A month or so ago, Nicole and I were driving to the HEB on 51st and we passed a pizza joint called “Pieology”. I’ve never been there, but I know that it’s one of those “make your own pizza” places, sort of like a Mongolian BBQ of pizza. For some reason, a jingle popped into my head:
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“Make your own
pizza at Pieology.
If it sucks
you won’t get an apology.
Coz you’re the one who made it…
You’re the one who made it…
SUCK!”
I’m not certain precisely why, but it was ridiculously catchy. I’d find myself humming it. I’d catch Nicole humming it (usually after I did, but still…). So, I decided to record it.
This turned out to be the most challenging thing I’ve recorded so far. It required a catchy, swinging drum line that I could have easily recorded using the Beatstep, but for some reason I used the motion sequencer on the Volca to do it and eventually figured it out. And then I found out that the sequencer doesn’t actually save the motion after you turn it off(I had to hit the “stutter” knob at exactly the right time to get the beat I wanted), so I had to do it again and record it immediately.
This being a short jingle, there’s really not much to it…unless you’re a hopeless TMBG fanboy and feel like you need horns, strings, bells, drum fills, and, for some reason, a synth solo. It was a weird recording. Normally I do a rhythm track, then record all the parts all the way through the song. This was more a matter of recording two-bar parts for each instrument and then copying-and-pasting them to the part of the song where I needed them. Not my normal process, but it worked OK.
My highly-professional system of charting the tracks.
Then there was the matter of vocals. I am not a singer. When I sing, people usually think I’m trying to do a parody bad singing. Then, when the truth hits them, they give me a look that says “Aw, it’s great that you tried.” I played World of Warcraft for 8 years without ever speaking on my guild’s channel because I am just that microphone-shy.
So I bought a mic, a cheap condenser. Then I had to, um, sing. I wound up double-tracking the vocals and discovered that a little equalization works wonders, but I would still describe the end result as “I get what you were going for” as opposed to “good”. It was fun to give it a shot, though.
Anyway, the next step is to send the jingle, unsolicited, to the folks at Pieology. Nicole insists that the right way to do this is to transfer the jingle to cassette tape and send it over snail mail She’s more romantic than she let’s on. Having thought it over, I think she’s exactly right. Of course, I don’t have a cassette recorder, but hey, what’s one more electronic toy?
So, here in all its glory, is the Pieology jingle I wrote:
And, for the sake of completeness, here’s the full version which is more of a short song than a jingle:
I don’t expect I’ll be doing anything like this again, but it was a lot of fun to do and maybe I’ll finally get this jingle out of my head.
Probably not, though.
-RK