One of the first collaborations Alex and I worked on, was when we used one of our AAEAA sessions to kickstart and begin building the audio track “Triathlon Anthem”. You can hear the completed track here:

This collaboration started with the idea of building a pump up track for our mutual friend Sam, as he was preparing to run a competitive triathlon that included running, biking, and canoeing (“1, 2, 3, PADDLE”). The children’s voices that you hear in this track were taken from a short audio clip of my children during one of our canoe outings in Austin on Lady Bird Lake. You can hear that audio here:

As the collaboration evolved, we eventually wound up with Seth Godin’s book, “What to do when it’s Your Turn…” opened to page 119. The opening voiceover was created by recording ourselves reading Seth’s words.

During that initial collab we discussed the vibe and some chord voicings; but after a long session we wrapped things up… and that’s where Alex took over. Over the course of the next few days, driven by a hard deadline: “finish this track before Sam runs his triathlon”, Alex took the track the finish line inside Ableton Live 10. He added multiple instruments and sounds to the mix, he adjusted the beat and the timing of my children’s chant to match the track’s meter, he added his own vocal tracks along with effects, and he spent as much time as he could mixing and mastering it to create the final version that you can hear above.

I learned a lot watching Alex at the controls — I’ll leave it to Alex to fill in with more details about the exact steps he used to finalize this track. It’s an interesting question: What does it look like? Or what does it take, to go from “this” (raw audio clip of my kiddos chanting “1 2 3 PADDLE”) to “that” (completed pump up track to share with our friend as he prepared for his triathlon event)?

This was a fun project… oh, and here’s some quick cover art that I drafted in photoshop that uses a photo from my family’s canoe adventure 🙂 … enjoy!