Welcome to the Don’t Stop digital album experience!  I’m really glad you’re here.  Day one, and I thought we’d start with the title track – Don’t Stop...

Don’t Stop was produced by my buddy Javier Silva.  He’s an amazing guy and producer out of Corpus Christi, TX.  The production went like this:

 

I wrote a basic chord progression, played on the piano.  It sounded kind of latin or “bouncy” – it was pretty typical of my style.  Then I wrote the lyrics, including the chorus which at the time went “don’t stop (don’t stop), don’t let the drop, hop (hip hop), on up and make it real and make it lovely make it yours”.

 

Then I went to my crappy drum kit and recorded a kind of crappy drum idea just to give it some rhythm.  Then I recorded the vocals, which included backups saying the stuff in those parenthesis.

 

Oh and it had a bridge that had this crazy horn melody that I faked with my mouth – which Javier loved.

 

I thought it sounded like a Disney movie or something.  At first I kinda wanted it to.  I was trying to make “licensable” songs.  It didn’t turn out that way, but the message turned out to be pretty much the same message I’ve been saying forever – don’t quit.  Specifically don’t just stop on something simply because you encounter an obstacle.  I’ve always been about that.  And actually, I admit at the time, I was pretty frustrated, and was feeling like I should quit music, but then during this session, when I tried to write something down, the pen basically did it itself.  It was like the advice *I* needed right then.  I was talking to myself.

 

ANYWHO – Then I sent it to Javier in separate tracks.  A few days later, he sent me back a rough mix.

 

He’d thrown everything away except the vocal! 🙂  He’d cut out words like the extra “hip hop” and stuff – kind of rearranged the chorus, added new drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and backing vocals – and kept my “horn” bridge.

 

He said “I hope I didn’t do too much” and I FREAKED OUT – in a GOOD way!  I was like “HELL NO YOU DIDN’T DO TOO MUCH LET’S DO TWENTY MORE LIKE THIS!!!”.

 

Nobody liked the horn bridge thing but us.  Some people also said to make the song a little more retro, which I heard as “be more like Fitz And The Tantrums” lol.  So Javier did another version, came up with all the cool stuff in the bridge, and sent me all the separated tracks, which I did a mixdown session on using a fancy program that sounds and looks like an analog recording console.  I enjoy that program a LOT – it’s called MixBus.

 

So, in the end the official credits for Don’t Stop are:

• Aaron J. Trumm “Don’t Stop” featuring Ten Summersets
• Produced by Javier Silva and Aaron J. Trumm
• Guitars, Bass, Drum Programming, Keys, Backing Vocals:  Javier Silva
• Lead Vocals:  Aaron J. Trumm
• Mix:  Aaron J. Trumm at NQuit Music
• Mastering:  Aaron J. Trumm at NQuit Music

The video was done by – me.  I cleared out my mother’s living room, and used various “retro” stuff from around her house to create the little set, and shot myself with a crappy Sony consumer camera.  She helped me a lot create the set and get the lighting right.  The edit was kind of hard because of lots of light variation due to outside light.  All in all it took me like a month of little short edit sessions to do it.

 

People fedback on the video, hence the thank yous at the end.  And of course, the zebra is a green screen zebra provided by John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” – they did some hilarious sketch with dudes in zebra suits, and at the end said “here’s a zebra dancing on a green screen, you can download it and use it for ANYTHING YOU WANT” and hashtag it #JustAddZebras.  So I did.  LOL.  I love that so much.  It’s dumb and silly and weird and I love that kind of thing.

 

Ok – story over!  I will see you tomorrow!

 

— Aaron

 

PS: If you want to talk – email me at aaron@aarontrumm.com or come talk to me on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AaronJTrumm