Back in 2002, my now ex-wife turned me on to Australian pop star Kylie Minogue who was hot on the charts with her album Fever and when I really get into a band/artist, I begin collecting their back catalog, as is my wont. It was her little know 1997, self reflecting album Impossible Princess that really caught my ear, especially the songs:
Dreams
Cowboy Style
Breathe
Say Hey (favorite song on the album)
and Did It Again (favorite video from album)
What intrigued me about Did It Again was that whilst Kylie wrote self deprecating lyrics, I imagined that a man could sing the exact same words to former girlfriends, wives, lovers, friends, etc. With that concept in place, I started working out the arraignment, drum beats, loops and minor lyrical changes (very minor, I'm talking only two lines) somewhere around 2006 (I can't totally remember, but I know it was a while back).
I think it was either 2007 or 2008 when my buddy and now songwriting partner, Rob Browning came over for a beer and to watch me track bass and was immediately dragooned into tracking keyboards.
It was during the preproduction and arrangement phase where I purposely made the key one step higher than the original in order to a) force my voice into a higher range so I could push my boundaries and b) allow me to emote/channel the protagonist's ire better and this is where momentum started to diminish and rapidly. I tracked and tracked, but nothing came out of my windpipe that was remotely close to my liking. I pitched shifted the song down a step and though it was easier to sing, I didn't like the timbre of my voice and so the incomplete piece remained dormant for several years while I focused on other things.
Then around 2008, my buddy Jafo reentered my life. One of my oldest school friends, he was in my first band back when we were in our teens until he left to join the hellish world of military and marriage. Having finally left both far behind, he asked me if he could just sit in on and watch a recording session or two. Knowing his technical and musical acumen, I told him he could do more than that and I would be thrilled if he would help me by engineering/producing as my vocals for Did It Again as maybe he could be able to inspire and guide me.
And as it turned out, Jafo was the missing link needed to pull a performance from my vocal chords. Truth be told, we were at odds as to the growly "aggressiveness" of my vocals. He felt I was too over the top whilst I felt that it was needed to properly channel the "anger" plus I wanted to experiment vocally and in the end I used the "I'm the artist" trump card and we wound up keeping the vocals you hear now.
With vocals completed and new life literally breathed into the piece, things went rather quickly. Mike Criscione and Scott Helfrich were drafted into performing acoustic and electric guitar parts and the one and only "Feedback" Bernie Stevens returned on harp duties for the first time since 1996's Mr. Handpuppet Man & Other Campfire Favorites.
I mixed and even featured it along with a couple of other tracks in my March/April 2009 newzletter as a "here's what I'm up to in the studio" blurb and then went to work on writing and recording other songs with Rob.
The old adage "practice makes perfect" is as true today as it was 1,000,000,000,000,000 years ago and as a software engineer, I constantly find myself revisiting and replacing "older" code with slicker, faster and better ideas discovered during my programming travels. So naturally, when I started comparing Did It Again with some of my more recent mixes and I immediately labeling it complete junk and sat down and applied a new approach.
Since I've found myself writing/recording less pop/electronica and more country/southern rock/AM gold type material, this track doesn't seem like it will be a good fit for my next album (tentatively being released on ??/??/???? or whenever I have $$$,$$$.$$), I decided, what the heck, let's just put out there for free people to share with friends, choreograph a dance to, make a YouTube video about, sing on street corners or just plum annoy their neighbors with.
So if you want to download the MP3 to put on your IPod, Facebook, MySpace, etc, click here and download away.
For those of you, like me, that hate MP3's or are elitist audiophile snobs, click here to download a high quality WAV version to burn onto CD.
Albeit not as perfect as I'd like it to be it is what it is and a snapshot of my production skills as of April 2010.
Btw, if interested, I would like to inform you that if you are interested in purchasing a copy of my last CD, 2006's No Talent NecessaryNo Travel Required, I would truly love you for lifeor maybe for at least 5 minutes and even though, compared to my recent mixes I would have to dub the mixes on that album pure rubbish, I'm very proud if it as a whole and would encourage you to give it a listen or two as it has made some diehard fans out of people who didn't really think they would enjoy electronic music.
