'Make Five' by Bandtraxs - new release 1st March 2013

Just a quick advisory about my new album release called 'Make Five' by the artist name  'Bandtraxs'. This has been a labour of love since 2009 writing five new instrumental songs and producing them with a retro disco feel. The title track 'Make Five' and writing five new songs in this style was the original concept for the material, the name being a play on words with a song called 'Take Five'. The difference being the number of songs rather than the beats per bar in the groove!

In effect these are elaborate demos with a view to one day maybe recording a full orchestra for real, plus of course write lyrics and produce vocal versions in the future. The productions on the 'Make Five' album are styled in such a way that they are evocative of the mid 1970's disco era and especially those instrumentals by the likes of 'Love Unlimited' or 'MFSB'. Clearly, these tracks are nowhere near the high quality output these orchestras released, as I believe they are in a league of their own with their differing styles and can never be surpassed. Nevertheless, my endeavors here are to write and be creative producing interesting melodies, counter melodies and instrumentation that it reminiscent of an influential era in popular music. 

You may glean that there are two mixes of each song to enjoy. The alternate mix is simply missing a few instruments here and there, which gives the groove a slightly different dynamic. Using technology of the day, I hope I have created something of worth and enjoyable to the listener, retro in style and showcasing my passion for this music.

Below are the Soundcloud links for the main mixes. Feel free to listen and enjoy. If you are curious about the songs, please ask. There is normally a story behind each of my compositions and I would be happy to engage. They are already for sale on CD Baby (see below) and iTunes and soon to follow on Amazon and all streaming media solutions like Spotify etc.

Ultimately of course, I would like airplay and sales to help finance my involvement in making this music. Therefore I ask on air talent to consider playing any of the tracks within their programming if they feel it appropriate. All songs are registered with the song writing and label societies accordingly. Each track has its own ISRC number, which is one the legal registrations for the sound recording and label owner. If you know any talent that maybe interested in the songs please make them aware! Send me a private message if you know air programming that would benefit from this style of music and I can send you Dropbox links.

Make five

https://soundcloud.com/55motown/make-five-by-bandtraxs/s-RYWEP

Side tracked

https://soundcloud.com/55motown/side-tracked-by-bandtraxs/s-G3Zki

Double up

https://soundcloud.com/55motown/double-by-bandtraxs/s-T8tMb

A little of the big stuff

https://soundcloud.com/55motown/a-little-of-the-big-stuff-by/s-Mj8D2

Walk away the winner

https://soundcloud.com/55motown/walk-away-the-winner-by/s-eSzOT

'Make Five' - New Album Relesase

Stand by for the new Bandtraxs album release called 'Make Five', featuring five new instrumental retro soul/disco compositions. About to go live on CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and all streaming solutions like Spotify etc...Stay tuned.

CD Baby acknowledge digital was forgotten about

Those lovely people at CD Baby have just confirmed the digital down loads of Pree's "Suddenly there's you" will be processed today. Stay tuned ....

Detroit session sheet music/notation

The wonderful David J. Van De Pitte was responsible for the arrangments of my Detroit session songs. He took my vocal/instrumental ideas from the demos I sent over prior to the session and created hand written full notation. No computers involved! After the recording session I was presented with sheet music, which I will treasure. Above is just one page of 'Suddenly there's you' and you can cleary see how intricate it is. Going back further in time, I created the chords and melody in Logic Audio, my sequencer package. Once the demo is ready to record, I record the composite output of wav/midi instruments (as I also do a little live guitar etc) into a stereo lef and right instrumental.

