Jobim Electronic

I think the first Jobim song I remember hearing was Desafinado. It was on a Herb Alpert album my dad bought when I was about three years old. I still remember him coming home from work through the front door with it tucked under his arm. When I was older, around eight or nine, it was probably my favorite song on the album but I did not have any idea who wrote it.

Years later after finding my way to the legendary Getz/Gilberto album that contained the hit 'Girl From Ipanema' I knew who Jobim was but I did not fully appreciate his genius. More years down the road I did some deeper exploration of Astrud Gilberto recordings. She did the vocal on the Getz, 'Girl From Ipanema' recording. I really started become a fan of Jobim. By the time I jumped into Jobim's Wave album I was all in.

A lot of times when I'm hacking away at the keyboard I'll try to noodle away at songs when they pop into my head. I find it a good exercise to try and figure out chord progressions by what I can hear in my head before I start grinding through a recording to lift the progression. It did not take long to realize there was a lot of complexity happening in the harmony and melody. Just try to write out the Wave melody without sitting at a keyboard first. When you're casually listening to the song it just flows by and doesn't feel unnatural or overly complex.

Wave was the first of the 3 songs in the playlist that I covered. I don't think I ever sat down and lifted any of the arrangement form any particular recording or chart. In fact my my melody is a mutation of what might be considered the original version that sort of evolved from playing through the chord progression as an accompaniment.

So Tinha De Ser Com Voce was a song I became a fan of after hearing an Ellis Regina / Jobim recording of it. I used that version to lift the changes. Playing the changes alone didn't seem to capture the basic essence of the tune. Usually when I'm playing a progression and imagining or singing the melody on top I get the essence of the composition. When I decided to create a version of this tune I started by creating a latin drum pattern and just looping it. I then blocked out the melody with a synth patch. After that I blocked in the bass. When I listened back to it I suddenly heard that essence I wasn't hearing before. You can never underestimate the power of percussion and bass. Adding the chordal accompaniment just cemented the tension between the bass and melody.

 

 

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Creating these tracks took me too a next level connection with the music and was worth the endeavour for that reason alone.