Episode 11 — Lofi hip hop, Zigaboo grooves and New Orleans explorations
In this episode Steve kicks off a run of New Orleans specials: first with percussionist and bandleader Hannah Davis, a London musician embedded in the New Orleans scene, talking about Frenchmen Street, parades, sitting in, community bands and why music there is treated as a shared service not a rarefied luxury. From Congo Square and second lines to all-female brass bands and democratic DIY crews, it's a practical look at how that city's history shapes how music is played, heard and valued.
Then Steve switches to a Music Theory segment on lofi hip hop, breaking down his mix and additional production for "Le Cachet du Soleil" — contrasting demo vs final, arrangement tweaks, trumpet layers and textural details. Finally, Genre Tombola lands perfectly on deep funk, sending us into the world of The Meters, Zigaboo Modeliste, Sissy Strut backbeats and a new New-Orleans-inflected funk track featuring drummer Pat Levett and clear echoes of that swampy groove language.
What we cover
New Orleans as ecosystem: Hannah Davis on moving from London, parades, Monster and Mardi Gras crews, Frenchmen vs Bourbon Street, and musicians as part of the service and social infrastructure.
Community & sitting in: Second lines, Congo Square, informal unions and why everyone from pros to beginners shares the bandstand.
Lofi hip hop mix breakdown: Demo vs final mix, levels, space, FX, trumpet hooks and making a woozy underwater feel without losing clarity.
What producers actually do: Arrangement nudges, ear-candy details, translation of an artist's intent, and where "mixing" becomes "producing".
Deep funk & Zigaboo grooves: The Meters, Sissy Strut, backbeat on 2 & 4, drum-bass lock, Hammond and guitar riffs, and why it's physically impossible not to move.
London–New Orleans loop: Working with UK drummer Pat Levett, The Coalminers, Wilton's clapping sermon and how these ideas feedback into Steve's own writing.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability only. No wording edits.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I am a musician and composer and performer from London, and this is my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin Of The Pieces. This is the podcast that helps you to hear and understand music in new ways. And yes, welcome back. Thank you for joining me once again. It's a pleasure to be back. I've had a month off, a month, imagine. But of course, I haven't had a month off, as you would have heard when I released a little teaser episode a couple of weeks ago. I have been extremely busy. I've been busier than I've ever been with this show so far, because I've been in New Orleans. It's been absolutely amazing, and we'll be talking more about that in a little bit. But before we talk about that, just to recap the previous episode, if you haven't listened to that yet, do go back and check it out. We had an interview with a fascinating and very inspirational, even though I'm sure you wouldn't like me using that word, Nathaniel Dye, who is about to run the London Marathon, playing the trombone throughout. So if you haven't sponsored Nat yet, do go and do that. And we're still looking to try and get him to Glastonbury. He's very keen to play Glastonbury. If you haven't listened to that interview yet, Nat has terminal cancer, and he's about to run the London Marathon, as I say. He's thrown himself into his career as a musician more than ever. I've had a lot of great feedback about that interview and about Nat's story, an amazing guy, and it's been a pleasure playing with him as well recently, a fantastic musician. But also, if you haven't heard the show before, most episodes I do a thing called the genre tombola, which is where I take a random genre that is chosen for me by the internet and make a piece of music in that style and kind of dig into that style as an outsider. And I was certainly an outsider last episode because I was looking at cow punk and I decided to write an East Anglian-themed cow punk track. So if you want to know what any of those words mean, do go back and check that out. Coming up on the show today, as I mentioned, we're gonna take a quick trip to New Orleans, the first of a few over the coming episodes because again, I'm recording lots of interesting stuff there. But I had a fascinating chat with a British musician who moved out there by the name of Hannah Davis. She's a fantastic percussionist and sort of all round multi-instrumentalist and doer. She does a lot of amazing things out in that city. She's really integrated herself into the fabric of the place. And we chatted about everything from kind of gender politics through to what the scene is like there, how to kind of get involved, the community aspect, the distinction between amateur and professional musicians, if there is one, all sorts of stuff. So yeah, stick around for that. And in the occasional section of the show called Music Theory, where I look at the nuts and bolts of music and try and kind of demystify some of the more technical aspects, I'm gonna be looking at the role of a music producer and or mix engineer, both of which I do. And I'm gonna be looking at a track that I worked on for a fantastic young artist and sort of demonstrating what it means to take a track from the demo stage,
