1800 cups of green tea. Really?

Yes. After visiting California and being creative in Los Angeles last summer, I quit drinking coffee. Now I run on green tea. My consumption is about one cup/hour, which sums up to 1800 cups after doing the relaxdaily project for 6 months now. The outcome: 42 chilling tracks attached to 42 YouTube videos.

For the LP Essence1 I tried to chose the eleven best tracks, the ones I like most, and the ones that got a good rating so far on YouTube, on the project’s homepage, on Soundcloud and via the relaxdaily Android app. Furthermore, I put in more energy to enhance these tracks, to make them even more enjoyable for you.

The result is 80 minutes of ambient background music that has the power to make you feel good.

To celebrate the iTunes release of Essence1 I give away free copies to the first 10.000 relaxdaily fans who show up either on the project’s website or on it’s Facebook page! (use the code: “relaxdaily”!) If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, to get the latest new relaxation tunes

For me, it was a pleasure and a good creative experience to be part of the production process. While the music creation and vocal recording took place in Hollywood/L.A., U.S.A, I did the mixing and some final touches in my home studio near Cologne, Germany.

While most tracks make heavy use of synthesizer sounds, you can also hear an acoustic guitar (which we got for 300$ from Guitar Center on Sunset Blvd.) on  ”Trippy City” and “Pop Pop Pop”. As an artist you always try to sound a bit different than the rest of the pack, right? And you try to develop. Probably that’s why the new songs sound quite different to the one and only “Chocolate Rain”. But with this new release we get a true Tay Zonday again, that’s for sure.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed the creating.

get your copy here

- Michael

Joey and Tay at work

Tay invited me into his home studio, where he wrote the lyrics in a couple of hours. We recorded a rough demo on the same day and improved the recording further and further during the following days. The collaboration was a very open, healthy idea exchanging process. Tay even taught me new insights on making individual tracks sound better!

A crucial point in the production process was the insight that the rap part spoken originally by Tay wasn’t the strongest part of the song. Heaven sent Jerid aka Upwords, who came into the studio and wrote his part  within 30 minutes. We recorded him (both the sound and video footage). His appearance took the song a step further!

Yoey expressing his vision

After mixing the track, partly on my beyerdynamic DT770pro headphones, partly on Tay´s not-so-accurate (sorry Tay),  monitoring system, there was the question: “What about the video?”

Tay decided that we want to celebrate in the video so he organized some colorful disco lights. We also got four yellow clocks from Target, which I ended up destroying in the video (see 1:14min). We got an additional TFT monitor for making the location more interesting (from a retailer that due to it’s fabulous service probably wont survive 2020).

the bathroom scene

When Joey Anderton (the film guy) showed up in the afternoon of the shooting day, everything went quite fast. We started with the outdoor scenes. Tay danced on a hill in front of the San Fernando Valley. Then we transitioned to indoor footage; Tay hammering on my drum machine and his keyboard, Tay singing into the mic, Tay talking on couch, and me destroying the clock. (Well, I actually destroyed four of them).

The next day Jack from JacksFilms and Richard Ryan showed up.  They both play a short story in the video (the bathroom scene)  and helped make the fun scenes look like some kind of party.  We shoot further singing scenes.  And, of course, the shower scene in the end of the day.

The whole process was fun. We captured what we wanted. It was a lot of effort and very good team work. Everybody did a good job and altogether made it happen!

For me it was very special to see the whole process from playing the first notes, developing the track, helping with the songwriting, recording, producing and being involved in video production, itunes cover creation and the final upload of music and video. Tay is an incredible artist. I hope his fans will enjoy the song as much as we enjoyed creating it!

watch the video:

watch the bloopers:

This is just a very brief sum up of some facts mostly for myself, perhaps it helps someone else too.

I’m referring to the Album Version (The E.N.D) (4:49min) [listen to it on grooveshark e.g.]

The picture shows a quickly made timeline analysis(click to enlarge):

For me, most interesting is how the creators made work the following:

- A kind of ABAB structure with kick drum only in the B sections (only 1:30-2:30min and 3:45-4:45min) and a stab like “fake guitar+ sound” on each bar during the A sections (the rest) making you feel there is enough of pulse during the whole song.

- a lyrical concept that is not attached to the musical concept: ask yourself: what is the chorus? Probably the “I gotta feeling” part. But the party (kick drum)  is going on in the other sections. Only at the end (4:15-4:45min) we get “I got a feeling” with the kick.

I don’t want to loose to many words here – have to create some epic tracks for a friend, I hope the notes on the picture explain it a bit. Interesting is to see that there are six additional lyrical phrases/ statements that are used by the peas guys, e.g. Fergie’s part on 1:45, three of them are repeated at 3:00min (but in a different musical context: the “A” section without kick).

Overall this is a unique, very unusual, concept. Nothing you would learn in a book about songwriting! And it works good for the Peas. I wonder if I can come up with something like that with my next material…

What’s that? You don’t have to love it by now… But it’s a possible direction where pop music will head in the next months. Yeah, we’re getting faster and faster. We’ll hear more pop songs above 140 bpm. We’ll sweat again in the clubs!
Like every bubble the “4to the floor” one will burst at some point. Pop music in 2012 will sound different then what we had in the last years. How? Who knows. It´s up to us creatives to define that with great new songs!

Yes, I gone a little wild with that one… definitely inspired by some tunes I heard here in Los Angeles.

I hear some rap in the verses and a cool melody in the chorus with this one. And of course cool lyrics…

How do you like the filtered section just before the last chorus?

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Update 2011-06-24

I took the track  off because it will be used as an exclusive in a collaboration. I’ll post both, the original track and the final song here, when the song will be released.

my favorite part is the very last chorus, where individual instruments are fading in and out…

… by the way: It´s my happiest time in my life so far. Los Angeles feels like musicians heaven, so many creatives here! Love it!
… I see people in the Capitol Records building working until in the night every day, that motivates me to get good results every day by myself…