Home » People » Quarkstar » "Stand up for your beliefs"

Stand up for your beliefs

uploaded: Sat, May 7, 2016 @ 10:31 PM last modified: Sat, May 7, 2016 @ 10:32 PM (add)

by	Quarkstar
length	4:16
BPM	90
Recommends	Recommends (17)

Listened to Mykleanthony, fantastic voice and very soulful music I felt rather overwhelmed by the quality and range. I decided not to go the well trodden soul route as ccmixter has many people that can do this genre far better than me.

I took a wrong turn, started with vocals and writing my own tune, working on it 4 hours a day for the first week but nothing was working to my satisfaction. It also failed to speak about Mayday.us.

Inspiration hit while making a cup of tea on Monday afternoon of the second week. Mixing the words of “We are the people” which touches on Lessings message, with the main part “After The War”, take the beats from “From the mouth the Mixter” and use parts of “Glo” for the introduction. Simple!

This will be the second time I have used the cut-up method in a tune. My aim is to put together 4 tunes so they sound like one concept. Working Monday evening, then waking up at 4am unable to sleep for ideas, I had the basics and structure done by Tuesday morning. I spent the next days listening carefully, tweaking the weaker parts. There are no verse/chorus sections, but it gradually builds and builds with a few change downs until it reaches a crescendo then ends.

I cut up the tunes to include Mykle’s parts, excluding other singers and musicians. The drums and bass are cut up pieces of “From the mouth of the mixter”. Words are from “We the people”. Intro and ending from “Glo”. The main theme comes from “After the war”.

To create various moods within the tune I change the textures. This is mostly done using high and low pass filters. As an example, at 3:10 minutes the high pass filter drops to allow the huge bass of After The War to enter for full effect.

I added my own small repeated hook, a few bars of woodblocks, minor percussion to bridge a section and a sweeping airhorn. Also BPM and key changes to the original tunes.

There are over a hundred splices in the bass line, taking different 1/8 and 1/4 note parts from five different bars. The other tunes are cut up to a lesser extent.

My first May Day remix of Mykleanthony is at http://ccmixter.org/files/Q...