when it got to me from the artist, through to the finished mix. And you can hear some of the different aspects of taking the kind of raw material of a track and I guess polishing it up, giving it a few extra little sparkles here and there and making it ready for release. And of course, finally, I'm gonna be looking at the genre tombola, which I mentioned earlier last episode was cow punk. This episode is deep funk, which is appropriate as I was in New Orleans, which is in many ways the home of deep funk. Genuine coincidence that that happened, but yeah, that's gonna be coming up right towards the end. So stay tuned. But first, as discussed, we're gonna take a quick trip to New Orleans. And before I hand over to my brilliant interviewee, Hannah Davis, I'm gonna just briefly talk about the importance of that city. I think it's, I mean, it's sort of almost a cliche to talk about New Orleans being the birthplace of jazz, and of course, it absolutely, it should be considered that in my opinion. But I think for me, the interesting thing about New Orleans is that it kind of encapsulates so many things that I've talked about in this show. I touched on some of them with Hannah about the community aspect and, you know, the kind of history of music in that sense. But also for me, you know, the show's title is The Origin of the Pieces. It's a play, of course, on the Darwin book Origin of the Species. And I think this idea of musical evolution is really encapsulated by that city. Because you've got music coming in from all over the world. You've got music coming in, of course, through enslaved people from West Africa, from East Africa, from the Caribbean. But you've also got European music coming in, European classical music. Something I learnt, which I didn't know, was that New Orleans had the first opera house in the United States. And so you've got that side of music coming in. And of course, very importantly, you've got the Native American traditions as well. And particularly, their links with the end of slavery. I think a lot of Native American people worked quite closely with some of the enslaved people to help them escape or to kind of aid their freedom. And so there's a lot of musical trading going on between all these different cultures. And what emerges out of that is essentially the history of the 20th century popular music, the history of everything from rock, jazz, blues, hip hop, R&B, and of course, a massive influence on classical music, film music, everything else. So yeah, I mean, it's kind of a cliche to talk about New Orleans being a melting pot. You know, that's always the slightly tired analogy that's used, but it is that sense of all of these musics happening simultaneously in that kind of unique environment. And it goes back to some previous episodes where I've talked to, for example, when I talked to the astronaut Chris Hadfield about the links between travel and music and how those two things kind of interact and people coming from different places bring their music to a new place. And then that music then changes by virtue of being played by these different people and being played on perhaps handmade instruments, homemade instruments, kind of improvised by people with from
whatever they've got. So, I mean, I'm gonna return to some of this over the next few episodes. I'm gonna sprinkle some of the interviews that I've done over the next few episodes because I met some really incredible people, some very, very well known and some less famous, I suppose, but still really fascinating and with incredible insights. So, if I go on about New Orleans a bit over the next few weeks, you have to bear with me, but I hope you'll agree that there's lots and lots of interesting stuff to come from that incredible city because of that unique confluence of people and musics from all over the world that happened about 100, 200 years ago. Enough of my pontificating about New Orleans. It's time to hand over now to someone who knows far more about it because she lives there. And I thought I would start this little exploration of all things New Orleans with an outsider to the city to maybe help those of you who haven't been to New Orleans, who don't know it, to kind of get a perspective on it. So hopefully there's not too many bits of jargon or things thrown in there. There's one, at one point I mentioned Congo Square, which is a central square where the enslaved people would have a day off on Sundays and they would come and gather in Congo Square and bring drums and percussion instruments and there'll be a big kind of community music making. So when I refer to Congo Square, that's what that is. Hopefully everything else is kind of explained. But as always, if you've got any questions or queries about what we're talking about here, do drop me a line on social media. I'm at Steve Pretty in all the usual places, including now TikTok, believe it or not. That's right, I'm on TikTok. Now, I'm just gonna hand over to Hannah, but just to explain that one problem with interviewing people in New Orleans is that it is a noisy city. Wow, is it noisy? So it's very hard to find anywhere quiet, particularly after gigs and all that sort of stuff. So I'm interviewing Hannah at a bar, which felt appropriate because that's what the town is about. But it's a bit noisy. I've tried to clean it up as best as I can. I hope you can understand it okay. As always, let me know if you're having any problems. Here's Hannah. Hi, my name is Hannah Davis. I am a percussionist and band leader from London, living in New Orleans for the last year and a half. Yeah, you're the person that London musicians hear up when they're here. I certainly am, that is the case. But why did you want to come over here and work? It was kind of an accident, so I was touring with a kind of punky, Frank Zappa style brass band. I was at these anarchist street band festivals and then I came to New Orleans on a whim and my eyes were opened. That was the first time you came? Yeah, honestly, I didn't know very much about New Orleans. The ability to play music in the street, the physical concentration of music. Frenchman Street in particular, 15, 20 venues next to each other or within walking distance and the fact that music is so integrated into people's lives. Pretty much every time I go out to meet friends, we go and see
