My friend Tucker Ellis and I got together to write this one back in August…. hence the title. We’ve played music together for the past 4 years or so through church and just getting together to jam so I thought it would be great to collaborate on a composition together. Tucker is a full-time student at Western Carolina studying Jazz guitar and recording.
During the process we’ve had to work around our hectic schedules and pass files back and forth to finally finish this composition. 8-16-17 was built from just a piano and drum track as a foundation then later accompanied by guitar from Tucker and also pads and programming. For starters we used the Nord to get our piano sound and added a delay within ableton for the opening sequence. Next the drum patterns were programmed using the virtual MPC in Garageband app on the iPad. We wanted something that wasn’t harsh but had a dry and soft feel so we went with a maraca as the hi hat sound with a traditional hip hop kick and snare sound. Once the foundation of the piano and percussive parts were taken care of we recorded Tucker’s guitar tracks using a line in since it was late and we didn’t have an amp available at the time… To get the guitar tone we toyed with amp simulators and reverb plugins within ableton until we found what we liked. Lastly we added the fillers. The melody comes from a Japanese instrument called an erhu which was played on the Garageband app as well as the string sounds. You may laugh at using that app but those sounds are pristine. Use what you’ve got to the best of your abilities right? AFter we had finished the song that night I sent the files through Dropbox and Tucker added some finishing touches to the composition that really brought out certain parts. Tucker also mixed this project and did an awesome job with getting all of the levels equal. 8-16-17 has a “farewell” feeling to it in the beginning. It’s a mid tempo drive that might have your head bobbing before it ends.
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