The310 - Smile (Audio)
This was a song that I worked on with the band The310. I wrote and performed the chorus, all in one session in about ~30 minutes.
As The310 and I were sitting down going through beats on YouTube, we were trying to find the perfect instrumental. I remember The310 telling me that the beat should almost “feel” right, and we shouldn't overthink it. A gentle hats-off towards the great Rick Rubin, a reminder to let intuition guide technique. A few passes through beats, we clicked on one titled “Happy Anderson Paak type beat”—we both looked at each other in spiked resonance and we knew we found the one.
I closed my eyes and just started humming to the instrumental. An extremely happy feel, I felt like I was listening to Bruno Mars' 24K Magic for the first time. I remember an interview with one of my favorite artists Sia, where she walked through her songwriting process. She would just hop in the booth, put headphones and play the instrumental, and would just start mumbling and “riding” the beat, almost this meditative, shamanistic flow where she would just experiment with different harmonies and rhythmic push-pulls.
I kinda started doing the same thing. Almost this iterative process, but a countdown because there exists this small window where if passed, the feeling is lost. Quickly I caught the wave, and The310 was listening closely, and he was shouting “that's the one, that's the one!”. No lyrics avail, just the core melody that symbiosified with the instrumental, making the global song greater than the pure sum of its components. I sat down to begin writing, and we created magic.