She must be very special…
Howdy one and all, I’m back with another track. It’s something of an “oldy” this time but if I may be permitted to say so, also I think a “goody”. Another song I recorded as part of my Shed Music project which you can read about in earlier posts. This was on the album “A Trip To The Where? House?” that we produced in 2001.
It’s called “Special?!” and it’s a classic piece of Shed Music really, mixing crazy electronic sounds with more traditional organic instruments and funny speech samples from a film. I had some fun experimenting with a little program which allowed you to take any audio file and use it to scratch with like it was a vinyl record. I can’t remember the name of it but man I loved that little program. You may know this already but I’m a huge hip-hop fan, isn’t every slightly middle class white kid? I love all kinds of music of course as I’ve said before but when I hear a break beat kicking off it warms my heart. I’m not really into a lot the modern mainstream rappers you hear now like 50 Cent, Ja Rule and whoever else is cool this month, those idiots couldn’t rhyme their way out a paper bag compared to true MCs like KRS One, Big Daddy Kane, The Furious Five, Zulu Nation, Public Enemy, The Wu-Tang Clan and Jurassic 5. I could go on and on with that list but I’ve leave it there as this is getting way off topic. I’ve always wanted to be able to do great things with turntables like DJ Shadow, Mixmaster Mike or Grandmaster Flash for example. I even bought a set of turntables years ago that are still sat in the cupboard gathering dust. I had a quick go but I’m not sure I’ve got it, give me a guitar and I’m fine, I guess I’ll just have to leave the scratching to others. On this track you will hear my attempts at scratching with the speech samples that come in from time to time. It kind of works in the context of the track but if you’ve heard DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist believe me you won’t be impressed.
This was recorded some time in 2001. I started with the drum loop, the acoustic guitar picking and the synth line and then built up the track from there. My studio revolved around an 8 track Fostex hard disk recorder in those days and I would tend to come up with a rhythm track on the computer then record it out to 2 tracks on the recorder, leaving me 6 spare tracks to put guitars, vocals or whatever else I wanted over the top. Looking back these days with my hi tech computer based studio where I can cut and change things around at any time and use as many tracks as I want, I kind of miss the simpler times because I think it forced me to be more creative with production. It wasn’t so easy, you had to work to solve problems and sometimes lateral thinking throws up things you didn’t expect. Maybe that’s just the mists of time making it look better than it really was to me now, I was probably sat there pulling my hair out (I still had some then) and screaming “if only I had one more spare track I could do this!!!” Anyway, I’m digressing again sorry. So instrumentation wise you will be able to hear: some drums programmed on an old 808 style drum machine, a synth riff from the 303, some acoustic guitar picking, my electric bass, a distorted guitar played with a slide and the funny little talking samples going in and out. It makes a surprisingly full sound.
I think it works well and listening to it now I still like this track, maybe it’s wrong of me to say that since I produced it but it’s the truth. It’s not half bad 
Listen out for the slide guitar parts, I had great fun with that. I didn’t have a proper bottleneck slide to use at the time so I had to use the back of my old Zippo cigarette lighter, how rock and roll is that? I got my electro acoustic Yamaha out, plugged it through my Marshall amp and just played that sucka, it gives quite a distinctive sound and I’ve not done it in a while, I think I should after hearing this.
It’s quite a simple track and I can’t tell you what inspired it, there aren’t really any lyrics as such other than the lines that I sampled. “She’s very special… well I’m sure she is special if you picked her out of the whole bunch”. Maybe it’s the closest I ever got to a Shed love song who knows… maybe I was just bored and I thought the words sounded funny, it doesn’t really matter now. Just listen to the track and see what you think, I really hope you enjoy it. If you do leave me a comment here and let me know someone’s listening… and also feed my ego a bit ha ha 
Till next time, word to ya mutha blood hehehe
Dan
Podo said,
May 1, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
What is that quote from? It’s been driving me crazy. Its like I remember it, but not quite. Is it an American Pie film?
Dan said,
May 2, 2008 @ 11:01 am
It’s from the first American Pie film if I remember correctly, where his dad is giving him advice on taking a girl to the prom. I sampled it at random really and just thought it was quite funny
Ben said,
December 1, 2008 @ 2:49 am
Did you use a real 808/303 or did you use rebirth? I’ve never got to actually play with either real instruments, but rebirth was fun enough. I was once lucky enough to own a 606, but it broke and it was cheaper to replace than repair.
Anyway, nice work there. I envy your output. I’ve been in bands since I was 13 (I’m 31 now) and over the years production has slowed and slowed. I took a long hiatus, but now I’m back (sort of).
After listening to a lot of your “shed music”, I had a similar term for music I used to make. Before I had decent equipment, I had to piece together casio keyboards, a Teisco guiar, a Yamaha drum machine, various effects, toys and a little battery powered tape deck. My buddy and I would get together, get stoned and try to make it all work out in to something fun, usually at odd hours. There was this slang term we invented (while once on acid) called “neckbone”. It sort of described makeshift, jerry-rigged solutions to mechanical and technical problems (I think the idea was that in addition to duct tape and bubble gum, the solution would also require a chicken’s neckbone). When we wanted to get stereo chorus, we neckboned it with two tape decks and played them at that same time. Anyway, the term neckbone became applied to the type of music we made: “Neckbone Music”.
By the way, do you like the Beta Band? I get the feeling from your music that you would.
Dan said,
December 1, 2008 @ 12:24 pm
Hi Ben, I did use Rebirth for this track yeah but I know a couple of people who own real 808’s and still just use Rebirth cos it’s easier and sounds exactly the same. The units can be a pain to repair when they break, I know a friend who had problems with his. Sounds like you had a good little system going their, I like the term “neckbone” that’s very cool. I can relate to the idea of getting together with friends at odd hours, getting mashed and then trying to make something approximating music, done that many times
I haven’t really listened to the Beta Band to be honest but I know of them, they were quite big a few years ago in the UK but the whole thing kind of passed me by, I’ll have to find some of their records and see what they’re like
Thanks for the comment – Dan
Ben said,
December 1, 2008 @ 1:06 pm
“Dry the Rain” is the hit that got me hooked. I think that is on the 3 EPs collection. They are quite good and I imagine they would agree with the shed music concept. Cheers!
Dan said,
December 1, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
Thanks for the tip, I’ll look them up