another friend playing music. That's quite a move to go from London to New Orleans. So I didn't go to music college. I went to an academic university and I always felt really out of place in the London music scene. I didn't start off doing jazz either. I was doing piano accompaniment, musical theater, conducting, some other stuff, choir leading. And I always felt like I was looked down upon because I hadn't been to music school. And that is the opposite of the vibe here. You know, if anything, people are disparaging about people who wasted four years of their life at university. Also, it's very expensive here. So access to university is that of the privileged. So the fact that I was not looked down upon for not having been to music college and the enthusiasm for my enthusiasm and my learning process, you know, I feel like in England, being excited about something is really embarrassing. Yeah, that's a really good observation. Much as I'm very English in my sort of general. Oh, me too. I think enthusiasm is really important. And I think something I've talked about a lot and banged on about a lot on this show is, I think it's getting better, but in general, there seems to be a belief that you can't sort of have fun and take music seriously. And those things don't overlap. Whereas here, I was just at Preservation Hall tonight and there, sort of almost halfway between a comedy set and a music set, but the music is incredibly high, like top, top class. And the comedy is sort of knock about, silly and a bit bawdy, but just really accessible, really fun. And the music is incredible. And there's no contradiction between those two things. Like, yeah, we're having a nice time and we take music seriously. Those two things, not only are they not in contradiction, but they're part of the same thing. It helps audience engagement. And there's nothing worse than playing a gig where no one cares. Yeah, including the musicians. Including the musicians. And yeah, I like music here because you do have to be listening the whole time. You can't just dial it in and just play, oh, I'm doing this feel for this verse. I'm now doing that one. I need to be constantly reacting to the soloist, pushing them and pulling and feeling and taking and giving. And it's meditative. Yeah, yeah, definitely. You play a lot of different stuff, right? Here mostly drum kit, almost exclusively drum kit and some vibraphone as well. But then I lead some community bands from my clarinet. Yeah. It is challenging to lead a band from the vibraphone or the drums. Yeah. So that's fun. I'm a terrible clarinet player, but it's fine, you know. But also, there's something I quite like about not being that good on your instrument, or at least on your second or third instrument. There's kind of a punk aesthetic about it, even like making that cow punk track a couple of weeks ago, which is on one level a bit of fun, but another level where genuinely I can't play, I was played
bass on that and I really don't play bass. I was like, I've got a bass. Yeah. So, well, I mean, it's going to be a simple thing. It's not going to be a complicated structure to this tune. It's like, well, I mean, I know that my finger goes there, and then I know that I want to move it here, and then loop it, and done. I mean, I'm not saying that that's what punk music is necessarily, but I think, I guess the point is, when you're working with a community band or with people with less experience, putting yourself in a situation of being less experienced on that instrument is probably quite a good leveler. But speaking of the community thing, so you run some community bands here, right? Yes. So my main project here is called Human Band, which is the working name because we play for the Monster Parade. Can you just talk about the parades a little bit? Yeah. I mean, it's a whole massive thing. It's a whole thing. I mean, look, there's whole books. So I do Uptown Parades. I do a lot of the official Mardi Gras parades. I have a band called Brass Band. Brass Band. It's an all-female band. Great name, by the way. We kind of weren't really up for the name at first, and then we realized, whatever. I think if you're going to be an all-female Brass Band, I think it's... We'll take it. We'll take it. There's a big transplant community, which means people who are not from New Orleans are doing parades in the Bywater and the Maroney, which is kind of a downtown area. It's where we are now, right? It's where we are now, yeah. It's a big culture of people starting bands. They don't necessarily play their instrument very well. They don't necessarily know anything about music technically, writing songs, meeting up, rehearsing so hard for weeks before Mardi Gras, two, three, four rehearsals a week, putting together this insane program of music. And quite often it's themed because the parades will have different themes. So there might be like a horse theme or water theme or space theme. Or I did a spiral themed parade once, and all the music was spiral based. Wow, that sounds wild. Yeah. How do you even write a spiral composition? We did a lot of stuff that was like A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A. And then there were like parts where you could loop sections and like everyone would loop their different parts. The concert was strong, the execution was more weak because it was seven in the morning. It's a huge social thing, and the parades aren't just about the musicians, you know, people, there's lots of dancers, there's floats, there's people making puppets, there's people doing installations, there's people who just make a costume and turn up and might do like a little interactive performance and everyone is as valid as the band. The band is quite often leading it because we
