CREATING SOUNDS OF TOKYO-TO FUTURE PART 9: INTERMISSION AND "I WANNA KNO"

INTERMISSION

When I started on these blogs, I thought it would be a fun exercise to get myself back into writing and look back at the work I did with a sense of accomplishment and peace. It has been that for me, but what I didn’t count on is the effort it takes to dig deep down into every song, pull out inspiration and references and figure out where to add visual aids, extra material and my inspirations. I should really have been keeping track of more of this stuff while I was actually making the album!

I wanted to apologize for the amount of time I’ve taken off between individual entries and the long stretch in the middle here, but the fact is that I’ve been so much more excited about new music projects than I have been about writing deep dives into the previous one. The blogs are all done, there will be no further interruptions and I’ll be dropping them in batches of four per week, this week and the next.

Thanks for sticking with it, and I hope you keep enjoying these deep dives into Sounds Of Tokyo-To Future’s tracklist.

“I WANNA KNO”

Audio Track Count: 89

Favorite Sound: The string section during the last hook, a very late addition

Cutting-Room Floor: The synth hit (0:27 and onward) used to have an echo effect on it and be a lot more sparkly, but I ended up going with the drier hit after some helpful feedback from a peer and I think it was the best decision

Inspirations: 2-step garage (Restless Natives - “I Wanna Know”, Sunship - “Try Me Out” (Let Me Lick It), DJ Sticky - “Things We Do For Love”) 90s-early 00s RnB (702 - “Where My Girls At”, Aaliyah - “Try Again” and “Are You That Somebody”, Janet Jackson - “Doesn’t Really Matter” (also check out Jet Set Radio appearing in that video), Amerie - “1 Thing”, Kelis - “Caught Out There” specifically for the transposed melody I do with the siren sample I do in the outro)

The same way that “Noize the Invasion” was originally conceived as “Noise Tanks” (did I mention that?), “I Wanna Kno” was originally named “Love Shockers”. That’s right, it’s an ode to that lovely heart-breaking gang of skaters from Jet Set Radio/Future. I liked imagining the lyrics as coming from some hapless soul caught by their charm, and that’s kind of where the song started. I also wanted it to sound like a breakbeat remix of an R&B song from the 90s that doesn’t actually exist.

I started the production with just the claps and the vocal, pretty unchanged from the exact way you hear it start now, then added the swingy breakbeat (probably my second favorite part and the secret backbone of the song) shortly after. It’s really hard to make synth/keys as effortlessly cool as the ones you hear in 2-step music, but I tried my best to pick really unique and lively sounds. I’m particularly proud of the pluck starting at 0:40 that expands and contracts its length dynamically and gets brighter and softer. A little extra time spent on a synth element to make it change can add a lot, and I feel that I started learning that lesson right here on this song.

The added breakbeats as intensity ramps up (0:53) are done in a similar way to RAVE SHIT, with each one adding something to the stack that the others don’t have–brightness, heavy compression, active percussion–to create a big and full beat sound with layering. I polished this section with the “what’s your name” and “that’s amazing” cut-in vocal samples and the introduction of the siren which is present in various ways throughout, but the real focus was the overdriven “All about you, yeah!” sample. It’s an ad-lib from the same pack I got the hook from, but it’s a fair bit more aggressive as I mixed it in here. Not only did I pitch it up to a squealing extent, I’m also distorting it, and it took a lot of mix drafts before this sound was reined in enough for me. Nearly to the very end, I was making small changes to its equalization and balance. In fact, this whole “verse” segment, 0:39-1:32, is one of the most agonized-over parts of the album. Once I got the hook figured out, I went back over it so many times to get the buildup to it right.

And oh, that hook. I figured that out and immediately went and started telling people in my life that the album was finally coming together, because it finally felt like it. Dropping the vocal back in with that GUITAR, the beatboxing and breaks, the sneaky slinky synth in the left ear at 1:46–it was one of THE big moments of the album along with a few others I’ve mentioned, like the LUV 2 LUV soulful breakdown segment. It was at points like this that I was reminded something cool and unique was coming out of my brain, not just a repeat or a recontextualization of existing work, but something only I could think to make at that time.

