JAMuary 2026 #28 | The Snake (instrumental) скачать в хорошем качестве

JAMuary 2026 #28 | The Snake (instrumental)

JAMuary 2026 #28 | The Snake (instrumental) I had the whole day in the studio today and I was there already at 7:30 am so I was very ambitious about getting a full, finished production done - a little over-ambitious as it turns out So what do we have here then? 11 and a half minutes?! ...I'll get to that but let's start at the beginning... This track began as a drone in C on the ‪@SequentialLLC‬ OB-6. The drone runs all the way through the track and holds the tension - not least because it's doubled through the space echo and given some extra texture and drift Then I tried to pick out some kind of melody on the piano - which you can hear in the earlier piano sections ... which eventually evolve into the chords that modulate around that C drone for the duration of the piece At this point it only had a click track but I could hear a trip-hop kind of thing in there, kind of Massive Attack or Portishead which are always obvious references for me with anything downtempo... so I added a dusty breakbeat and picked out the simple string motif with the 'Strings Trio' preset on the Viscount Legend 70s Then it came time to put down a bass line. I wanted moody and brooding of course but also funky ...but after about 2 hours of trying things out it just wasn't working ... the breakbeat was far too dominant - so I deleted it I put down some very minimal drums - just kick and rimshot - and then decided it needed a little bit of feel so I mic'ed up a hi-hat ...actual real 10" mini hi-hats that I bought off a guy called Joy Deb who has written tons of Swedish Eurovision hits. He told me that he bought them from Morgan Ågren - Swedish prog drumming legend who played with Zappa ... but I digress So I sat and played a minimal hi-hat and did an 11 minute take - hence the length of the track. In the end I only used two bits of it and looped them around but I'll probably go back into the track and piece together some other bits After that the bass variations came easily and sat nicely and I added some clavinet (again from the ‪@ViscountInstruments‬ Legend 70s - it's such a workhorse). Then I began to hear voices... ...it was mutating away from a trip hop track and towards a haunting David Axelrod kind of thing maybe? I had a backing vocal idea of doing something like The Specials 'Ghost Town' so sang multiples of a 3 part melody and built those up - in the end sounding more like Fun Boy Three's 'The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum' - an evergreen A really creepy falsetto lead vocal idea came to me off the back of that and I quickly put a guide down of it (not on this recording) ...and then realised I'd not broken my concentration in about 5 hours and was suddenly very hungry for lunch ... so I went for lunch for an hour When I came back and reviewed what I'd done I was pretty pleased but I needed more lead vocal ideas and I knew that the difficult and daunting task of lyrics would soon rear its ugly head ...so obviously I plugged in a guitar - the strat this time The idea here was to just freestyle and grab whatever snippets sounded cool afterwards - not soloing or chords or anything - more textures and sounds ... something 'Bush of Ghosts' adjacent. I ran the strat through a POD HD500 and just clicked around the 'FX Heavy' preset bank. Got some interesting stuff that you can hear peppered throughout the arrangement I had also figured out a lead vocal which came from a little riff I'd improvised - again, not on this version so... what was this song about? It sounded to me very much like seduction and betrayal. Ever experienced that? So I spent the entire afternoon writing a lyric, figuring out a pretty complex call-and-response vocal part, trying to nail some super creepy falsettos and by 5 o'clock I realised there was no way that in the remaining hour I had that I would be able to a) edit the track down to a lengthy but well-balanced 6 minutes or so b) comp all the vocal takes c) mix all those vocal takes properly and d) shoot a video of me playing or singing something over the top So, this is my compromise ... the slowly-building 11 minute instrumental plus a sample of part of the lyric here The Snake There’s beast on your shoulder And a voice in your ear whispers ”Wicked manchild, draw your spear” So you turn to the whisper But the beast isn’t there You’re alone in your cell With distress and despair But this wraith - he’s a revenant He crawls back inside through the morning mists that shroud sunrise And he glides on his belly, undulating his tail While you stare in dread as he sheds his oily scales How gently You squeeze me How gently You squeeze me I'm out of breath I'm out of breath How gently You squeeze me to death --- So yeah, that will have to do for today - I need more time to make this one really special Thanks for listening/reading Like Subscribe Comment Tell your friends ...I'm exhausted now