The flute solo on the introduction was a sample from the Reason synthesizer program that I improvised in the D-mixolydian mode. I had been watching the DVD of Standing In The Shadows of Motown while I was working on the song, and was trying to get some of James Jamerson's fluidity into the bass parts, which is why it's also improvising away under the introduction before settling down on the verses. (While I own a Fender Precision Bass, the bass on the recording is a SoundFont loaded into one of the virtual synthesizers in Reason, so that I can more easily craft it to match the music on top of it. Long story, but I've used tons of synthesized bass ever since my first synthesizer back in the mid-1980s.)
Turning Two Voices into a Dozen
Nicole originally only sang two verses and two choruses, so I wrote a bridge to extend the song. Since she wasn't available to sing it, I tried to sing from the point of the guy who just left her. If he "walked away with a smile", as she sings, I simply tried to figure out what's behind the smile. I think I may have used the Antares Auto-Tune a little to touch up the intonation on my voice.
Did you notice that "whooo!" just after my voice comes in, and that sustain flute note dies away? A few months ago, Nicole did some scat singing for me, and I had a track full of hummed melodies, improvs and "whooos!" to chose from. In order to connect the bridge with the rest of the song, I played a long sustained note on the flute sample, and then pasted in a "whooo!" from Nicole. The idea was to recreate some of the studio chatter you can hear in the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", when a particularly impressive part was sung.
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