My birthday is coming up this week, May 29th, so I thought this would be a good time for me to give back—a musical gift—a piece of Chicago’s history.
Last year, I had the opportunity, pleasure, and honor to author my first long-form content project. This substantial piece of journalism took form as an editorial documentary of the musical instrument product category.
That product category happened to be the century-long contemporary history of the drum machine, tracing its diaspora through the years, and assessing its cultural impact within the modern musical landscape:
Electric Rhythm: The History Of The Drum Machine | Reverb Documentary: goo.gl/MfT1zq
Writing the initial research paper, and assisting with shooting and location scouting (Thanks again Danny The Wildchild), I was also tasked with rounding up some original music for this production.
Instead of just making some original music of my own—which could have been easily accomplished—I wanted to give this opportunity to an elder craft-master who deserved to have their commissioned original work be featured in the most comprehensive documentary about the drum machine ever made.
The idea for the music was just to have the producer craft each track based a particularly significant drum machine. The one person that I came directly to mind at the top of my list of candidates that would be perfect for this job, and absolutely deserved the opportunity was the prolific prodigy and hit-making beatsmith, Mr. Paul Johnson.
Paul turned in five fantastic works that are all featured in the film, and work perfectly for their scoring utility. However, three of them, I loved as self-contained dance musical works and made playable edits of them for my personal DJ use:
1. Paul Johnson | LinnDrum Track (Andrew Emil Extended Edit)
2. Paul Johnson | SP-12 Track (Andrew Emil Extended Edit)
3. Paul Johnson | TR-808 Track (Andrew Emil Extended Edit)
For my birthday is this week, I am going to give them away to the world as they have brought me much joy far beyond their use in the project they were initially commissioned for.
Thanks again to the super homie deluxe—Mr. Paul Johnson—for being an admirable friend, an inspiration for decades, and for really coming through for me on this one!
Enjoy!
@AndrewEmil
@ChangeRequest
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