The official FredNukes blog - Life in the music business

Inspired by the good readers of this blog, I decided to deconstruct one of the beatmaking moments from my album. My favorite beat on “Deconstructing Fred” is the outro, entitled “What’s next” (and not just because I did it myself, but basically because this beat touches something in me - no homo). I re-recorded the same verse over 3-4 different beats, but just couldn’t get that “closing” feeling I was looking for. After a couple of days, I found an old soul sample which had a really nice sound to it (sorry, can’t share the sample here). Chopped it up and put on some heavy drums, actually I think I took a kickdrum from a Kanye track and blended it with another breakbeat drum to create a slamming kick. After that, I played a heavy synth on the beat (from my motif rack - I think I blended 2 different sounds together to create a wider 80’s synth sound) and added strings. My plan was to get these strings re-played with real instruments: Violin, cello and more - to get that really big, orchestral, larger than life feeling. But unfortunately we didn’t have enough money on the budget or time left to do it. When I look back at it, I really wish we could have done it.

The track turned out close to how I imagined it; I even sampled my favorite movie (American Splendor - “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff”) for the closing seconds of the song. I have uploaded the instrumental beat if anyone wanna peep it - sounds a bit different without any vocals on it. The original album track is also there to listen to.

What’s Next (Instrumental)

What’s Next (Original)

Some bonus material:

When I was in the booth recording the album track “I see the light“, i had a bit of a cold. Therefore I was all drugged up on chamomile tea, trying to wrap the track up. But unfortunately, when doing the first verse, I started to sneeze, badly. This is what it sounds like..

Bob Saget, eat your heart out and peep this blooper:

Hope you enjoy this, hehe.

Tags: American Splendor, Beatmaking, Deconstructing Fred, Instrumental, What's next

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