A Million Dreams

Last night I finally finished a joint using this Chet Baker sample. I had been working on it since September...

heres: "A Million Dreams" (Chet)



I started building this track back in September when a friend got me the "Best of Chet Baker Sings" album. Initially I wasn't that hip to his voice, but after a while I started to dig is nasal-y tone and simple approach. I generally don't like jazz vocalists because I often feel like they do too much, but Chet Baker's vocal approach is very simple and bare so I started to dig it.

The sample comes from his "There Will Never Be Another You"--a common jazz standard. I had played the tune plenty of times but never heard the lyrics to it until hearing Chet. This past summer I implemented learning the lyrics of tunes to really help ingrain the melodies into my head/memory. I really like the second half of this tune, which lyrics go:

"There will be other lips that I may kiss,
but they won't thrill me like yours used to do.
Yes I may dream a million dreams, but how can they come true--
If there will never be another you?"

Definitely check out the original track if you can, I'm sure you can nab it on iTunes for 99c or whatever. I strongly suggest the whole album, its really accessible to both jazz and non-jazz heads.

Putting together the track was a mastering nightmare, the beat I initially had just clipped way too much and sounded like distorted wash, I kept on trying to makr it work but would always give up. After re-working the track at least 5 times this is what I came up with. I dig the live drum sound/feel that I ended up with. Punching out the drum fills was real fun. I hope you all catch the "dream sequence" cliche at the end of the track, I'm sorry, I had to. haha