“Dance of Paradise” has a very short life span compared to many of my other pieces. I had recently re-attached my guitar cables, and in the course of confirming that the recording equipment was working on an instrument-by-instrument basis, I decided to throw down a drum beat, and island-inspired dance beat, and see if I could whip up a commercially viable piece of music in a relatively short time period. This was in May of 2021.
I’m pleased to report that it took three days plus another to come up with everything you hear on what I eventually titled “Dance of Paradise.” First–if it sounds like that old Six Flags commercial, that’s not a coincidence. It’s supposed to have that appeal. I tried to structure it so it had sections that would fit together as 15- to 30- to 60-second chunks of music, like you wanted to use it for a commercial for something, or for the closing credits of something, or even the opening theme song to something.
The first day was recording and then quantizing the drum track. The bulk of everything was tracked on day two. Day three involved re-recording the violin and then mixing. Day four, which came months later, involving overdubbing acoustic guitars and adding a conga track (to double the bongos track, for some extra rhythm groove goodness).
Its two original working titles were “Plains of Marathon” and then “Plains of Abraham.” At one point, I devised an amusing partial lyric wherein the protagonist met a lovely Quebecois woman at a pub in historic downtown Quebec City, but her boyfriend didn’t show, and he found himself escorting her across the Plains of Abraham. But eventually, the name of “Dance of Paradise” won out.
Here it is, accompanied by its Winamp EQ, “Dance of Paradise.”
