The day we worked on “Hear Me Calling,” I think we did like at least three tracks
prior to that. It was probably like 4 in the morning. We were super tired. We were just
like, “Okay, we’re gonna knock out one more.” I play him the beat and he’s like
“Oh damn. What’s that?” I’m like, “Oh shit. I didn’t really wanna play you
that beat.” And he’s like, “Hold on. Hold on. Play it.” Plugs it up. Kid knocked
it out in like 40 minutes, freestyled the whole thing. The record was done.
I was always a fan of Juice WRLD as soon as I heard his music because of the fact that
he did throw in the twist of rock music. Essentially to me, it was rock music with hip hop background.
I was already on that wave. I’d been doing that shit like focusing, focusing on that
sound for almost like 4 years so when I heard him, I was like, “Dude this kid… He’s
young. He’s talented as shit. I definitely gotta send him a pack.”
Juice WRLD was recording in Hollywood. I essentially just pulled up. We had already worked together
but we never met. And he’s like, “Play me some more beats. I’m still working on
my album.” We just started recording for like… I think it was like a week straight.
The first sound I used for this was a piano.
When I made this sound, I was just trying
to go for like a happy pop sound. I just used a little EQ. Took down the brights and the
lows, and just left room for the middle. And then I just put like a reverb just to make
it sound more roomy. After that sound, I added MPower Synth and I think I just added an organ
pad type sound.
This organ pad is basically just copied from the piano, and copied and pasted it over
so it’s just layered. And I just tucked it underneath.
After I had those two sounds,
the piano, I was like, “Dang. This kind of has a tropical vibe.” So then that’s
why I put like a plucky sound, like a nice acoustic island-y sound. Here’s the original
sound with no effects on it.
So I just put an EQ on it. Cleaned up the sound a little bit.
Then I added a gross beat, glitch sound with a little pitch down on it at the very
end of it. Then I added like a chorus effect to widen the sound and make it more like rock,
Cali kind of vibe. To widen it even more and make it more trippy sounding, I put a delay
on it. Like a ⅛ delay.
I played it and then I kind of manipulate the notes in Midi just
cause I’m not that great of a piano player.
The other sounds are just like little chops
like right before the chords, and it’s kind of just like a bunch of random stuff.
I added this sound to layer on top of it.
Then I added this cool little saxophone thing.
I added another vocal thing to give it more of a lead line.
All the sounds I added so
far, I’ll take them and put them in one channel and then I’ll bounce it as a WAV
file and make it a sample. So this is the piano, pad, this is the vocals, the pluck,
all together, and then I’ll take it and I’ll pitch it up.
Definitely when I was done with the melodies, I was like, “This is a total international vibe.”
So I’m like, “What is the most common international sound?” And then I
was like, “Dang. Afrobeat. Obviously.”
After that, I added more percussion to give it more of a bounce. I believe another snare,
I put a crash, and I put like this brush and a cool snap that has like a tunnel effect.
All together, it sounds like this.
There’s really no limit to how many percussive sounds
you add into these things. I believe if you tuck it enough, it could be even off a little
bit, it’ll give some kind of swing and cool vibe. I think it’s a balance of both worlds.
You need the cool instruments and then you need like a strong, percussive rhythm backbone
to sit there and be like, “Damn.” I go into Kontakt and I use like mixed percussions.
So it’s just like a bunch of random, like…
So I added like two more layers of mixed percussions.
With all the other rhythms, this is what it sounds like.
So after I had all the percussive sounds, I took a Trilian bass. I just layered that
and put some Sausage Fattener on it.
So after I had the bass, I structured it. I took the
sample. I reversed it. Just arranged it, mixed it, put some cool filters into it and added
my tag.
The way he came at this record was super catchy, like his vocal topline. Even after all the
other songs he did, I was like, “Damn that’s the one that really stuck in my head.”
We met a bunch of people, built cool relationships and we just like knocked out a classic.