might be the only sonic element, but there could also be a DJ float or an experimental music float and they're valid as well. Yeah. It's an amazingly sort of democratic process really, at least from the outside. It is. I sometimes painfully democratic for me personally. That's something I have struggled with. You know, I do like a bit of delegation and it doesn't come naturally. I can imagine, yeah, if everyone's got an equal say, that's great on paper, but in practice, that must be challenging. Yes, it is challenging. It feels like a really appropriate kind of community coming together. It is very community based and pretty much nobody is getting paid for any of those things. The uptown ones, you do get paid for, but the downtown stuff, people are losing money, people are spending so much money making their costume and giving their time. And yeah, all the downtown ones, I don't think anyone got paid for anything. And even like very professional musicians who make all their money from playing music, many of them will come out just for fun playing a second instrument or playing their first instrument and contributing because that's what you do. The thing that is always at the back of my mind with all this stuff is that the name of the show is the origin of the pieces. Music has been around for as long as humanity has been around and the professionalization of music is a relatively recent phenomenon, right? And so something like a community band or something like these, there's a tension between needing to make a living as a musician, but also thinking music is a kind of living, breathing community thing that shouldn't just be professionalized in that you've got this professional class of musicians versus a kind of inverted commas, you know, amateurs or people who are just trying stuff out. It's like, you know, it's a communal thing that we were in Congo Square today talking with one of the kind of guardians of Congo Square and he was saying exactly this, that Congo Square in New Orleans is where enslaved people used to come and drum together and you know, and it's kind of the birth of jazz. There's no such thing as an audience in that, right? There's not an audience versus a professional class of musicians, like everyone's involved, either you're dancing or you're playing or you're kind of clapping along or whatever. And you see that today in Second Lines and in this sort of crazy... People will play a beer bottle with a stick. People will turn up just with a cowbell or a tambourine. And yeah, there's a huge culture of them. I don't even know if we really have this in England called Sitting In. Or, you know, you just you go to Frenchman, which is the big street where all the gigs are. And you finish your gig, maybe you have a beer or whatever or eat some food. And then you just go hang out with your mates on stage for like three hours, come play a few songs, gives them a chance to use the bathroom, gives them a chance to pass the tip bucket. But you just go and hang out because it's fun. You watch your friends gig.
And that's where you learn as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that I've been thrown in in the deep end with so many songs and I had no idea how they went. But it was fine that I messed it up because I wasn't the drummer on that gig. So it's sort of pressure, but no pressure. Yeah, and it genuinely gives people a break. Like I've been walking down the street and like a drummer has bashed on the window for me to come and sit in because they need to use the bathroom or they want to get a beer and they've been playing for two hours and they are done. Speaking of that Frenchman scene, so this is the street that where all of the... I mean, there's lots of music bars in town obviously, but Frenchman Street is the real musicians. It's a critical mass. Yeah, it's a critical mass. This idea of musicians being part of the service industry. So where I got that phrase from is there was talk of starting a new union for Frenchman and Bourbon Street musicians. Bourbon Street being another big music street, but it's kind of more touristy. It's less jazz. Frenchman is still lots of jazz, lots of New Orleans music and some other stuff, funk, whatever. Bourbon goes a little bit more pop and rock. So we were talking about a new union, which was ideally going to be an integrated union with the other people working on those streets, the service industry people. So the door people, the sound people, the bartenders, you know, everyone, because we're all in it together at those venues. Everyone's creating the experience and the music. It's part of a service that you are providing to someone. I've come to New Orleans to do this. I want to see music and drink. And that's a multi-person effort that is put in, with not just the band, it's also the bartender, it's also the person you welcome to, and it's everyone. It's the cleaners, it's everyone. Yes, it's something, again, I've talked to a lot of musicians and other people about this week, about that, whether there's a tension between the kind of high art, if you like, of the concert hall, the sort of sophistication that jazz in particular has, has a certain association with, but also that jazz is, I think, is almost unique in having this weird kind of dual personality, as first, as on one level, like very kind of chin stroking, nodding along, everyone quite, like quiet and respectful, listening intently, but on the other hand, either background or quite bawdy. And so again, we talk to a lot of people here about the crossover between those things and them coexisting in New Orleans in quite an interesting way. The musicians don't, there's not a distinction between them, the musicians who play one or other of those. Oh, loads of people play both. Exactly. Yeah, loads. In fact, actually, everyone can do both. It's nice to have a little break. Yeah, and it's nice to play for a crowd sitting and listening carefully, but then also there's nothing inherently kind of inferior about playing in a bar or in a pub.
