Here it is, “You Wanna Get with Me”:

I wrote the first version of this song in 2005. I remember writing the lyrics on the Burlington Transit Plains Road bus from Jackson Square, and it took about five minutes, and I wrote it in pen on a sheet of paper and a clipboard. I remember having the phrase “trying to get with her” on an episode of Dr. Phil. It was about infidelity in that context, but I just ran with the phrase “get with” and wrote some dance-rock lyrics.

Verse 1:

I’m captured by your body
‘Cause there ain’t anybody
Who moves the way I’ve seen you do

So come on closer to me
I’m going to make you want me, too
So give it up, now, give it up, now, baby

Chorus:

Come on, baby, wanna get with me
Ooh, you wanna get with me
Come on, baby, wanna get with me
Ooh, you wanna get with me

Verse 2:

The beat’s intoxicating
Now I’m anticipating
Where we could be when this night’s through

So let your senses take you
And feel the pleasure grow in you
And keep it up, now, keep it up, now, baby

(Chorus)

Bridge:

You’ve got a lot to give me
I know I want you with me
I feel my heartbeat racing
We’re gonna be amazing

Verse 3:

I’ve got the thing you want
I know just what you’re after
Let’s make this dance ours
Proceed a little faster
Don’t think about tomorrow
Just make it last the whole night through
And keep it up, now, keep it up, now, baby

(Chorus)

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The two that follow those are phone videos of me in my basement; the first one is me doing a left-foot-hi-hat solo, and the next one is me playing a slow, swung groove for thirty seconds.

The post On YouTube: Jazz drumming tracks with free-time-ish solos, showcasing my left foot independence appeared first on Daniel Butterfield Music.

Just dropping in, because I haven’t put anything new here in a while. There is one bit of music-related news that’s public facing. The latest mix of Self Confidence dropped on July 18, 2023. It was a technical issue, and I’m basically 100% sure that I’m finished making technical corrections to it. There isn’t anything left to tweak that’s worth tweaking.

It’s been up on Spotify since July 14, the final mix and master of Self Confidence:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5q2tF7sFSRaFuc0l99AMue

It’s kind of embarrassing, but in a way only certain people would appreciate. I didn’t have the bass frequencies worked out “right.” I had them a certain way, with a certain rationale, but the more I listened and thought about it, and listened to other music as well, the more I decided I wanted to fix it. I did a set of fixes that improved the clarity in the 40 Hz-100 Hz range. It was a matter of de-prioritizing the kick drum to leave more room for the bass. As such, the bass is a lot clearer now.

There were also two significant artistic choices that were undone. “Lovers at First Sight” lost its double-tracked lead vocal in favour of a standard single-track, and “I Believe in You” lost its rhythm section in favour of a more subdued, acoustic-guitar-prioritized arrangement.

So that’s it. Lessons learned. Done. Videos re-released, links re-shared. Onward and upward if and where possible.

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I must say, it feels wonderful to hear someone call my track “excellent.”

Here’s NoEsFM’s website: https://noesfm.com/. If you check them out during January, you might hear my lengthy psychedelic epic, “Wonderful Time, Part 2.” Big thanks again to NoEsFM!

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Mr. Kadan seems like a very nice person. His list has this description: ” A playlist of songs that must be listened to before you die. The best songs in the world.” I will take it as high praise to be included in his list. Thank you, Mr. Kadan.

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I must say, it’s by far the most comfortable typing solution I’ve developed since I’ve started working in my new office space in earnest. I am on the autism spectrum–I am an Asperger’s case, is how I like to put it–and physical comfort is very important for me when I’m working, and especially if I’m going to be doing a lot of typing and mousing and coffee-drinking. It really helps to like being in the space where I’m spending so much time.

I’ve been using this folding table from WalMart, and it’s been nice in terms of being a useful, height-adjustable work surface, but it has the drawback of employing legs that form a horizontal-x shape underneath, and therefore I can’t use it as a work table under which I put my legs, without weird posturing that I’m not willing to do. So today, the brainstorm struck–what if I stuck the keyboard on top of the drum-practice-pad-on-a-snare-drum-stand that I often use as a mouse rest or very small but sturdy coffee table?

And there it is. This is my new favourite posture. It’s not perfect. There might be one more thing to try, and it will likely involve a trip to Staples. But for now, this is pretty good.

