How I Did It
Lips That Would Complyby Clarence Simpson
Uses samples from:
more...Tools I Used
Reaper
Reason
TAL Dub Delay
Izotope Ozone
Samples I Used
From Gurdonark:
Sci-Fi Mid Tempo Pack - descending bell
Faith Without Creed - mellow pad
Great Kiskadee - rhythmic pads and sounds
Gulf - great piano motif with lots of variations
Kindergarten - another great melodic motif
Little Penguin - another great melodic motif
Relief - cello
KCentric: Trigonometry pella
Leza2unes: Brown and Gold pella
Original Samples
A sequenced bass line, synth pad, and drum loop.
Process
I started by sorting Gurdonark's uploads in order of Recommends. He has WAYYY too many to just browse randomly. :)
I didn't want to make anything abstract or ambient so I started going down the list listening for strong, non-dissonant, melodic motifs even if they were only a few seconds long. After going through about 3 or 4 pages of his uploads I had downloaded about 10-12 tracks that I thought might be useful for this remix.
I tried putting a few of the samples to a drum loop to see how it fit. I wanted to find my cornerstone melodic motif for the song. I ended up deciding that Kindergarten and Little Penguin would fit the bill. I also started cutting up the drum loop to make variations and fills for use throughout the song.
Then, I wanted to see if vocals might work with these tracks. I wanted to make something relatively upbeat in the 100-120 bpm range. I had considered using a rap vocal, but I also thought a more jazz lounge-y vocal might work well too. In the end, I found KCentric's Trigonometry and Leza2unes' Brown and Gold and decided to use them both. KCentric rapping about the mainstream music industry seemed to work really well with Leza's siren song. I could imagine Leza as personifying the music industry and making an alluring call to artists to sell out and join them. On the technical side, I had to speed up Trigonometry quite a bit to make it match Leza's pella, but it wasn't to the point of sounding unnatural.
Once the vocals were there I had to create different song sections to repeat and expand upon as the song progressed. So, for each section I took a few of Gurdonark's samples to use as the foundation for that section. I mixed and matched those for a while until I was happy with the song structure. I ended up deciding that Gurdonark's descending bell sample would serve as a transitional effect to be used between each section.
After that, I went back to the vocals again to tweak them some more. Leza's pella is terrific, but it didn't really have a traditional refrain as such. So, I decided to do a little copy/paste to make a refrain anyway. I ended up settling on her "Lips that would comply" line as the part that would be repeated. It worked well as a refrain, made for a good song title, and played up the alluring nature of the vocal.
Finally, I was at the polish phase. I needed to tighten up the transitions between the sections to make sure that everything flowed well. That meant adding fade-ins, fade-outs, and in some cases some digital delay. I did a little panning to give each sample it's own space in the stereo spectrum. I added EQ to a few of the instrumental tracks to make sure they stayed out of the way of the vocals. I added some stereo imaging and delay to Leza's vocal to place it firmly in that spacey ethereal realm. Finally I threw everything through a mastering EQ and limiter and voila!
Other Notes
This track turned out much better than I had hoped for when I started working on it. I am very pleased with the end result.
I was really torn when I realized that both KCentric and Leza's pellas seemed to work. Realizing that they could both work together was probably my big "a-ha!" moment for this project. Not sure what I would have ended up with if it hadn't been for that.
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