Yeah, and lots of people who play straight head or modern or beard stroking jazz don't have the skill set to talk to the audience, don't have the skill set to get people on board with the gig. And it's alienating for people. Lots of people come here and they've never seen this kind of music before. And if they're going to be put off by a load of people on stage, not helping them feel included, I don't really think that's helping people come and see live music gigs. I think that's a really important point. And I think something I certainly feel very strongly about doesn't diminish the music to try and get people to feel included. For me, I should preface this by saying that all music needs to be silly and fun and you need to make a joke about everything. No, absolutely not. It's all context dependent. But the key thing is as musicians, as those of us who like to, depending on context, have fun and try and welcome new people to it, it's important for the music scene generally not to look down on that. You should look up on that because you're bringing new people to the music. To confirm, I also love opera and when I'm in London, I go to the orchestra or the opera minimum once a month, if not more. I love sitting very quietly and not saying anything and enjoying having art go in my ears for three hours. But I also like going to a tiny little bar and seeing a weird Turkish folk band and having a glass of wine and dancing around. I think it's just music has different functions and for me, that's what is so endlessly intriguing about it. Particularly someone like yourself who likes to straddle those areas either as a listener or as a musician. You're like, well, there's a different function between a band in a bar and a band on a concert hall stage. I think that the crux of the matter, which is ironic for us to discuss right now because we are currently in a bar, is are you getting paid from alcohol sales? And that for me, I think is what makes a musical situation, a musical venue, an artistic experience function differently. Concert halls do sell drinks, you know, the opera house, getting a little champagne at the interval, but I would never drink if I was going to a classical or an opera show. I want to experience that completely sober, have my soul and my body taken away in the most pure way. But if you go to a bar, it's different and people are talking if you're in a bar and you kind of have to be okay with that. That's a different thing in the concert hall to in the bar. In the bar, I want to have a little drink and talk to my friends and go, woo, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's different. It's true. Although, I don't know, it's funny. I think I'm just saying this partly just because I've just come from Preservation Hall where... They don't serve alcohol there. I know it's different from being in a bar. But at the same time, the bands are encouraging some audience, not audience participation in a major way, but there's a bit of interaction. The audience are part of the show.
But then meanwhile, there are also some kind of jock, drunk jock guys at the back who are right by us, and who I had to basically tell to shut up. Because it's about reading the situation. I think there's a difference as an audience member. I think if you're listening to this thinking, what's the right way to be an audience member in that situation? It's like, well, the musicians lead it. It's a conversation. At some point over the last couple of days, someone said to me, it's like inviting people around for dinner. So the musicians are the hosts, right? You're in their house, they lead the conversation. Yeah, that's good. But it's still a conversation, but they lead it. And if you went into someone's house and started just helping yourself to stuff and shouting and being obnoxious, it wouldn't be cool. You're not welcome. And I think that's how I feel like it is. Even in a bar situation, even if you haven't paid to get in or any of those things, you go in as an audience member, and the musicians are on one level a kind of service job, because they're there to drive alcohol sales and all those cynical things. But also they're there to play, and the interaction is led by them. And if it's just like people being obnoxious and shouting over it and inserting themselves into it over the musicians, you've misread the situation. It's not about you. It's about the interaction between the audience and the band. It's not about just you shouting. I mean, it kind of is about the audience though, isn't it? Oh, it's 100% about the audience. If they're not there. It's 100% about the audience. It's just trying to square that in my own mind with why is that person shouting out at the front OK? Yeah. But you guys not OK. And it's because you guys are chatting. It's about you, the people chatting. It's not about you shouting appreciation for the band. It's about you guys having your thing at the back. It's not you're not participating in the group. This is a group activity between musicians and audience. We're all in this together as, again, dating back centuries to Congo Square and everything else. That's a participatory thing. Whereas, if this is just you guys at the back having a laugh, shouting, you're not part of that communal experience. Is your contribution interactive? Exactly. I'm really bad at speaking to drunk audience people. I got these service dog patches. They say, I'm working, don't distract me. I'm working dog, do not pet. Now I have them on my bass drum strap. So when I do parade. It's so good. You were wearing them the other night. Thank you. That came from a specific incident. There was a very specific incident that that led to. I got them for some other friends as well. It's really good. I know. Thank you.
