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Blogpost #2: Digital Art and New Media
Today I’ll be blogging about Song Exploder, a Digital New Media site where different artists go through their songs and break them down piece by piece, giving one an aesthetic deconstruction of the art of music. Specifically, this time I will be listening to and reporting on the experience that Patrick Carney and Ralph Carney had when composing the theme song for BoJack Horseman.
Song Exploder, for one, is a vast and varied platform. There is a large repertoire of artists present here, from the Alternative rock stylings of band Alt-J, to the folk-inflected pop of NYU alum Maggie Rogers, to the ambient and experimental music of Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s truly a remarkable place to find posts because it just has so many different styles of music, so it gives one a taste of how it is an artist reached the headspace and intellectual platform required to capture these captivating pieces.
Patrick Carney is famous for being the drummer of the Neo-Blues band “The Black Keys”. Simultaneously, he is also known as the most vocal member, regularly lashing out at pop icons and idols via Pitchfork webcasts and magazine interviews. He is opinionated as hell, and undeniably talented. His band has helped revive the interest in Blues that has kept the spirit of the community alive for so many years.
Ralph Carney, his uncle, is also an incredible multi-instrumentalist. According to Song Exploder, Ralph has worked with some serious names, including the B-52s, St. Vincent, and the legendary cookie-monster vocalist Tom Waits. Even though Ralph hasn’t established a name for himself as much as Patrick has, he is regarded as a very strong musician.
Funnily enough, the theme song wasn’t recorded specifically for the show at all. Patrick was building himself a studio in Nashville and the song was actually the first thing he recorded. The signature arpeggiation from the beginning happened almost by accident, in fact, after Carney redirected the audio of ProTools’s click track into his Roland Jupiter 4′s arpeggiator, and bam, there you have the weird beginning sounds of BoJack Horseman’s theme song!
After that Patrick did the drum track, kicks snares and hats first, then brought in the fills with a second take. then he brought in a distorted rhythm guitar and played with the panning, which is the underbelly of the tenor sax part that takes over the second section of the song. Then Ralph would play with double tracking different instruments, to give the track, as he says, “More of a bite”.
The track ends with a short baritone sax riff inspired partially by Lisa Simpson’s solo from her theme song to resolve the song.
The song itself is cut off during the show, but song Exploder and iTunes have the full, unedited version featured. You can listen to the full interview here!
http://songexploder.net/bojack-horseman
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