Four On The Floor and Jesse At The Door!

Song Name: Jesse Beyond

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...

ShankThr33 - It's In The Genes!

Copyright (c) 2013 Christopher Neal

Three Rules and One Motto!

It's hard to be a musician.

As I've mentioned before, I have three rules for writing songs. I've developed these over time based on listening to what I write that works, or doesn't, and also listening to what other people have put out. I also have three goals as a producer, three things that I would ultimately like to accomplish. And I have one motto.

The motto? Well, okay, let's get that one out of the way first. I've already mentioned it in a previous post. It's the Voltaire quote, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." I made the decision to start putting my stuff out there for people to listen to and (hopefully) comment on before I started even really writing anything. Feedback is a good thing, even though it doesn't always come in the form you're hoping for. This is not complaining when I write what I'm about to write: I have had 375 plays on my SoundCloud account. That's between 32 songs, some of which have been up for over two months. Now, I could get all depressed over that and say, "Yeah, but Deadmau5 get's that many plays before he's even recorded the song!" Which is true. But I can also break it down case by case and see which songs are getting any love and which ones go to bed lonely every night. And one that gets 15 plays in a month and maybe one or two favorite-ings (yes, that's a word because I just made it up) is by definition more popular than one that got three plays the first day and then no one ever came back to it. And I can work on what I've got until the day I die but if nobody is listening to it, why bother?

Yes, I am an artist but I also want to connect to an audience. There's nothing wrong with that.

So I stick my stuff out there even though there are glitches and pops and ideas that stopped too soon, or not soon enough. And if people like something enough to listen more than once, I'm on to something.

My three rules for writing a song are: 1) Find a groove.
                                                           2) Layer effectively.
                                                           3) Finish what you start.

The first one is both a lot more simple and a lot more complicated than it sounds. What is a groove? You know, I've never heard a technical definition of that but in context of how I learned about it, it's that time in a song where all the musicians are working together and the song itself gets bigger than the people playing it. A lot of people can write a competent song and play competently but when the song seems to suddenly become really big, and reach deep inside of you, that's the groove. With one exception (Harlem Digital Nocturnal) I haven't actually written anything that big but I keep looking for it. And I go with ideas that add to, not subtract from, the song.

Which brings us to the second rule.

There's an old rule about visual art (and to some extent it applies to music as well.) The measure of a really good artist is not only the space they fill but the space they leave blank. A lot of people, even some pretty big names, don't seem to know the value of space. But you especially notice this with rookie producers, they throw a riff in that sounds good in one particular spot so they assume that it will sound good throughout the entire song. It just isn't so. Sometimes one riff can carry a whole song, but sometimes you have to use the riff for a couple of measures then drop it as you layer in other instruments and riffs. I like a "wall of sound" as much as most people but not when it comes out as just a bunch of noise. A song should have melody, or at least a tune you can make out. That synth line you layered in after twelve measures may not sound as cool after thirty measures when you've added more synths, drums, guitar and maybe a tabla. Know when to leave well enough alone.

And now number three. A lot of people start something and then give up. I'm not really saying anything against them, at one point I was pretty bad about that. But I found that I wasn't happy leaving songs just hanging. Either I need to finish it or I need to erase it. And in music as much or more than other art, sometimes pursuing an idea you had that isn't working out leads to another idea that is better. Or you just make a mistake somewhere but it actually sounds really cool. Don't ever just write something off because you got frustrated. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of ideas that you can't seem to finish, maybe you need to face up to being a perfectionist and just get on with it. Tina Fey relates how Lorne Michaels used to say, "We don't go on because the show is ready, we go on because it's 11:35 on Saturday night." Just do it!

Which brings us back to the motto!

Well, it's late and I'm tired. If I remember, next time I'll write about my three goals. Until then...

Peace out and catch you later...