It's really good. What's the gender politics like? I mean, that's a big question. Oh, that's a huge question. I've definitely had more active face to face sexism in this country. But I've also been given so many more opportunities. There's a lot of like, oh, you're a chick who plays drums. That's really cool, which I used to be really offended by. But actually, generally when people are saying that, they are actually trying to be really helpful and say something positive. And I think I've also reached a level now where I've proved that I'm good enough. I'm also 36. It was different when I was younger, I think. And people have grown up. Men have grown up. Women have grown up. Everyone's grown up. But I know a lot of people, especially younger, more conventionally attractive, female presenting people, get it a lot worse than I do. I'm wearing a track seat right now and I have a buzz cut. I don't know. It's a really hard question. There's lots of female band leaders. I think a lot of women have to start their own bands because they don't get the side person gigs. Because then you get profiled as a singer, which is also a musician, but lots of people don't think that, and then they don't get the side person gigs. So, yeah, lots of women as band leaders. Not that many women as working side people. I am very rarely on a gig with another woman where it's not a specific band, but by my friends. And there are women who are just as good, if not better than the men that I'm playing with. But they're not like in the gang. Quite a lot of all female bands here though, and quite a lot of female lead bands, and they get a lot of respect. There's a band called Shake Them Up Jazz Band, which is all women, and they are amazing, and get a lot of really good gigs, and are extremely well respected. It's the same thing, there's a lot of bands that are predominantly black, and a lot of bands that are predominantly white. People seem to keep to themselves quite a lot for whatever reasons, but people do tend to be respected within the sphere of their own demographic. Respect between the groups, but not a lot of interaction between the groups. Yeah, there's crossover people, for sure. One of my friends, she's white and a woman, and she plays with lots of bands that are all black, local, male musicians and her, and people are generally extremely respectful to her, support her. She's done her time, she's proved it. I need to have a wee. I've needed a wee for quite a long time. Yeah, let's have a wee. That was great, mate. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's just nice to talk. I feel like that was just us talking. So as we go for our wee, back a couple of weeks ago in the Marigny in New Orleans, thanks once again to Hannah Davis. Do look her up and go and see her play on Frenchman Street or wherever in town. If
you're in the city. Now, we're going to move on to a section of the show called Music Theory. And again, this is where I kind of break down the nuts and bolts of music. And this episode, I'm going to look at what it means, I guess, to mix a song, to mix or produce a song. Now, this is a very different style of music than we've had on the show before, really. This, I guess you would call Lofi, Lofi Hip Hop, something like that. It's a fantastic artist called Uraris, who's really, yeah, I was really touched to be asked to mix his track. I've done a couple of tracks for him now. And this one, I think more so than the last couple I've done with him, this one I very much took on the role, I guess, of producer as well, as well as mixing the different levels of the instruments. I also added quite a lot of stuff, so I added some trumpet, quite a lot of effects, a lot of sort of textures, a lot of little kind of sprinkles to make the whole production a little bit, I guess, richer and get some of the transitions together. So Mararis has been kind enough to give me the permission to play his original demo that he sent me to mix. So this is before it got mixed, and then I'm going to play you my mixed version of the final song which you can listen to now on Spotify or in any of the usual places. It's a track called Le Cachet Du Soleil, and I really suggest you check it out. I think he's a very talented artist, and yeah, I think you should go and have a listen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play the track, I'm going to start with the demo, and I'm going to switch between the demo and the final mixed version. Now for those of you who know anything about music production, you'll probably know that once the song is mastered, which we'll come to and cover in a future episode, that means, amongst other things, that the track gets much louder, so that the overall volume of the track, compared to what it was before it was mixed and mastered, gets much louder. I have matched these roughly so that they are about the same volume, so hopefully you're not going to be hearing one that's much louder than the other, because our ears naturally are drawn to louder sounds, sounding better. So yeah, I have tried to sort of match that out. Anyway, here we go. This is Le Cachet de Soleil by Rauris. Okay, so you can hear here I'm going to put in a little build. This is the mixed version. We go back to the unmixed version. There's a lot of vocal processing I've done here. Here's my version. And the radio. All the elements are there, but I've made some pretty radical changes. You can hear Viraris is doing this thing between the ears. Here it is, left and right. We fell down from the sky into the sea. The tower and the tide. So again, we've got lots of lovely vocals here. And a few more vocalists. Go back to the demo. That's the demo. That's the demo.
