Sometimes, the simplest things can grab your attention; like when your cat swats your microphone while sitting on your lap as you wear black pants. As I was attempting to record a cat toy with a bell, my cat, Gadget jumped on my lap and swatted the microphone in an attempt to get his “bird” back.  It quickly became obvious that I was not going to get the intended audio track with Gadget participating, so instead of deleting the audio, I decided to use the swats as a percussion element for the track I was developing. 

     Eventually, I felt I needed additional content to add to the developing track, and wanted some vocals, but I have a very poor singing voice.  I recalled a family friend who used to “sing” in one spoken word at a time to make us laugh as children. I decided to add four spoken words to the track that tell the story of Gadgets swats in a minimalist way.  Black pants and cat fur say it all.

     The track is in 4/4 meter in the Key of C Major and a 100 beats per minute tempo.  The track is in two parts with some shared percussion elements for continuity.  I chose the “Blue Ridge” drum kit from the stock Logic instruments. In addition to a kick drum, I added claps, a closed Hi-hat, and one finale cymbal crash.

     I started the composition with a I- IV -ii7- V-Vi chord progression which consisted of C, F, Dm7, G with recurring C/E and G/D first inversions for voicing.  The part 1 harmony was developed from scratch using the native Logic Pro X ES E synthesizer shaping a violin influenced pad type sound bussed to a “small room” effect.  The Finger Style stock instrument bass line was developed primarily from the root of each chord after being transposed to the bass track as whole notes of one per bar.  I divided the whole notes to add some dynamic energy to the low end of the track.  The part two bass line was developed in a similar manner from a ii-V-I chord progression; Dm, C, and G.  The chords were formed using an ES P synthesizer to which EQ and a noise gate were added.

     The part one melody was also created from scratch using the Quick Sampler and a stock Logic loop “Clearing Flute”.  I added EQ to raise the gain and clean up the low end using a high pass filter.  The part two melody was created from scratch using a Logic ES E synthesizer.  No effects were added to the second melody line.

     The two audio tracks were recorded with a Shure SM58 Dynamic mirophone routed through a Focus Rite Scarlet 8i6 interface.  The “Cat Swatting” was sharpened to a result that sounds like a cross between a Tom and a Snare. This was accomplished using a stock EQ and compression as well as being bussed to an auxiliary reverb track. The vocal track was also EQ’d to raise the gain due to a slightly low recording level, and was then bussed to an auxiliary chorus.

     The final track, an accent of a cat’s “meow” was created with a Quick Sampler and an apple loop “Cat Meow 03” and shaped using the controls on the Quick Sampler to align more with Gadget’s insistent “meow”.  I bounced the midi track in place so I could use a lead in fade on the resultant audio track.