The inspiration for the group track came from an African drum sample and some African music Kristina had been listening to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGTDBng9vbc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUrVeRGo5IM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY0VucZrgWA

 

After listening to the tracks above, we decided to make an African themed piece.

We found a sample on abelton called Egypt drums and used this as our base/beat. We started to improvise as a group and figured out how we wanted the track to sound like, so we started putting down guitar parts.

 

Jordan played the guitar on the track and we built layers of different guitar tracks and picked what we think fit best with the track. The riffs in the track are the ones that we finally choose.

 

Amy and Kristina improvised with the vocal parts and added harmony. We searched for most known African phrases and words, and came up with Jambo Bwana (hello mister) and Hakuna Matta (no worries), so we took these words and played with different tunes and then recorded what we thought fit with our guitar riff and beat.

 

We listened to some tribal music and figured there’s a lot of call and response and wanted to incorporate this in our work. Therefore worked on some melismatic tunes and sang them in call and response. This gives it an African tribal feel to it.

 

We found a sample of a tribe chanting and wanted to include this hence starting and ending the piece off with the African chanting. We decided to start and end the piece with the chanting as we thought it’d bring everything together as tribal music and gives it a circular structure connecting the beginning to the end.

 

The effects we used was reverb and delay, to make the track sound like its being played in a savanna near mountains. We panned the guitar to the left so the voice had it’s own space.