The city theme for Calico was the toughest one to put together.
The reference that I was given for the tune was a delightful enough clip from Carole & Tuesday.. except, it was only about 15 seconds long. But that wasn't the difficult part!
I listened to that 15 seconds a few times, really dialed it in, and I realized: it was hip-hop. Happy hip-hop.
Now, I've been listening to hip-hop my whole life, and I'd even covered some light hip-hop production techniques at Berklee. Like, for example, if it doesn't sound "right," try moving your drum samples so that they're ~ever so slightly~ off beat - either a little bit ahead of the beat or a little bit behind the beat, depending on what kind of "feel" you want it to have.
My problem was: my drums were really bad. Like, criminally bad. And I don't know if you know this, but you cannot make good hip-hop if your drums do not sound ~crisp~
After a solid 6 or so days of trying (and failing) at making something, THANKFULLY, I finally put together a decent sounding kick and snare. Most of my sketch came together on the 7th day (the day it was due) and the team was like "oh cool, yeah, sounds great." and I was like "yeah thanks it was easy 🫠"
(I'm kidding I told them it was hard)
City Cat Kitty Cat is available for streaming wherever you get your music!
And if you're curious, the reference the Calico team found for me was a short snippet of "Warm Groove" from an episode of Carole & Tuesday. I ended up finding the whole tune earlier this year.