Harlem Digital Nocturnal, a beautiful place to be

Title: Harlem Digital Nocturnal

Recorded on: GarageBand

Instruments: Ambient Beat 01
                    80's Pop Beat 09
                    Lunar Strings
                    Nylon Shimmer
                    Motown Drummer 06
                    80's Dance Bass Synth 04
                    Deep Round Synth Bass
                    Deep Electric Piano 04

Now we come to the song that was my first "favorite song" and is still the second most popular song I've done. On SoundCloud it's received 21 plays in approximately 2 months and has been played by people in the US but also people in Canada, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia and the Asia Pacific Rim. Fantastic!

I wanted to write a piece of mood music and something that would kind of fit onto maybe some 1970's blaxploitation style movie. Something kind of soundtrack-y at any right, whether for a movie or for a video game. Something you could listen to and kind of see the action as it went along.

Kind of is what I got. The song itself is pretty good, in fact until recently I would say it was the best I've ever done and undeniable proof that I do, for real, have talent. It was also, in some ways, a lucky accident. Most of the stuff I've done on GB shows how new I am at this. Even when I started getting the writing together under my Three Rules, there would still be glitches or gaps. This one didn't have anything like that. It came out pretty close to perfect as-is. In fact, when I played it for Burch he told me that he couldn't believe this came out of GarageBand.

What can I say?

A-Mac also really liked it, so I decided to go out on a limb. Of all the songs I have on SoundCloud right now, this is the only one not available for download there. I went ahead and posted it to Beatport. It promptly got lost there, the only way I can find it is to log onto my account. But it's up there, waiting for the day when some clever DJ will discover it and pay me 9.99 to download and tear it apart for beats.

Part of the reason, I think, is because it has sucky artwork. But artwork is a subject for a different posting.

You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/c-l-neal/harlem-digital-nocturnal.

I tried to find orchestral sounds but had little luck. Some of the bass presets I was actually able to utilize better by lowering the octaves on my controller (I have an Alesis QX25 controller. It has 25 keys so I can't do too much two-handed stuff, and if I want to play low I have to lower the octaves manually. I want the Ableton Push and a Korg midi controller so bad!) And also by raising the octaves on the "Deep Electric Piano 04" preset, I was able to get the piano sound to somewhat mimic a glockenspiel (Burch thought that it was that sound.)

I started with long, slow, bass-heavy chords and went back and added the drums in later. Then, when I had the rhythm down and the groove was really set, I added in the texture bits. This is the song that more than any other showed me how to find the groove. "Lost In The Big House" would be the opposite end of the spectrum. But everything really clicked on this. And I had been listening to it on a pair of cheesy headphones. After I finished it and took it to Burch, who has access to a decent studio, he popped the disc into that Mac and when I heard it through some good studio monitors, wow! I blew myself away!

It got the name "Harlem Digital Nocturnal" because, and don't ask me why, when I listen to it I often hear the opening strains of Earle Hagen and Dick Rogers' "Harlem Nocturne." So I wanted to pay homage to that in the title.

Anyway, thank you very much to everyone who has enjoyed it so far, and if you haven't heard it yet, you are in for a treat even if I do say so myself!

Peace out and catch you later...