Week Thirty-Eight: Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week “Breaking Up, Acoustic”

Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week airs EVERY WEDNESDAY at 6pm Eastern ONLY on RadioRadioX.com

This is Jesse Sample. First impressions are powerful. Something foreign or unknown enters our field and we will always anchor much of our thought around it to our first experience of it. Think of your first kiss. What was it like when you first met that person? Take a minute.

You didn’t really get the whole story about them. You were moved and bathing in the quintessence of being alive. That experience is galvanized in the story of your life.

Surprises are also powerful things. You think you’ve learned all there is to know about something or someone and, occasionally, you learn something new. From there you need to recalibrate what you think. Think of a long-term relationship with a spouse or a family member. You think you’ve got their card and then they do or say something that forces you to examine the old story.

Songs are like that. You write a song, and you have this idea that it is a known quantity, but it’s not. You are only dealing in one of a million potential manifestations of an idea.

The ways we can produce a song are just as critical to a song’s expression as the lyrics, melodies, harmonies, or the rhythms. This week, I took a song that exists in hard rock form and explored one of its potential lives with Roseanna Grimaldi.

We opted to forfeit an artillery of guitar and keyboard sounds and use some more natural tools. We chose to produce this song with an acoustic guitar and two human voices. We thought about our vocal productions and also let the song make its intentions known.

I don’t know about Rosa, but I walked away haunted. This style of production lay dormant in the DNA of this song until last night. I guess it’s a duet and that adds another layer of meaning.

First impressions are great. The glitz and glam of something new is priceless. But remember, you’re not getting the whole story. Don’t ever stop looking for surprises in the things you think you know.

Thanks to all of you tuned into RadioRadioX. This is the Freak of the Week, “Breaking Up, Acoustic”