Here's a brand new song I recently submitted to a contest put on by the podcast Song Exploder and a website called Splice. Basically, Splice is a subscription site which contains a large library of samples you can use for your songs. For this contest, I was given a collection of 50 samples and tasked with creating a song using at least 4 of them. If my song is selected, I'll win a one year subscription to Splice, a Song Exploder t-shirt, and have my song featured on both the Song Exploder and Splice websites.
In the spirit of Song Exploder and the Making Music podcast, I thought it would be fun to break down the song a bit and talk about how it was made. I ended using 13 samples for this song but I'll just point out a few of them.
Most of the song revolves around this bassy synth line which I think sounds really cool. Reminds me a little of a Moog synth. The beat I choose was the wrong tempo so I had to speed it up to match the bassy synth. I also added other samples like a piano line, strings, ambient sounds and a buzzy synth.
After I started piecing together some of these basic elements, I came up with a melody and some lyrics. At first, I couldn't decide what the song should be about. I went to website with a song idea generator, clicked the submit button, and got the response "Write a song about your physical condition." This spurred the idea to write a song from the perspective of someone with cancer who is about to die and some of the feelings they might be going through, including trying to find hope in a dismal situation.
I'm please with how the whole thing turned. I'll keep you posted about the contest and let you know if I won.
Visit: http://jakehaws.com/ep-52-life-support-song-exploder-splice-contest/
Episode 52