Vespa, scooter, and 60's soul

I did not realise that so many scooterists supported soul, and Northern soul music. They travel all over the place to meet and listen to mod and soul material from the 1960's. I wonder if any of them would be interested in the soul cuts I did last year in Detroit:

www.youtube.com/bandtraxs

And, even better, available to purchase right here on this site. (see right hand side)

Working with legendary Motown arranger David J. Van De Pitte

It seems like only yesterday that I used to visit as many record shops on a Saturday afternoon as I could in search of some obscure soul record from the USA that nobody else had heard. That was in 1974 and in that process I picked up albums also to discover that some companies had started to name musicians, arrangers and other faceless people who had somehow contributed to the studio session output on the rear of the LP sleeve. Over the years and into the 1980/90’s the names of certain individuals became more celebrated, as their contribution to the songs became more apparent, and rightly so. I cannot remember when I first became accustomed to reading David’s name on a record cover, or indeed via some other medium, but what I do know it was always synonymous with quality music from the Motown record label. Distant memories come to life also, as in my archives reside the names of Paul Riser, Gene Page, Hal Davis in addition to David’s. They must have been imprinted long ago as I was in awe of these people including the musicians and how they all made the music come alive for me thousands of miles away in England.

During the planning stages of my dream Detroit session and the hundreds of emails both Dennis Coffey and I exchanged, it became apparent that it may be an idea to employ an arranger to study the demo’s I had sent over and put some sparkle on the songs. I was not familiar how this was done, but Dennis Coffey, who really worked hard and helped this project work from start to finish suggested contacting David J. Van De Pitte and asking whether he would be interested in arranging the four songs, doing the charts for the musicians and leading the band in the studio. Amazingly he said ‘yes’ and I was shocked, in fact tearful. How could this happen to somebody like me? Not even an average person, from Hull, England on probably one of the most difficult ventures of his life and here, a top Motown arranger coming on board to help make my dream come true.

So, everything was organised. Dennis had contracted the musicians and David to appear at Studio A one Monday morning in March 2008 for the Carl Dixon session! My wife Michelle and I turned up early to Studio A in Dearborn Heights on a cold winter’s morning, to be followed into the car park by drummer Spider Webb and pianist Robert Jones. We embraced and laughed about what was happening like old friends. We had met previously on ‘The Soulful Tale of Two Cities’ session held at the same studio coincidentally in March 2006. Bobby Eli had invited me to attend around January 2006 and I flew out to Detroit with excitement and watched the masters at work. It was this session that made me realise that I could possibly hire Studio A too, and do something similar. Everything fell into place. However, David was not on this session and a million miles still, from mine.

The interesting part to was when I saw this small bearded gentleman waltz into the studio that Monday with a bag full of Federal Express white envelopes. I honestly thought he was a US mail delivery man wandering around looking for the studio owners to get a signature for an important delivery. I was wrong! I said to him ‘Hello, who are you?’ he replied ‘David Van De Pitte’ and I introduced myself and told him who I thought he was. We laughed, shook hands and discussed the music. It was an unbelievable encounter. He whispered something in my ear about my demos which made my day! He was complimentary and thrilled to be working on the session. Of course he knew many of the musicians who had already arrived and I remember fondly the embrace he and Uriel Jones had as they had not seen each other for some time. In the studio I was speechless when out of the Federal Express bags came hand written musical notation for every musician playing on that gig. Meticulously organised and created without the use of computer technology, something he did not believe in. He even told me he did not want an email address and handed me his CV! David was a professional and worked the musicians hard to acquire their best cumulative effort during the session. It’s like he understood that once the best was in the can he could relax knowing that he and the musicians had done their very best for the label/contractor. In just two days, we recorded the basic rhythm tracks and horn overdubs. Can you believe the rhythm tracks were recorded in less than 4 hours on the Monday! How professional is that! Some of the demos took me 6 months to do! It was a priceless experience and to quote David at the end of one of the song recordings:

“I didn’t know that there were that many notes”

And Dennis Coffey replied:

“There wasn’t when we started”

And David again:

“He just makes ‘em up as he goes along”

Go here to see and hear the studio session in full swing, and those famous words.

http://www.youtube.com/user/55Motown#p/u/3/UKuRfjNmY-E

Rest in Peace David J. Van De Pitte, I miss you already…

© Carl Dixon 2009

Listen to Bandtraxs releases here

Listen to Bandtraxs releases on Youtube. These are samples of the 3 wonderful tracks cut last year in Detroit:

http://www.youtube.com/bandtraxs