CREATING SOUNDS OF TOKYO-TO FUTURE PART 12: I SHOULDA KNOWN!!
Album art by Ethan Redd
“I SHOULDA KNOWN!!”
Audio Track Count: 64
Favorite Sound: The electric piano sample, especially the way it gets chopped in the breakdown at 2:04
Cutting-Room Floor: Planned to do a little more with vocoder samples, once I figured out the second section it wasn’t as relevant anymore
Inspirations: Fatboy Slim, big beat and breakbeat, Ridge Racer Type-4 for the final section (specifically the more breezy, jazzy tracks)
The intro to “I Shoulda Known!!” follows the time-honored hip-hop tradition of stitching together some disparate samples to communicate an idea I was trying to get across. Hip-hop rose out of an art scene, and it is now more commercial and industry-controlled. It’s true. But most commercially successful hip-hop styles started with experimentation in a small regional scene, too. What I’m trying to say here is to do what you want rather than what would be “good product” based on what you can foresee at the time, and trust someone will like what you’re doing enough to support it.
I think musicians would be foolish to completely ignore popular trends and history, and I don’t intend to put forward the standard Old Head argument that everything sucks now and didn’t before. Actually, I often find it hard to communicate or work with musicians who don’t have knowledge of popular music or think that they’re above it and it has nothing to offer them. I believe we are in one of the most exciting and diverse times for music ever right now, in all brackets of success and popularity.
I’m worried about the algorithm and streaming services more than “radio music”, industry placements and lack of creativity. Making social media content is starting to overshadow making art. I hate the idea of something important getting buried because someone isn’t good at marketing themselves online and doesn’t get lucky, more than I hate the idea of some song I’m not that interested in getting super popular.
Anyway, there’s a really sick breakbeat chop solo to kick things off and when I was working on it, I was thinking “I sure hope these aren’t cheesy and people still like them”. I think I got lucky and a lot of styles I really love (drum n’ bass, breakbeat, basically anything with breaks) started coming back around recently. From 0:29-0:42 is probably some of my favorite drum programming of my career.
From 0:42 on when the melody launches in, I just think the song grooves so well–the deep, resonant bass, the big barking 4/4 drumbeat, the energetic vocals and the salty mid-range electric piano. I can’t tell you why, but that piano sample in particular gives me such a nostalgic feeling. The big, bright vocoder at 0:56 and chanting choir at 1:10 come in to keep it fresh and replace some instances of the titular vocal so that it doesn’t get too overused. On this song especially, I felt the need to be agile and not repeat myself too much, resist just riding on that central groove. It wasn’t easy, but it was a fun challenge.
If you haven’t noticed, I got really into analog monosynths on this album. Seriously, they star on almost every track. The back-and-forth between the “get up” sample and synth lead at 1:24 is a fun example of how expressive these mono lead sounds can really be. I had an incredible time making all of them “talk” in their brief appearances. During the 80s, I just think rap groups made some astounding usage of synths before the sampler reigned absolutely supreme later on. The synth sounds were inspired by funk, jazz fusion and nascent electronica, and I wanted to try to let some of those sounds back in.
At 1:38 we have another one of my shoegaze moments. In this case, I really imagined the feeling of jumping from the highest place in a Jet Set Radio nighttime level and getting to soar above the bustle of the city for a moment in slow motion before diving down into it (though you’d probably revert into the “whoOoOoA” animation, take fall damage and make the whole thing rather anticlimactic).
Everyone always tries to pick out these galaxy-brain video game references in my music that aren’t there at all because I’m way more likely to make general Music references than Game Music ones, but I will say that the little vocal filter sound at 1:44 is totally there because it reminded me of the sound the ghost ropes make in the haunted forest level of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. There you go, you get one.
Aside from that, I’m really proud of the filter sequence I applied to the drumbeat here–it feels liquid-smooth and expressive and really makes the breakdown stand out as its own section and not just as a break from the beat. The trumpet I used is the same one from “I Wanna Kno”, the Embertone Chapman Trumpet, here in its ensemble form. The little synth beeps at 1:52 might have been the last touch added to the song overall (I literally have a production phase called “last touch” where songs get special treats before they’re forever locked in). Sometimes I feel like you can “hear” an element in your song before it actually exists, and that was the experience I had one day on a walk that made me add those.
The next section is probably one of my favorite parts of the album. At 2:04, I subvert expectations of launching back into the same beat and instead remix a few elements of it over these new, snappy electronic drums. This is what I love about sampling, that an electric piano you previously heard as this deep, warm and velvety texture under a beat can be chopped into this dry, raw and funky sound that drives the beat. The fact that the sound is this little malleable piece is what inspires me to mold it in turn.
When I started making music, I didn’t have knowledge of keys, chords or anything like that–just that I had only so many chunks of audio from a free sample CD that came with my software, and I needed to stretch each one to work overtime for me. I think this instinct of making every chunk work in as many ways as it can–using every part of the sound–is still with me and it’s part of what makes my music stand out. The musicians I get along with the most are people who can sample, and beyond that, people who can make every chunk of audio work in a spectacular way.
2:04 onwards just bangs, that’s the only way to put it. A lot of this album has me arranging various breakbeats on top of each other and making huge, shifting stacks of sound. It was really nice to have a part where it’s just a hard kick, a snappy crackling snare and some good hi-hats punching through the mix. When this part comes on, I feel a visceral satisfaction with what I’ve done. It’s the kind of moment that makes you want to reach out and turn the song up naturally.
The part of the song from 2:28 onward was highly revised and reworked. I was originally just going to launch back into the 0:42 section and end the song on the strength of that, but the right idea turned out to be to keep my snappy simple drumbeat and build on that instead. I was so in love with it, so why leave it so soon? The radio static SFX became the bridge that helped me effectively bring some old elements back and some new ones in, rather than just retreating to an earlier section.
At first, this last section actually had too much going on with a few elements clashing, and I had to pare it down. In my excitement, I had really lost the focus of that snappy drumbeat and layered on one too many melodic elements. With the airy percussion, mellow electric piano, gliding smooth sine synth and carefully mixed wide stereo image, this last part of the song was heavily inspired by PS1-era breakbeat for games like Ridge Racer Type-4. I embraced this lane of inspiration in terms of my arrangement, deciding to keep it chill rather than heightened and cutting some stuff down, and it totally worked. I realized that the gliding background synth I introduced in this section had a perfect pairing with the “shoegaze moment” from before, so I combined the two for the end of the song and went out smoothly.
As far as difficulty and complexity, I’d say “I Shoulda Known!!” was a 5 or 6 out of 10. (Yes, I’m adding a rating system arbitrarily in the 12th blog of this series) Definitely not a simple song, but also didn’t leave me stuck for months about what I could do next. I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of the production!
Above: Full view of the “I Shoulda Known!!” mixdown in Ableton Live. Most DAW programs arrange music from left to right on the timeline, so the left end is my intro and the right end is my ending, with every sound placed in a linear fashion. The rows of color are audio tracks, and the tighter multicolored bands of audio tracks are collapsed Groups.