Wasn't Me
|
|
Track 1: Better Late Than Never An anonymous "guest artist" exercises his sax for a few minutes, with "my band" behind him. This is a "live performance" to compensate for low-quality samples. Actually I'm beginning to like the live venue sound—it helps disguise a track's cut-and-paste origins, amongst other sins. And the title came from imagining the scenario where the guest artist shows up at the gig very late, and doesn't have much time... Track 2: Take It Or Leave It After I found a treasure trove of royalty-free sax solos online, I quickly began building a collection of pieces just begging to be put to good use. This long, soulful performance by someone identified only as "Mister E" needed nothing more than a laid-back rhythm track and a dirt-simple bass riff. Lest anyone think it was a simple matter of just slapping three tracks together, however, the sax solo took quite a bit of finagling to finally work with the new mix, the percussion was mostly pieced together by hand, and I "auditioned" a dozen bassists before I wound up "playing" it myself (such as it is). All told, it was over a day to assemble and mix. In terms of my "ownership" of the track, I imagine it this way: when I "host" a "guest artist," I'm not in control of the artist's performance. The track title hints at this situation—I take what I get. Track 3: Thought So This track evolved very slowly as I sought to find a way to utilize a nice backing piano loop that I'd assembled. Then came the soloist: yes, it's another sax, but this time it's different. While prior tracks feature performances that are more or less intact, I came across a source of tiny little riffs that I could pick apart and reassemble, a few notes at a time, so it's pretty much a unique performance largely under my control. It was a lot of work, but well worth it, imperfect though it may be. Track 4: Don't Go There What started out as a dance track morphed into a jazz tune, one that's of a very different kind for me—a bit more traditional than my typical stuff. You'll either get it or you won't. And from what I've been hearing, some folks definitely get it. Track 5: Sup To You It began with a nice piano chord progression I created, but nothing to go with it. Then I accidentally clicked on a sax solo by mistake—which just happened to be in the right key—and suddenly it started coming together; it just took some slicing and dicing to wrap it up. I must also say I enjoy working in unusual time signatures. Track 6: Who Knew This time I started with a sax solo (by an anonymous player), which I modified to suit my needs, and built simple bass and drum tracks around it, complete with traditional bass and drum solos. Nice and mellow. Track 7: Fat Chance I've been wanting to do a muted trumpet tune for quite some time, and I finally found the raw materials for it. With original drum and bass tracks set to a 5/4 time signature, this represents quite a lot of work. Track 8: Way Too Late The genesis for this fusion piece was the drum solo from "Fat Chance," which I built first. The addition of an original bass track and some chopped up funky electric piano riffs was all it needed. Track 9: Wasn't Me It took a while to finesse the sax solo into a satisfying form, but it was worth it.
More NonsenseHomeCopyright © 2012-2024 by David K. Smith. |
Most but not all of these feature saxophone artists. There's a bit more variety in style on this album. The album title also
serves as a reminder that I didn't play anything; it's all just cut-and-paste.