So there we are, I hope you enjoyed that track, something a little bit different for the show. But yeah, once again, congratulations to Rarers for the release. I think it was made with another producer called Houston as well. Yeah, check out the track, Le Cachet de Soleil. I hope you found that interesting. It's funny, as a mix engineer and producer, those roles can kind of blend into one another sometimes. Sometimes I'm just mixing something, sometimes I'm also kind of producing, in other words, having some kind of artistic input into the song in terms of adding things or taking away things or maybe changing the arrangement slightly, as I have done a little bit here. The demo he sent me was really great to start with. I could hear there's loads of potential in this song and I just got very much the sense from talking to him and from listening to the track that they wanted this kind of slightly woozy, under watery kind of feels, a lot of references to the sea in there and drowning and that kind of thing that the artwork for the single is Rariss and some others under water, so with the guitar under water. So yeah, I wanted to kind of get that woozy sense. So hopefully you think I achieved that, but congratulations once again to Rariss for a great track and go and check it out. So we get to the genre tombola section of the show where a random genre is picked for me by the gods of the internet, AKA a random list picker. And the genre that was chosen for me this episode is deep funk. And honestly, it sounds like a fix, but I promise that this is real. It was chosen for me, but at random a few days before I went to New Orleans, which is pretty much inarguably the home of deep funk. Because arguably the sort of prototypical deep funk band is a band called The Meters from New Orleans, of course, who are mainly a quartet. I think they did have one or two other members over the course of their career, but they're an absolutely amazing band, mainly instrumental, some vocals as well in there. The tune they're probably best known for is a tune that I actually played quite a lot over the years. It's a tune called Sissy Strut. And that is the tune that I'm gonna take as my inspiration for the track I've made this week, because I've made a track based on the meter's kind of sound. They've been used a great deal in films and TV over the years, so you will have heard them even if you don't know the band name. But most importantly, I guess, is the influence that they've had on music to come, because they were, as I say, one of the earliest and most influential funk bands. Now funk is, I guess, born from originally jazz, rhythm and blues, it's got a very, very strong emphasis on what us musicians call the groove, which is some combination, I suppose, of drums and bass, particularly those two instruments and the interaction between them. And in this case, for me, it's the drums in particular that really power this music along. And the drummer for most of the band's career was a drummer with the amazing name of Zigaboo Modellist. And he kind of pioneered this very funky drum style. With that in mind, I think enough talking from me, let's hear some funky drums, not courtesy of Zigaboo Modellist, because unfortunately, even though I was in New Orleans, I didn't manage to
pin down Zigaboo for a session. Instead, I have a London drummer with a slightly less good name, but an incredible drum feel and drum sound. His name is Pat Levett. He's a real specialist in music from New Orleans and that kind of region, and particularly, I think, this kind of deep funk sound. He runs a great band who have had the good fortune to play with once or twice called The Coal Miners, who play at Ronnie Scott's quite a lot and various places if you're in the UK, and I think occasionally get abroad as well. But he's also a great session drummer who's played with all sorts of people, including I think people like Tom Jones. So yeah, Pat very, very kindly sent me over some drums and they sound like this. Pretty funky, I think you'll agree. It's really got that kind of Zigaboo feel. For any of you who've seen it, I put out a video from my Wilton's Music Hall show about clapping on the two and four. If you're in an audience, you clap along on two and four, and there's no better way of kind of illustrating that than this groove. You can hear that heavy snare drum on beats two and four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now remember, friends don't let friends clap on one and three, clap on two and four people. If you're hearing that backbeat, that's where you gotta clap along to. All right, so next up, I added some bass. Now again, this bass interacting with the drums, particularly the bass drum and the snare, really gives it its feel. Here we go. So, the Meters were a four-piece band, as I say, for the most part. They also had guitar and keyboards, in this case, organ. Now, the Hammond organ is used. Originally, I suppose it was designed for church to be a sort of smaller pipe organ, but it was used in this music, in funk and associated music, because of, I guess, the gospel influence on it. And here, you can kind of hear it just filling in some little twiddles behind that bass line and the drums. It's just gonna fill in some gaps and provide a little bit of context to everything