This was truly the beginning. This is the very first track Sweet T created on her own while at Full Sail. She said if she could have titled it, she would have named it “Funky Numba One” due to its funk influences and its status as being the first, so it might not have been her career defining track. Sweet T takes her influences from Funk and incorporates them into how she styled the timing of some of the instruments and of course the obvious guitars. She admits, looking back on it, that there is an aged quality about it that makes the music feel either like something out of safety commercial or traveling music from an older game.

Sweet T chose to let this track rest and a sweet 108bpm because it made the vibe feel just bouncy enough to keep the listener interested but not too fast where one would get lost in the sauce. She also wanted to keep playing around with rhythm. Each eight bars of music has a different element either added to or taken away from the piece, whether that was spicing up the groove of the kick drum, changing the flavor a bit with a clap, or even adding a tasty beat drop element. Sweet T wanted to keep people on their toes. Once the bass was added and the rhythm tweaked to give it its own identity, the track was slowly starting to come together.

Admittedly, when it came down to the harmony and melody, this was the part that took some time and examining. Although Sweet T has a powerful voice with some music theory understanding and education, sometimes mapping it out can be a little sticky. Knowing that, she chose to keep her first attempt at a track in the C major key because it was seemingly the easiest…until it was time to look at the chords. The chords she chose included C, Am, G, Bdim, and A flat. Typically, A flat is not a part of the C major chords scale because Am and G are already occupying that spot within the progression of the note names however, Sweet T was adamant about keeping that tone in her piece because it added a different taste that the Am chord just could give her musical palate.

There was one recorded element added to “Funky Numba One” and that was a vocal track spoken by Sweet T herself. Unfortunately, during this time she was suffering from a touch of vocal dysphonia and had been for a few months, so she didn’t have her usual powerhouse vocals to provide the BGVs she would have preferred. But she just could not leave her first track unblessed with her voice in some way. So, she added a small speaking part to breakdown section of the song. To that part, she made sure to blend it in with some reverb and compression, so the entire piece sounds as cohesive as possible.

Sweet T is a fan of reverb. There is reverb throughout this first piece of hers on different tracks such as her vocal track, both guitar tracks and even the warp sound effect. She even added a small delay on her melody track that is barely noticeable but adds to the fullness, in her opinion, of the sound of the melody. But reverb is definitely her favorite effect to use so far. There was a lot of EQing and compressing that had to be done as well because “everything came in very hot” she said so she needed to tone it down. Once it was all said and done, Sweet T finally had her very first track mixed. She worked very hard for very long and was very proud of the fruit she produced. She said to herself “It’s only up from here”, as she knew this was just the start of a delicious journey that was sure to be filed with sour notes and sweet tunes. Be sure to join her and follow her on all her social media websites by clicking the link above.