Wha Da Funk?

(Image from Wkikimedia Commons)

For another musical piece to share on my blog, let me offer the latest thing I've created.  This is something I call "Wha Da Funk".

It started as another wikiloops jam -- the original drum and bass track was done on wikiloops by members "Baer" and "FunkT." It's an older track I found when I was looking for something to jam against.  The original backing track on wikiloops is HERE.

I loved the beat and that slappin' funk bass by FunkT, and thought this would be a blast to jam to. So I downloaded the track a while ago and started messing around with it.  But my original intent to just add a guitar track or two kind of expanded.

In the end, I came up with this -- take a listen:




(Note that if for some reason you cannot play the embedded SoundCloud mp3 above, you also can go directly to SoundCloud and find the track HERE, or listen to it on wikiloops HERE.)

So do you hear a lot of different guitar parts?  You should -- there are eleven distinct tracks of them:

1. First rhythm guitar -- lots of chorus and heard in the first bit of the song.
2. Second rhythm guitar -- doin' the wah-wah funk rhythm, transitions over from the first rhythm.
3. Base melody guitar -- at the beginning, and returns for the other times the melody line is heard.
4. Third rhythm guitar -- long chord strums deep in the mix, but also does melody an octave lower.
5. "Metal" section first rhythm guitar -- mixed to the right channel.
6. "Metal" section second rhythm guitar -- mixed left.
7. Delay-heavy 3rd melody -- heard 2nd and 3rd time of melody, and before the metal section.
8. High 4th melody -- highest octave part, distorted, at 2nd and 3rd time, also adds fills before metal section.
9. "Metal" lead -- freak-out guitar soloing over the "metal" section.
10. First lead -- doubles melody parts and also does the cleaner lead parts.
11. Second lead -- also doubles melody. The reverb-heavy distorted guitar lead parts.

There is a lot of mixing and fading in and out going on in this piece. But I hope it's not all just a mass of sonic confusion -- there's never more than three or four guitars heard at the same time.

As you can probably tell by now if you've listened to any of my other musical pieces, I love to blend different parts and add a variety of tones to a song to make it interesting.  Adding a heavy freak-out guitar section to a funky track like this might not make sense to everyone, but it does to me. :)

Yet I also wanted to have a cohesive, unified feel to this piece, which is why I created that melody line that is returned to.  And the lead guitars come and go, but both return at the end. I think this helps tie everything together.  So the overall feel is hopefully one of exploration and unexpected twists, but also with a sense of resolution and completeness.

So what do you think?

As with probably everything I'll ever do, I hear parts that I could perhaps "make better" (see my previous IWSG post), but as a whole, I think this tune worked out pretty well.  It was certainly a lot of fun to put together.

I hope you like it, but if nothing else, I hope the power of da funk comes through enough to get your toe a'tappin'...