else that's going on. Now, of course, the next instrument to complete the quartet is the guitar, and in this case, the guitar is going to play the riff, the same riff as the bass is playing. So, very sort of simple little riff based, I guess, around the blues. Very effective, just goes round and round. It's really more of a focus on that simple little melody and, very importantly, the drums coming through. And then there's a little passage of improvisation in the middle, and that's about it. We've got a couple of different sections, but it's really based around this feel. It's for dancing, it's almost impossible to listen to this sort of music without moving. At least it is, if you're anything like me. Now, if you grew up, like I did, in around the 90s, this had a big revival, this type of music. There was DJs in London, people like Snowboy, I think to an extent Giles Peterson, and lots of interesting people like that. The James Taylor Quartet, the Hammond Organ player James Taylor, not the singer-songwriter. Yeah, and there was a real revival of this stuff, clubs, DJs, that
kind of thing. These records became very sought after by club DJs, and they were sampled, and all sorts of stuff. So this music is incredibly important, not just in the 60s and 70s in the era that it was originally made, but right through into the 90s, and still the present day. In fact, I wrote a song featuring James Taylor, the Hammond Organ player, who was a big revivalist of this music, as I say, and that's on the last Hackney Colliery Band album. It's a tune called Hypothetical. So do check that out if you like this sort of stuff, and you want to hear it in a brassier context. Speaking of which, I'm going to play the track out now. And this is the track that I made. I always want to make sure that people understand that I'm making this stuff out of sort of interest and respect for all these genres. I'm making it in my studio, mainly myself, of course, today, featuring the amazing drummer, Pat Levett. But otherwise, I'm playing everything myself. Slightly hastily, been quite busy. So forgive any slight rough around the edges stuff, but I put a bit of trumpet over the top because that is an instrument that I actually do play at some reasonable level. So here we go. Anyway, this is my kind of inverted take on the meters and sissy strut and hand clapping song and that kind of stuff. There we go, a little bit of funky stuff for you in episode 11. Okay, it is time to find out which genre I'm gonna be looking at next episode. So I've gone on to randomlists.com, not sponsored by them, not yet anyway. And I'm gonna run across all the 1,335 genres from Wikipedia, and I'm gonna say go. Okay, so what I'm gonna be looking at in a future episode is L-G-B-O rap. So Lugbo rap. Lugbo rap. Igbo? Lugbo? Igbo or Lugbo rap. I think maybe Igbo rap. So yeah, forgive my ignorance, but hopefully I will be able to be a little bit more illuminating when I look at Igbo slash Lugbo rap next time. Man, I'm looking forward to kind of investigating that. Intriguing. So yeah, tune in next time for that. As I say, there's all sorts of stuff coming up. A quick reminder that I do have a Patreon. I have been a little bit useless, I'm afraid, at updating it recently, but you can get the full Wilton's Music Hall show up there from January, featuring choir, featuring harp, featuring Hackney Colliery Band, rhythm section. Really interesting chats with everyone, including Chris Lintott, the presenter of BBC Sky At Night, about music and the universe and where those points meet. That is available exclusively on my Patreon for now, and I promise, now I'm back in this country, I have all sorts of stuff that's gonna be going up on the Patreon, including full interviews. I've edited all of these interviews that you're gonna hear down significantly, but there's really interesting stuff that I've had to cut out for time. So yeah, do sign up to that. If you go to originofthepieces.com, you'll find information about how to sign up for the Patreon, which is only $5 US dollars a month for loads of stuff, and it really helps me to support the show and keep the show running and as ambitious as ever. But also I have a mailing list there you can sign up for and all of that good stuff.
As always, please contact me on social media if you wanna ask any questions, if you've got any requests for the show, if you've got any suggestions, any feedback, all that sort of thing. Meanwhile, thank you so much to all my amazing guests this episode. We had Pat Levett on drums there and of course earlier Hannah Davis, the brilliant young artist Rariss. Go and check out his track Le Cachet de Soleil and his other work. And yeah, thank you very much for tuning in. We're gonna be back in two weeks' time, so back on the usual schedule rather than having a month off. So lazy, having a month off, unbelievable. We're gonna be back on Thursday the 21st of March for all sorts of interesting insights for your musically curious ears. Meanwhile, thank you to Anjali Kidjo, who I wrote the theme tune with, and Hackney Colliery Band for performing the theme tune. That is on our album, Collaborations Volume One. There's gonna be news of Collaborations Volume Two very soon, so watch this space. Meanwhile, back in your ears on the 21st of March. See you then, bye.