Leave Things Alone

When I was in my late teens I made an album with some friends. I made most of the beats, recorded most of the songs, and mixed a lot of it.

There was one song, in particular, that stood out above the rest. It was built around a Teddy Pendergrass sample, a record which I hadn’t grabbed intentionally — one night, I was just cycling through vinyl, searching for interesting sounds.

At the time, I didn’t know a lot about music theory. I didn’t really even know how to play. I couldn’t tell the key of C from the key of Z.

I just sat there and tinkered with stuff, using my ears. If it sounded good, then I thought, well, it must be good. And if it wasn’t good, who cared anyway. I wasn’t doing it for any specific reason; I was doing it because it was fun.

So, we recorded the song over the beat made with the Teddy Pendergrass sample, and the artist on the track wanted someone to come in and sing a chorus. He had an old Liberian song that he wanted to incorporate.

I called a friend. And he came in, recorded the chorus, singing it in the key of the original song, the one we used for inspiration. The key he sang it in was wrong for the beat; it sounded, to me, like two things that didn’t go together.

I remember asking him to sing it in the right key, but the right key wasn’t really working. It wasn’t that it was bad; it was that, when it was in the right key, it became a lot less interesting.