(There’s that imperfection again. The part that wants to sit and relax and have it in the perfect position. I only really know it because I worked for a year-and-a-half in administration at the City of Hamilton and I helped out on a project where they did ergonomic optimizations on everyone’s workstation. My workstation was absolutely ergonomically perfect. It was a thing of beauty, and to duplicate it, honestly, would take over a thousand dollars. So for now, I’m happy with what I have. But I know that there are better possibilities. Someday. Somehow. I’m picturing certain catalogue items.)

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“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.”

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Well, I’ll get the lyrics part out of the way first:

(I want) a wonderful time
(To be) going on
I want a wonderful time to be going on (repeat)
I want a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time (repeat, etc.)
[and at one point:]
I want a wonderful time to be going on
I want a wonderful time, good God, come on!

As for the recording of the piece, it occurred to me on a lark one morning in July of 2020. I’d thought of something: what happens if you try to play the melody of “Wonderful Time” as if the song is in B minor? So that the chord progression just goes Bm, E, Bm E, back and forth, such that the chorus now becomes I and IV in B minor as oppposed to II and V in A major?

That’s where “Wonderful Time, Part 2” comes from. I came up with the piano part based on that idea. And then, not long after that, I thought about what to do for a second verse, and I decided to see if I could teach myself the same melody and harmony on classical guitar.

That’s where “Wonderful Time, Part 2” comes from. Then I got the idea of writing out all the orchestration as software instrument tracks and keeping it around as a demo for about a year and a half after recording the first few base tracks. It’s actually very easy to tell what was recorded when: I started growing my current beard in the Fall of 2020, so anything where I’ve grown a beard is from sessions that took place in the Winter of 2021. Those sessions took place while I was recovering from a particularly bad knee sprain and was receiving workman’s comp. (It was the most pain I’ve ever felt.)

Here’s me playing most of the instruments on “Wonderful Time, Part 2”: drums, timbales, bass guitar, synthesizer, classical guitar, piano, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.

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This one’s kind of interesting, because it brings up a whole big, personal phenomenon in the development of my songwriting. At a point in my early twenties, it occurred to me that the emotional content of my expression seemed excessively negative, and at its worst, whiny.

I had a feeling that eventually I’d start getting my act (shit) together, so I told myself I’d just hang on to song stems as they occurred to me, and I wouldn’t get too married to any kind of lyrical meaning attached to the musical idea, unless it represented something which I knew would be worth keeping (i.e. would be good) in the long run.

This one came along in about 2010 or so, but might have had seeds dating back to 2008. I think I wrote it on my father’s Martin acoustic in its first guise, in terms of its tune and instrumentation–I wanted it to be something I could play solo with just an acoustic and vocal.. I was having a hard time there just now, remembering how it came to be, but I see now that I didn’t write this in its fullness until after I completed Essence of Being Mastery in 2016. That was when I first starting giving myself permission to write again.

This was written to be beautiful and uplifting, and I don’t know if it requires much in the way of explanation, other than to say that we’re all here on our own, special, challenging life journey, and the goal is to get better.

Verse 1:
The road it twists and turns now
But with each bend you learn how
To be even more of who you are
And I believe in you
And you’ll pull through
And there’ll be times when it gets harder
To keep going farther
But I believe in you
Just keep your eyes on the path of love
And you’ll find your way back home

Verse 2:
The path it looks so dark now
But deep within your heart now
I know there’s a light that shines so bright
‘Cause I believe in you
And you’ll come through
And there’ll be times your heart gets wounded
But you’ll make it through it
‘Cause I believe in you
Just keep your eyes on the path of love
And you’ll find your way back home

Bridge:
And on this road we’re walking
The wind it blows so cold
I’ll put my arms around you
And give my hand to hold
‘Cause I believe in you
And you’ll pull through
Just keep your eyes on the path of love

Verse 3:
We’ve come a long, long way now
And there’ll be another day now
When we reach the end of this long road
‘Cause I believe in you
And we’ll come to
A new world that’s free and giving
Where true love is living
I believe in you
Just keep your eyes on the path of love
And we’ll find our way back home

Coda:
I believe in you
I believe in you
Just keep your eyes on the path of love
Just keep your eyes on the path of love

Here’s me recording the original vocal on the track, “I Believe in You,” from 2022’s Self Confidence, with lyrics subtitled.

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