“Watch Out” is the first track of a series I started haphazardly in the late summer of 2021. It could have easily become one of many, many early versions of a new idea that ends up deep in the drafts folder, but something about the simple chord and progression fast-tracked this one for completion. Have a listen:
How it happened
In the beginning, the project was named “Lights out” and started with a single chord I held for a while on Logic’s onboard electric piano, based on something I came across in one of the Prisms chord packs from Render Audio. My left hand almost moved itself once the chord was in the air, creating the bassline and a basic progression.
After a few rounds of the keys and bass, the drums came together and fell into place easily, which happens sometimes when the track starts that way, i.e. with a strong set of chords and basic feeling. I build my drums piece by piece, usually after some time finger drumming to find the right kit and rhythm, but with a progression like this, I knew exactly what I wanted very quickly.
I bought the Novation Launchpad X a few months ago, and it is definitely a good piece to have on the desk. I’m so used to playing my drums on a midi keyboard, and that’s still my instinct, but having drum pads on hand has definitely been useful.
With the main trunk of the beat created, I worked on a sample-like element – for some reason I don’t remember, whether it was an intro, something to chop and play around with rhythmically, or whatever – mixing keys, a simple drum line, and a saxophone. This ran through a homespun stack of reverb and filter magic to get the feel of an old tape recording, and ended up as a short break between verses of the beat, horns, and scratches throughout the track.
The verse horns came next, just playing around over the beat until something stuck. I switched to Logic X this past winter (after 11 years on Logic 9) and started using the built-in Studio Horns almost immediately, but I feel like I’m just recently getting a good feel for the plug-in.
The horn pieces felt very natural and free, with long pauses in the riffs that seemed intentional once the scratch phase began.
I worked for a while to get the horns sultry using a combination of plug-ins from Waves and AudioThing, and (Nick Newport, Jr. voice) some other stuff, and I didn’t realize in the moment, but later on, that my love for Sade’s signature sound (example below) probably guided my hand.
It felt appropriate to add some scratches to what I had at that point, and I spent some time testing different samples and kits, and how they could exchange with the horns. It became a give and take between the saxophone and turntable, which is just fine with me.
The key to dope scratches, in my experience, is in the effects like EQ, echo, and reverb, among other options. In the case of this track, there are scratch samples of one (the classic sample), two (“watch out” and “real shit”), and three syllables (“break it down”), and the echo that sounds good on the one-syllable scratch won’t work on the two and three, and vice versa. So each alternating scratch in each verse has a different echo that fits the scratch sample itself.
After some digestion and tweakage, and many rounds of “final versions,” the track felt complete and then it was time to name it. That part was simple once the scratches were done, with the title coming from the second scratch sample.
For the diggers, here are some clues to the scratch origins, in the order in which they appear:
- A major, classic scratch sample 🤔
- Another classic sample from a popular scratch kit 🧐
- The final part of the first song (after the intro) of a Wu-Tang Clan member’s sophomore album 🤨
- One of the dopest duos in NYC Hip-Hop 🧐 🤔
Happy hunting, sample seekers!
The artwork was based on the first thing that came to mind when I contemplated the phrase “Watch out!”
And of course, that parental advisory sticker really ties the whole thing together.
The nuts on the whipped cream, aka the final piece, was the “breakdown” at 2:43, which prompted a “kitten dance” video reel, which you can view below, at your own peril:
Stay tuned to my Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages for new tracks in this series, mixtapes, and whatever else happens. Check out more “Behind the Beats” here.
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