oh yeah!" And Fastball is a really talented band and the disc this song was on (All The Pain Money Can Buy) had several good songs (personally I really like "Fire Escape") but if people even remember their name it's in connection with That Song. I have no idea how they feel about that but personally, I would be fine with it.
Okay, a little about my song, Jesse Beyond. (You can listen to it here, https://soundcloud.com/c-l-neal/jesse-beyond.) I've only been doing this for a little over six months now, so I'm still trying to learn how to write the stuff I actually like listening to. And I like to listen to four-on-the-floor dance songs, especially deep house tracks. This is my third piece with four-on-the-floor. I came up with the title because I listened to "Crazy In Love" by Beyonce (which is a song I really like) but then also listened to a song by Jesse J which for the life of me I can't remember. And it's featured on Vevo. Go figure. The only thing I remember about it is that I liked the bass line, before she started singing lyrics that were interchangeable with a dozen other female artists and trying to impress me by dancing around half naked.
ShankThr33's rule number 422: The more skin a woman is showing the less likely her song is to be memorable.
And yeah, I know about Beyonce's video, but I heard the song long before I saw the video. I've never seen it all the way through, I prefer just hearing it.
So I thought, "I can do that" and started messing around with bass lines. I don't know if I did a good job of copying a sort of standard house bass line but I liked what I came up with. And I liked the drum sounds I put on top of it. I got a little carried away with the trombones but I'm experimenting with different sounds and exploring what Ableton has to offer.
And yes, the title "Jesse Beyond" is a take-off on Jesse J and Beyonce.
Listen to it and let me know what you think. I love that people read this blog. The majority of people reading it are in Russia! Why? I don't know but I love anybody who's reading this no matter where you live! Thank you all so much!
Peace out and catch you later...
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| ShankThr33 - It's In The Genes! |
Copyright (c) 2013 Christopher Neal
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