A Blue Note Day

For about two years, I rented an office/studio that I went to most days to try and be creative.  It was in a strange part of town (strange to me, anyway).  I got a lot of impressions of people and things when I walked around the area. Hipsters, beggars, second hand stores, scruffy dogs and various hustlers.  It was a busy commercial street in an old and rather run down area.  This tune documents some impressions I had at the time. Other than the vocal, its built entirely from commercial samples and/or synths shipped with SONAR.  Mixed on SONAR X2, Mastered at Black Dog.
 
http://www.danharrison.ca/Music/A%20Blue%20Note%20Day.htm

 
The music is real solid.
 
I don't get the irony between the vibe of the music and the lyrical content.
 
It's sort of like when Steely Dan sings about Kid Charlemagne but without the cutting irony that made that bod of work click.
 
It seems like a happy feeling song and a tragic story, and it makes me wonder if that was what you were going for or if it just sort of happened.
 
It seems like there must have been some sort of inspiration, perhaps an insight that the street life may have seemed glamorous to your protagonists for a few fragile moments before reality set in.
 
The music led me to hope that there might be a happy ending.
 
I only comment because the music is so solid and well produced that it seems like you might be open to thinking about where you are going with it.
 
all the best,
mike

Timidi… many  thanks
 
mike_mccue:
 
Thanks Mike.  Interesting questions you ask.  First let me say it’s a huge honor to have Steely Dan and Kid Charlemagne mentioned in the same paragraph with any discussions regarding my work. Fagan & Becker are huge influences and I live perpetually in awe of those fellows.
 
I’m not one to engineer happy endings if I don’t observe them.  On the streets where I felt these impressions there is no ending, either happy or sad.  There is just one sunrise after another.  Fortunately, a curious sprinkling of ‘blue notes’ exists to help ward off what would otherwise become interminable boredom.
 
‘Blue notes’ are a musical analogy for those characters that exist outside of the ordinary stable of standard-issue citizens. Those who are unwilling or unable to follow mainstream pursuits and do not seek to ‘get ahead’ in any conventional sense.  They live life like everyone else but do it on terms the rest of us would find intolerable.  That is to say, they inhabit shaky, unpredictable ground but have grown accustomed to that environment. 
 
They experience each day as it unfolds collecting whatever spills over from the excesses of a greater society in which they are permanently peripheral. That’s who Jenny, Jimmy and Billy are.  They don’t actually ‘do’ all that much but individuals like myself notice them and appreciate how they accent the urban palate.  It’s not as if I’m likely to have them over for dinner but I accept their right to inhabit their own space. This song is really how I ‘interpret’ them.
 
batsbrew:
 
Many thanks for your kind comments, sir.  This song was not built entirely from samples.  The sampled items were: female vocal riffs, horn parts, guitar riffs and a few percussion parts.  The bass part was originally a sample but I created a midi part from that which then drove a SONAR synth.  The piano and organ parts were synths either played or programmed by myself.  Drums were a SONAR Session Drummer kit driven with a Roland TD9 kit.
 
I have created several songs which were recorded by live players and had some successes with that.  For example I used StudioPros to produce two songs and was extremely happy with the results. However, the subtleties of a song like this one are difficult to communicate to an online production service.  Still though, I might try it sometime.  But I have other tunes I would try first before I spent the cash on this rather quirky tune,  Cheers…  - Dan

Very cool jazzy like groove on this number.  Your lyrics really paint a vivid scene about people in a bad place on a blue note day.  I was out in Vancouver a few years ago and the place you are talking about sound like a place where I got lost.  Of course, I think that you could find this place in almost any city of any size anywhere.
Very nice indeed.