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"Behave"
Written & Produced: Nov 2007 || Reproduced: Oct 2009
Behave is a tune I wrote in 2007, and is one of the first tunes I used a vocoder for. If you aren't familiar, vocoders are instruments which can dramatically transform the character of human voice. Typically, it is used to assign musical pitches to human voice that was merely "spoken", not "sung".In this tune, I used vocoder for what I call the chorus section.(hear) And here are the lyrics for the section:
I'm resting on a tree / Drinking lemon tea
You're singing like a bird / I like what I heard
Breeze from the sea / Sets my mind free
You're rolling like a wave / Oh honey, behave
You're singing like a bird / I like what I heard
Breeze from the sea / Sets my mind free
You're rolling like a wave / Oh honey, behave
As you might have guessed from the lyrics (and the title), this tune was inspired by the genius of Mike Myers. I really love his talents shown in the movie series of Austin Powers and other mediums. (Here is a great speech he gave in honor of Sean Connery.)
This is the mix page of the project, in Cubase. The top raw shows you the sections of the tune, starting with i1 and proceed to A, B, C and so on. The next raw is the vocoder part. You see a little audio segment at the end of the i1 (this stands for "intro") section. This is where the voice goes "Doo bee doo bee da da ba da", along with the rest of the ensemble. At the bottom of the image, you see a bunch of drum parts including (from the bottom up) kick, snare, clap, hihat (close&open), etc. The green lines seen in some rows are pan-controllers. The line going up means the sound of the track (raw) pans to the left, and going down means pan to the right.
Score || Leadsheet
(Continued from the left column)
I assigned pan-controllers to three tracks: synth(shown as Arp), guitar(Gt) and clap part. If you listen with your headphones, you'll notice those three sounds are moving back and forth between the right and left.
I think the most prominent characteristics of Behave is the high-pitched synth part which continues throughout the tune.(hear) This image is what these phrases look like on my Cubase screen.
I also have a great deal of attachment towards the bass part of this song.(hear) It's funky, it's jumpy and it's sexy, I think. If you enlarge this image, you'll see those very short notes inserted here and there. This creates some special rhythmic feel. When you listen to bass players such as Jaco Pastorious or Marcus Miller, among many others, you'll notice they're inserting some very short notes between the actual notes sometimes, and that makes the bassline really groovy. This programming technique I'm showing you here is sort of like a reproduction of that in the digital world. It is a common practice in sequencer-oriented music (I mean electronic music in general) too.
The guitar is in charge of telling the chord progression in this tune.(hear) Shown in the image here is the progression for A section (the part that comes in right after the vocoder does the very short scat).
I used the Ibanez full-acoustic electric guitar for this part.
The term "full-acoustic electric" might make you frown, but it means that the guitar is an electric guitar with hollow body. It produces warmer sounds than regular "electric" guitars and mainly favored by jazz guitarists.
I'd like to bring your attention to the snare part since it's relatively less noticeable in the final mix.(hear) As you notice, the snare hits are not on "2 and 4" like in rock drumming, but rather, they're on unusual, less predictable beats. This is made possible thanks to the steady hits of the kick drum and hihats. Because they make such a recognizable pattern, the snare can venture into creative rhythm without ruining the groove. This is an often-found approach in the drum parts of Dance music such as House and Techno.
I assigned pan-controllers to three tracks: synth(shown as Arp), guitar(Gt) and clap part. If you listen with your headphones, you'll notice those three sounds are moving back and forth between the right and left.
I think the most prominent characteristics of Behave is the high-pitched synth part which continues throughout the tune.(hear) This image is what these phrases look like on my Cubase screen.
I also have a great deal of attachment towards the bass part of this song.(hear) It's funky, it's jumpy and it's sexy, I think. If you enlarge this image, you'll see those very short notes inserted here and there. This creates some special rhythmic feel. When you listen to bass players such as Jaco Pastorious or Marcus Miller, among many others, you'll notice they're inserting some very short notes between the actual notes sometimes, and that makes the bassline really groovy. This programming technique I'm showing you here is sort of like a reproduction of that in the digital world. It is a common practice in sequencer-oriented music (I mean electronic music in general) too.The guitar is in charge of telling the chord progression in this tune.(hear) Shown in the image here is the progression for A section (the part that comes in right after the vocoder does the very short scat).
I used the Ibanez full-acoustic electric guitar for this part. The term "full-acoustic electric" might make you frown, but it means that the guitar is an electric guitar with hollow body. It produces warmer sounds than regular "electric" guitars and mainly favored by jazz guitarists.I'd like to bring your attention to the snare part since it's relatively less noticeable in the final mix.(hear) As you notice, the snare hits are not on "2 and 4" like in rock drumming, but rather, they're on unusual, less predictable beats. This is made possible thanks to the steady hits of the kick drum and hihats. Because they make such a recognizable pattern, the snare can venture into creative rhythm without ruining the groove. This is an often-found approach in the drum parts of Dance music such as House and Techno.