Week 3 of 52: "newt" w/ jalen edington
Collaboration in artistic fields almost always begin as a learning experience.
Everyone has different experience
“newt” started as a collaborative production session with jalen edington in my apartment at the time on Avenue D and 10th Street in February of 2020 about a month before the start of the pandemic. We had never worked in the same room as each other so we started with some inspiration from underscores, then Jalen got right to working with a tasty drum loop he had cooked up in the days prior. What commenced was a learning experience for us. XD
“For the most part [laughs] that came about, lowkey, not from like, anxiety, but I was like “damn, I really must be trash rn because [Noams] is not fucking with this at all!”
In all honesty, I was admiring his work and when I had collaborated with people in the past, one person would start, bounce stems to the other, and then go from there. Jalen, on the other hand, was used to people being more forward when they wanted to jump in on the production. So, since I hadn’t hoped in to take over, he thought I wasnt feeling it…
but I most definitely was
Jalen laid down the basic chords and rhythm; there was basically already a song there by the time I recorded the loops over to my computer and started messing with them!!
He had started with a drum loop he had made earlier, started messing with some chords, and the layers kept piling on!
This is what the original loops Jalen made sounded like:
I had been working on some spacey/grimey intro stuff, also while messing with my Prophet Rev2 and came up with these layers:
I had taken some audio of the room during the session, resampled many of Jalen’s loops, and messed around with some totally new instruments and I structured the overall arch of the song. Then I sent stems back to Jalen to mess with and he added some cuts, FX, tasty bits, and mixing; then I sent him some extra subtle synth lines to add a little extra texture in sections.
We both were loving the lofi feeling but wanted to mess around with some weird, playful sounds that you may not usually hear in a regular lofi track.
This is what I ended up adding in the “chorus” area:
But my favorite part of the story is how “newt” got it’s name. When I had first asked Jalen what we should title the track while saving, he said “deez nutz” (which is not unlike us, the other tracks we’re currently cooking up are called bita chips, and choo choo XD) so I just popped it in but so quickly that I mistyped “deeznwts” was solidified. As we went through versions, it was pared down to just “newt”.
Just a few thoughts about collaboration:
Most importantly, you can learn from every single person you work with, no matter their experience level or background (the more different, the more you can learn)
Learning how you collaborate with people in general is a journey in itself, don’t beat yourself up if it’s not going the way you want the first few time, you’re getting better whether you know it or not
There is NEVER ONE way to do anything… NEVER! Creativity is the backbone of music and art and putting your mind in boxes by telling yourself that there is a certain way things have to be done limits that creativity
Don’t apologize for your ideas
During in-person production sessions be open with communication, what you’re feeling, what you’re not (not about everything or all the time, just in general), but don’t just look for criticisms while you’re first getting ideas down. Everything can get perfected later, the first collaborative step to a collaboration is just throwing ideas at the wall and keeping that momentum going however possible, negative talk can stop that in it’s tracks.
Respect yourself… if someone is intentionally making you feel bad, wasting your time, etc. they’re not worth your time. Those that you have mutual respect with will be the collaborators that lead to the best product