A big part of getting in touch with your musical style is identifying the elements that would have no value to other people, but that you can make intense use of. Putting that guitar with that breakbeat and that vocal was so dope it actually felt kind of foolish. I don’t know how to explain it further, but I love those moments where you’re saying “WHAT??” at your own work as if you weren’t the one who did it. I try to be as modest as I can a lot of the time, but I’ll yell about I Wanna Kno from 1:32-1:58. I’ll yell the whole time.

After the highs of the hook, I quickly duck into one of my moody “shoegaze” moments in the breakdown from 1:59-2:12, a wistful plea to be able to go out and drink beers outside on a patio and/or eat ramen again spoken by an electric piano and synth lead. These little moments peppered through the album (like white pepper, which I could have on that ramen) help break up the intensity and give me a chance to insert the actual Mello sounds you’d think you would be getting with my name, instead of frantic breakbeat. Listeners to my entire discography already know I’ve got it, though.

2:12-2:25 is the “how many different guitar samples can I throw into a bridge” segment (the answer is seven) and the verse begins again, with a new melody for the synth pluck to work on. You may have caught that video creator Woolie (of WoolieVersus) said he had a feature somewhere in the album, and if you haven’t found it yet, it’s the “yeah yeah yeah yeah” at 2:25. He was incredibly generous to take some time to record that bit for me and it fits right in, just like I anticipated. I owe a lot to Woolie and Pat on the Castle Super Beast podcast for leading listeners my way since even Memories back in 2018, so if you’re reading this, thanks so much again.

I tried to vary up the second verse and make it a remix of the elements of the first one–the distorted vocal is back but it’s a little different, a lot of the same elements are there but playing slightly different roles. The changes are exhausting work when you’re deep into an album and just want it to be finished, but from the start I always wanted to be sure to give things a twist and not noticeably repeat anything.

Since that first hook was such a big moment, I knew I needed to give the second hook something to even be able to compete, and… for a long time I didn’t give it that much. It has new horn hit samples playing out a melody, and that was kind of cool. It drops out in unique places and the siren makes a reappearance, but it doesn’t really have that THING–until I figured out the string section.

I’m not that experienced writing for strings, but I got these sample libraries that kind of make you sound like you know what you’re doing, the Embertone Intimate Strings series. They sound beautiful right away. It’s a violin, viola, cello and bass for $99 each and I think the strings sound just right for most of my purposes. Adding them in behind the hook was like finding a new door in my house and discovering I already had the key to open it on me. The last hook feels about three times as big, thanks to their swells backing everything up. Speaking of good sample libraries from Embertone, I also use their Chapman Trumpet on the breakdown right after, another instrument that makes samples sound surprisingly suave. I was once trying to make the choice between having the synth or the trumpet play out the breakdown melody, but I took the selfish option and had the synth play it on the first one, THEN the trumpet on the second.

Finally, I drew from the same soul sample pack I used on the “LUV 2 LUV” breakdown to have a song to chop up for the outro and give y’all one last surprise change-up. I also used even more of the vocals from the “I Wanna Know” vocal template pack and cut in some separate vocals so that our singer would finally get a reply after all their begging. (Sidenote: please do not use my song to pester someone for their name in real life, I didn’t even consider the possibility until just now.) Cherry on top (for me) is getting to transpose the siren sound effect into a little melody of its own right here at the end. That’s my little nod to Timbaland and The Neptunes, the masters of odd sound effect melody lines in popular music.

So yeah, that’s “I Wanna Kno” on paper! I’ve picked up that this is one of the more popular songs on the album, and I’m very grateful because it’s one of my personal favorites as well. I hope you enjoyed learning all about it!

The next song breakdown, “Rapid Crew (Can’t Move Me) (ft. TV-MA)” can be found here!

Above: Full view of the “I Wanna Kno” 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, as you can see on the right.

2 MelloJanuary 19, 2023