Dreams
Cowboy Style
Breathe
Say Hey (favorite song on the album)
and Did It Again (favorite video from album)
What intrigued me about Did It Again was that whilst Kylie wrote self deprecating lyrics, I imagined that a man could sing the exact same words to former girlfriends, wives, lovers, friends, etc. With that concept in place, I started working out the arraignment, drum beats, loops and minor lyrical changes (very minor, I'm talking only two lines) somewhere around 2006 (I can't totally remember, but I know it was a while back).
I think it was either 2007 or 2008 when my buddy and now songwriting partner, Rob Browning came over for a beer and to watch me track bass and was immediately dragooned into tracking keyboards.
It was during the preproduction and arrangement phase where I purposely made the key one step higher than the original in order to a) force my voice into a higher range so I could push my boundaries and b) allow me to emote/channel the protagonist's ire better and this is where momentum started to diminish and rapidly. I tracked and tracked, but nothing came out of my windpipe that was remotely close to my liking. I pitched shifted the song down a step and though it was easier to sing, I didn't like the timbre of my voice and so the incomplete piece remained dormant for several years while I focused on other things.
Then around 2008, my buddy Jafo reentered my life. One of my oldest school friends, he was in my first band back when we were in our teens until he left to join the hellish world of military and marriage. Having finally left both far behind, he asked me if he could just sit in on and watch a recording session or two. Knowing his technical and musical acumen, I told him he could do more than that and I would be thrilled if he would help me by engineering/producing as my vocals for Did It Again as maybe he could be able to inspire and guide me.
And as it turned out, Jafo was the missing link needed to pull a performance from my vocal chords. Truth be told, we were at odds as to the growly "aggressiveness" of my vocals. He felt I was too over the top whilst I felt that it was needed to properly channel the "anger" plus I wanted to experiment vocally and in the end I used the "I'm the artist" trump card and we wound up keeping the vocals you hear now.
With vocals completed and new life literally breathed into the piece, things went rather quickly. Mike Criscione and Scott Helfrich were drafted into performing acoustic and electric guitar parts and the one and only "Feedback" Bernie Stevens returned on harp duties for the first time since 1996's Mr. Handpuppet Man & Other Campfire Favorites.
I mixed and even featured it along with a couple of other tracks in my March/April 2009 newzletter as a "here's what I'm up to in the studio" blurb and then went to work on writing and recording other songs with Rob.
The old adage "practice makes perfect" is as true today as it was 1,000,000,000,000,000 years ago and as a software engineer, I constantly find myself revisiting and replacing "older" code with slicker, faster and better ideas discovered during my programming travels. So naturally, when I started comparing Did It Again with some of my more recent mixes and I immediately labeling it complete junk and sat down and applied a new approach.
Since I've found myself writing/recording less pop/electronica and more country/southern rock/AM gold type material, this track doesn't seem like it will be a good fit for my next album (tentatively being released on ??/??/???? or whenever I have $$$,$$$.$$), I decided, what the heck, let's just put out there for free people to share with friends, choreograph a dance to, make a YouTube video about, sing on street corners or just plum annoy their neighbors with.
So if you want to download the MP3 to put on your IPod, Facebook, MySpace, etc, click here and download away.
For those of you, like me, that hate MP3's or are elitist audiophile snobs, click here to download a high quality WAV version to burn onto CD.
Albeit not as perfect as I'd like it to be it is what it is and a snapshot of my production skills as of April 2010.
Btw, if interested, I would like to inform you that if you are interested in purchasing a copy of my last CD, 2006's No Talent NecessaryNo Travel Required, I would truly love you for lifeor maybe for at least 5 minutes and even though, compared to my recent mixes I would have to dub the mixes on that album pure rubbish, I'm very proud if it as a whole and would encourage you to give it a listen or two as it has made some diehard fans out of people who didn't really think they would enjoy electronic music.
pini:
not a big fan of Kylie minogue, BUT I like the re-mix you did of it, I think you have a really nice voice for "rockabilly" kind of music...if you wrote your own lyrics and added a more prominent deep bass sound, and maybe a tiny bit faster you could make some sick music !! 