The Anatomy Of A Song – Part 1 Messing Around

“How did you write that one?”

“Is that one about me or _____?”

How does a song move from the ether into being? Inquiring minds want to know…and if not, click to the next blog entry

So here’s how Blacktop Shimmey came to life.

It was December 2007 and Didier and I needed one more song for our demo EP. We were sitting around the dining room/studio (see the Home Depot Youtube video if you want the visual!). We were just mess around with ideas, looking at some of the old songs and snippets I’d written to see what we wanted to build out. We got a laugh when the little melody “Yo baby you’re my Christmas ho. You put the ho in ho ho ho” spilled out of my mouth. But we didn’t feel that was a good fit with Africa and Asylum!

Then I started singing an old blues tunes and Didier thought that sounded lovely and we should do a blues number. The next morning, in the shower, in pops the lyrics and melody for the chorus. I had to rush out of the shower to the mini recorder so I wouldn’t forget it.

Stay Tuned for the next blog “Imagery”

After being in my mind awhile, you’ll understand how easy it was to write Asylum!
Jenn

The Making Of Africa

We were in the studio last week to record the vocals for two of our originals, Africa and Asylum. We shot some video and uploaded it so you could get a taste of what we’ve been up to and checkout the whole studio scene. The audio is not finished, it’s just a rough mix. We’ll be finishing the mixing in the coming months.

I kinda geeked out on the whole video thing. I found a little app that’s so easy. You load in your audio, video and jpgs, push a button and voila, you’ve got a nice, automatic video with transitions and a title and credits page. Of course, one can’t stop there! So I had to spend time looking for programs that had both this “automatic movie” feature AND the ability to edit every little thing.

I had to stop the obsession before it ran away with me (ie: the free trial period ran out). But then I found another app that changes video into flash so that I can put it directly on the urban fiction site. That was cool. Watch it here on myspace or on the UF site.

Enjoy.

Happy Holidays,

Jenn