Cade

I must have had a sad, sad look when she turned to say goodbye, because she tilted her head, raised her hand, touched my face and said: don't worry, we'll be fine. And it was right then when she said it that I realized we were going to be perfectly fine indeed, we were just not going to be together anymore. I went back into my house and wrote this song.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by micayetoca (15 comments total)

The first sampled drums you can hear in it are a long time caprice I've had, of having the drum pattern accent the melody, instead of playing the rhythm, and that's what makes them sound broken and wrong. They came from a very small sample I slowed down a lot, chopped it up, and pasted the pieces in key parts of the melody. I used the change of beat to provide some "relief" from the "broke-up" drums.

The rest of the instruments (guitar, bass, synth-piano and xylophone) were played, not sampled, if it makes any difference. The lyrics are in Spanish, with a little bit in Portuguese at the end. I'll include them here, in case someone wants to practice their Spanish:

Cuando vos
dijiste "va a estar bien, tranquilo"
Me oí decir
que sí, que cómo no, seguro
y sé que sí,
y sé también por vez primera
que el día de hoy
o un día cualquier del calendario
llega el sol
a encontrarnos bien y separados

Cade seu amor?
Cade hoje você?
posted by micayetoca at 5:31 AM on February 6, 2007

nice track, micayetoca - it's got a really cool analog vibe. I also dig the singing. More, please!
posted by fingers_of_fire at 7:30 AM on February 6, 2007

hey thx man. The singing was done by the vocalist of the band, not me, and he took ages to get down to it, but when he finally took the time he got it done with in like 15 minutes. It's only 12 lines, after all. I'm glad you liked it. I have mixed feelings about it, it used to be a really cool jazzy song when actually played, and this sorta electronic version has never completely done it for me. In any case, thx for your comment!
posted by micayetoca at 7:42 AM on February 6, 2007

Goddam. I love the shattered drums. Love.

It's funny how reconfigurations of songs can feel right or wrong. I've been both frustrated and pleased by the with-band After produced off of the Before I walked in the door with—but usually write songs to a degree of completion that makes it more or less impossible to reproduce them with a band consisting of something other than clones.
posted by cortex at 9:40 AM on February 6, 2007

This is very good, you have an excellent handle on production. What are you using to throw it all together?
posted by ageispolis at 11:52 AM on February 6, 2007

We mixed it in ACID, then that track was used by the vocalist (who is in another country) to record the voice in ProTools. He sent his voice track and I mixed it with the rest and panned it and all that. But the bulk of the production was in ACID.

And thx for the compliment on the production. That is something I never expected to hear.
posted by micayetoca at 12:12 PM on February 6, 2007

mica, this absolutely kicked my ass! The stuff you did with the drums is brilliant. What really impresses me is how the music expresses your sentiment. Happy and sad at the same time. Keep it up man, this is good.
posted by snsranch at 4:16 PM on February 6, 2007

mica, this is wonderful. Crazy how it shifts gears, from the "broken" vibe, to the cleaner bit, back to the broken, etc. Great production/arrangement: singing sounds really good (love the doubled piano with the vox), also the radio voice... Plus nice placement of the vibraphone (and I usually don't really care that much for vibraphone). Hilarious unexpected ending with those big fat low piano notes. This is totally cool!

cortex writes: ...makes it more or less impossible to reproduce them with a band consisting of something other than clones.

I know just what you mean, there. Lately I've started doing some gigs with a guitarist and violinist (after a long period of just recording and performing solo), and we're doing songs that I've previously recorded with multiple tracking of everything from the kitchen sink to the bathroom sink and back, and I'm finally reaching that place where I can just toss my preconceptions about how the tune should be (based on how I'd recorded/conceptualized it before) and just move the tune into a new house. A completely different house. Which of course is exhilerating, but also always a little bit sad. Losing something, gaining something.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:24 PM on February 6, 2007

snsranch, thx for the words, mate. And you nailed it. That mixture of sadness and joy is the core of Brazilian music. What does Brazilian music have to do with this song? you may ask. Originally, the song was more bossa/jazz oriented, then it got out of control and ended up in this version, but I'm happy to hear that some of the original feeling remained there.

And flapjax. A friend was telling me yesterday that the "cleaner bit" is "the good part" and that it should last longer, that I could just cut the "broken" part and extend the part that is actually listenable.

-Why can't you just provide your friends with something to sit back on a couch and listen to?

He had a point, I guess. His mistake was to expect good music to come from me.

And the last big fat piano notes are actually a bad case of laziness. I could have tried to construct and outro. Some nice chord progression to end the song. I could have worked on it for hours, or just introduce the Big Fat Piano Notes for the drama. Thank god I didn't have a timpani at home.
posted by micayetoca at 7:41 AM on February 7, 2007

Those final notes nailed it down perfectly. Nice work!
posted by snsranch at 4:07 PM on February 7, 2007

A friend was telling me yesterday that the "cleaner bit" is "the good part" and that it should last longer, that I could just cut the "broken" part and extend the part that is actually listenable.

mica, that person may be a friend, but... IGNORE THAT ADVICE!!

anyway, that's my advice.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:00 PM on February 7, 2007

This is fantastic.
posted by sleepy pete at 1:48 PM on February 8, 2007

Thx a lot for your feedback guys. Being that you are al musicians, and that we music geeks love to sneak as much as we can into how the songs of others were put together, I decided to post the first demo I made for this song here.

It's not pretty, it's not really enjoyable, but it might be interesting for someone to see how much the song changed.

This one was recorded in a 4 track analog tascam portastudio. The beat, the piano, the flute and chiming bells all came from a MC-303 I've had a love-hate relationship with for years now.
posted by micayetoca at 6:49 AM on February 9, 2007

Nice - I love how many parts this song has.
posted by ORthey at 12:44 PM on February 25, 2007

Great song. Thanks for the self-plug over on my question.
posted by puddleglum at 12:31 PM on May 1, 2007