Since I was a bit younger, I felt attracted by jazz music. I never went to music school or anything, so when I first encounter music theory it was kind of overwhelming. And at one point I was kind of afraid of music, because it became too serious too quickly. But jazz appeared, and the theory wasn’t scary anymore, it was just kind of a way to keep a record or to help me in developing a groove, basically just tools to be a organized chaos. That’s why I did this piece. Maybe I’m being a bit too cocky by calling this a jazz piece, but that’s why I tried to do. I think it is a nice song for an elevator, background or lounge music, to be more artistic about it.
The meter is a basic 4/4, tempo of 85 bpm, 32 measures with a distribution of 2 measures for intro, 4 in each verse, 2 in each bridge, 4 in each chorus, 8 in the break and 2 in the outro. The drums have a classic ride cymbal pattern in jazz, in my country we call it the “corchea swing.” The bass line is made out of the root notes of each chord, and the 5th, to mark certain parts of the measure, and follows the rhythm pattern of the drums. In the break part of the song, I used a walking bass to change the dynamics of the structure, and mark the improvisation on the piano. The drums keeps basically the same two measures pattern in the kick and the snare, except the break and the chorus. The toms mark the jump between the segments.
I used the scale of G major for this track, and 7th chords in the Verses:
IV vi V vii˚:
CMaj7-Em7-D7-F#˚7
some of them have inverted voices to add some warm feeling into it.
In the chorus I used:
V vi I vi
D7-Em7-GMaj7-Em7
In the bridges:
I vii˚
GMaj7 F#˚7
In the Break:
IV
CMaj- G5 with a D from a lower octave forming a triad-
DMaj
I used a semitone in certain chords as a dissonance to give a different color to them: G# in the first chord, F in the second part and D# recurring to the pentatonic blues scale of C. I know they are not from this scale but sounded really good in it. I chose a grand piano sound for the harmony and a flute sound for the melody, which goes well with the style and genre of the track. Also I did an improvisation on the break, to add some humanity to the song, because I did the rest of the sequence placing each midi event, I wanted that some part of the song showed something more loose and honest.
The outro is a:
I
GMaj7
I recorded a percussive instrument, called Bongos. I recorded it on the break, to add something special that marked the difference between the parts of the songs, also I only used a ride here, the reason is that I wanted this specific part to be more human, and I needed to feel some kind of groove in each basis of the song, the bongos and shaker (loop named Swinging Shaker Groove) in the rhythm, the piano on the harmony and melody. For the sampled instruments I used the ES P, in both. The first one Is a pad, I used the root notes of the chords plus the octave. And the second one is a bell like sound doing the triad of each chord in the intro, the bridges and the Outro.
I used a reverb and a delay echo, both of them to play with the perspective of certain instruments and to fill spaces, the reverb on the shakers creates a great rhythmic atmosphere, and the echo on the bells pad gives a nice touch that actually goes in place with the harmony and the rhythm. Also I used a compressor on the bongos to control the dynamics and a a noise gate to eliminate any room noise from the recording, I used a compressor on the shakers also. A list of other instruments that I send to the reverb and the delay is displayed right now:
Time Based Effect:
Tracks:
2 Snare: Small Hall Reverb
4 Toms: Small Hall Reverb
7 Grand Piano: Medium Hall Reverb & Slap 1/2 Delay
16 Flute: Large Hall Reverb
17 Shakers: Reverb EnVerb
20 Bells: Echo Delay and reverb
18 Bongos: medium room Reverb
Dynamic Effects:
Shaker: Compression
Bongos: Noise Gate and Compression