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OOTM (Original of the Month) Challenge for November 2022 Write a Latin Tune!

3622 Views 160 Replies 16 Participants Last post by  SaxNutz
November 2022 OOTM: Write a Latin Tune

I was a beach boy, and I believe I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest. - Antonio Carlos Jobim

This is such a vibrant and passionate kind of music! There seems to be differences in how Latin music is defined, but here’s a dictionary definition of Latin jazz in particular:

Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin Americanrhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, which includes samba and bossa nova.

But no hard rules as usual- it’s all for fun to prompt some songwriting and share ideas!

The different rhythms are the keys of course, but also chord progressions so I’m starting with this for some direction.
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This feels like cheating having this tune already in the can. I was working with a Latin band where I was the only non-Latinx (I'm from Wyoming). This is a song I wrote but there isn't any sax or flute on this. I'm busy playing keyboards

This was a band that sounded really good live but just couldn't seem to work well in a studio environment. After two or three failed studio attempts (expensive wasted days) I decided to record the band myself - I had to learn on the job. I used creative mic placement because we were in a practice room without any sound treatment - in fact we were near the airport and frequently had to stop and wait for a plane to land before we could record - kind of hilarious really. But it worked because the band relaxed being in their own space and not feeling the pressure of studio. I recorded the band pretty much exactly as we play live and used minimal EQ/effects etc. BTW the picture of the band is the actual room where we recorded this.

I'll have to write something Latin this month with some sax or flute but in the meantime here is this sort of Latin thing I wrote:
https://soundcloud.com/user-460666353%2Facercate
EDIT: Oh ... if the voice at the intro sounds familiar (I stole it from this track to tack on to the TOTM October) this is the track that actually started out with that voice. It's our Conga/Timbale player who loved to do Mister Haney voice from the Green Acres TV series and I thought it was hilarious to stick in front of this tune :ROFLMAO:
Nice. Blaine.
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This is so polished and tasty! I'm really enjoying this.
sounds great Blaine. love your tenor tone. song and background are great K
sounds great Blaine. love your tenor tone. song and background are great K
new thing
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This breaks my own rule a little! .This is my arrangement (vs. an original) of “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts. I made it awhile back during record-breaking cold just after a blizzard in Maine (it was therapeutic!) and attached a pic of a summer day playing a gig in Castine,Maine on my website.I play saxophone, flute and synths I used the Partido Alto groove for the verses. The partido alto groove was very difficult to play my melody with for some reason and I'm not entirely happy with it because it seems kind of choppy or something, but no matter how I tried to do it differently it just didn't seem to improve it, but it does contrast with the other section that used a more traditional dry swing drum loop.

I'm working on an original Rumba though so stay tuned!

Summer Breeze

View attachment 139533


Sounds: The verse uses Partido Alto loops/samples from Celso Alberti, fretless bass, jazz guitar and Rhodes. In the second verse I use a new device called Humana in the DAW I use (Reason) which has great samples of the human voice. The last verses are solos- first tenor, then synth (Rhodes put through a polyphonic arpeggiator), and finally flute for the outro. The chorus has a more traditional dry swing drum loop, a “low simple sub” bass, a guitar sound called “Vollenweiderustica” and a synth called “Shoals”. The contrasting, more tranquil sounds in the bridge are synths called “Ambient Bamboo” and “Cinematic Justice”. The Rhodes accompanies, and there is an Udu sample.
Your flute work is fantastic
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Here's a piece for concert band called summer breeze in modest cuban/bossa style. It's the last of my 4 movement piece "4 winds" - and I could thankfully link two of them in the odd meter OOTM.
The sounds are sibelius/noteperformer. I wrote this for a composition contest for junior concert band, which I did not win ;) But without the contest I wouldn't have invested the time and work and I learned a lot on the way. So if you run a ensemble like this - drop me a line and I'd be glad to send the parts.
All the best!
Really nice arrangement/composition. you get some Juicy complex chords in the background. Perfect for aJunior high band K maybe senior high, faster with a solo section?? K
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