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

A Bright and Shiny 110 Sunnyside Morning!

Recorded on GarageBand.

Instruments: (In Order Of Appearance)
                    Techno Kit
                    Techno Kit
                    Smoky Clav
                    Solo Star (GB Preset)
                    Classic Organ
                    Classical Acoustic (GB Loop)
                    Pop Kit
                    Pop Kit

Uploaded to SoundCloud March 14, 2013

Plays to date: 11 (8 in the US, 2 in Canada, 1 in Spain.)
"Favorites" to date: 1 in the US.

Part of the evolution of my career as an EDM producer.

There's really not much to say about this one. I still had no idea what I was doing. I had an idea about trying to find a groove in the song, and I did okay with this one but there are others where I've done much, much better. Even back then.

It's no joke that I listed both "Techno Kit" and "Pop Kit" twice. One of the drawbacks to GarageBand is that if you want to overwrite something, you have to literally erase the original clip you wrote. Ableton allows you to edit more selectively, adding and subtracting notes and beats, but not GarageBand. It's all or nothing. So if, like me, you have trouble figuring out how to play the snare, kick and hihat all at the same time, you have to do them on more than one track.

It's kind of a spare sound, which is something I have been trying to not do. I really want to learn how to produce that full wall-of-sound experience, but I was definitely not there yet.

You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/c-l-neal/110-sunnyside-morning.

I named it "110 Sunnyside Morning" because I was trying to write something light and happy. And it is, compared to some of the other stuff I wrote around this time.

I hope you enjoy it!

Peace out and catch you later...

Add caption

Don't Ever Mess with the Little Loudmouth!

Title: Little Loudmouth

Recorded on: GarageBand

Instruments: (In order of appearance)
                    Edgy Rock Bass 04 (GB Loop)
                    70's Ballad Drums 01 (GB Loop)
                    Smoky Clav (Preset)
                    Deep House Dance Beat 01 (GB Loop)
                    Blue Jazz Organ Riff 03 (GB Loop)
                    Southern Rock Organ 05 (GB Loop)
                    Southern Rock Organ 04 (GB Loop)
                    Southern Rock Organ 03 (GB Loop)
                    Southern Rock Organ 02 (GB Loop)

Uploaded to SoundCloud 03/14/2013

Some of my songs I like less the more I listen to them, and some of them I like better. This one is definitely in that second category. In fact, this has always been one of my favorites, ever since I first wrote it. This is also the first time I almost had the courage to use just loops when writing a song.

At one minute and forty-three seconds, it's not the longest song I've ever written but it's got some pretty satisfying stuff packed into it. Unfortunately I don't remember bpm, but I'm thinking it's about 120 because it's pretty fast and I wrote this when I thought successful EDM needed to be 120-140 bpm to get club play.

Like most of my songs, it tells a coherent story. Spoiler alert, if you just want to keep your pictures of it (which I say bless you if you do) then skip to the next paragraph. It's a classic story of falling and redemption, with a little Southern-Gospel-Style thrown in. The opening bass line is meant to represent someone (and yes, I do think of a girl, although don't call me misogynistic. I just do. It don't mean nothin',) who is tightly wound and on a continuous roll of shooting off her mouth and getting into trouble. The additions of drums and other bass (the Smoky Clav) are just meant to show her speeding along no matter what happens. Then the organs come up and I couldn't help thinking of her going into a church and finding redemption. Since it's a dance song it's all meant to be done in spectacular fashion, but that's the basic of it.

When I started writing this I just was listening to different loops in the Garageband collection and really liked Edgy Rock Bass 04. I think I almost used it for something else but decided not to since it is kind of busy. It's got a great funk sound to it and is kind of dirty and grinding. I added the Smoky Clav preset (the only instrument that I actually play) to fatten it up (like it needed it, but it still works!) And also to add a little menace underneath, emphasizing the beat.

There is an art and a science to arranging loops just right. I don't claim to have mastered it yet, let alone when I wrote this song, but when I started working with the organ loops I realized that I was going to need to let some pieces go in order to have it tell it's story most effectively. Layering the organs on top of each other, which was what I initially wanted to do and I know some EDM guys WOULD do, was just a mess waiting to spill. May seem like a no-brainer just listening to it, especially if you're a more experienced producer than I am, but at the time it was a bit of a revelation. This piece more than any other helped me form my Three Rules of recording. It was accidental, but I found that groove and locked it in solid. I layered effectively, knowing when to let go. And I finished it up. And I was pretty happy with it, and I still am!

You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/c-l-neal/little-loudmouth

I've always been disappointed that this one wasn't more popular. In all the time that it's been up through this writing, it's had fifteen plays, no downloads and no little hearts. It's been most popular in the US, followed by Canada and Ireland. Hey, I love for people to like it no matter where it's played!

Hopefully if you read this you'll check it out and maybe this little gem will get another shot at the life it deserves.

Peace out and catch you later...

ShankThr33 - It's In The Genes!

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...

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...