Streamline Song
Mariam Obregon
"Streamline" is a song composed by Spanish makina group Newton. It was released in 1994 as a single in Spain. In 1996, it was released in France, reaching number 30 on their national chart. It is the band's most popular song to date. Written by Juan Carlos Pla, the song is made up of a whistling tune along with drums, a choir (this can barely be heard in Track 1, but can be heard clearly in Track 2), and a piano.
In 2006, the song was featured in a Pepsi commercial featuring Jimmy Fallon, leading to some fame in the United States. The original length of the song was 5:05, but was shortened to fit the 30-second commercial. SPG Music re-released the song on July 10, 2006.
Hello all, and welcome back to Song of the Day here at Marshall Arts! My main priority for this Substack right now is to finish a couple of reflections about former MLB umpire Don Denkinger, who passed away just yesterday. Especially having interviewed him for my upcoming 1985 World Series book, Interstate \u201885, it\u2019s a loss that will definitely take time for me to process.
Of course, in times of intense pain and grief, nothing can heal quite like music. Especially when it\u2019s music from an artist you have loved your entire life. Such will be the case tonight when me and my family head to Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln to see the one and only John Fogerty. The former frontman and main songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who now has legal control of his songs after decades of wrangling, is certain to put on a great concert!
Given how mind-numbingly prolific Fogerty was as a songwriter during CCR\u2019s heyday, one would think that fertile musical mind would have just naturally switched gears to fulfill the band\u2019s \u201Cwoulda coulda shoulda\u201D potential on his own. Yet it\u2019s actually quite spotty, although to be fair, his Centerfield album is timeless enough to compensate for that.
For as popular and well-crafted as the Centerfield album is, however, Blue Moon Swamp was - and remains - the highpoint of Fogerty\u2019s solo career. Released to great anticipation in May 1997, it was his first album in 11 years after the disastrous Eye of the Zombie. BMS was a critical and commercial success, ultimately netting Best Rock Album at the 40th Grammy Awards.
From the opening notes of the album\u2019s opener (and today\u2019s Song of the Day), \u201CSouthern Streamline,\u201D it was clear that the maestro of bluesy swamp rock was back in form. With Kenny Aronoff\u2019s crisp drumming, hearty backing vocals from the Lonesome River Band, and Fogerty slinging hot licks on his custom Fender Telecaster, the second single from the album celebrates the timeless Americana of locomotives. Even more importantly, it showed Fogerty was reenergized as an artist, and here to stay.
Whether or not he plays it tonight for the Garvey family\u2019s entertainment at Thunder Valley Casino Resort, you can enjoy this incredible song right here. Crank it up, and listen to the rest of the album as well!
Auddly is a unique metadata identifier, a song data hub, which keeps all members attached to a song in sync and contributes to efficient collaborations, matched credits and correct payments. Founded in Sweden and backed by hitmakers Max Martin and Bjrn Ulvaeus, who is also the main investor in the company, Auddly brings the future of data management to music creators and organizations. www.auddly.com
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Have you ever struggled to finish a creative project? Felt disorganized, uncertain, or unmotivated when it comes to making progress on a single song or even finishing an entire multiple song album release?
Actually, shipping creative work should be part of what you group under the rubic of being creative. And, in fact, there is evidence to indicate that the quantity of creative output is correlated with creative success too.
There is a whole range of factors that drive these creatives to productivity and subsequently the chance of success and greatness too. To simplify this down, I believe there are two critical components to being a productive creative.
First, creating a wealth of first drafts and initial versions. If you want to have creative work to finish and ship, you have to get started and put something down. In the case of music it means writing, riffing and jamming on new songs and song demos. There are various strategies a creative can deploy to generate new ideas. As I documented in my post on dedicating a month to new song creation, I assembled an environment and tooling that made it easy to get started (Template!) and then made it a habit to show up daily and try to create something fresh. Personally I used various starting points but through that month, I discovered that the combination of intention, routine, and flow-centered music writing resulted in 31 new songs in just 31 days. There are a lot of strategies and approach to consider with getting started, and I highly encourage a divergent thinking approach.
In spite having pretty good productivity tools and practices, it might seem surprising that I ended up using a spreadsheet to organize and streamline my creative process and finish my album, especially since generally speaking a spreadsheet is for accounting and managing numbers rather than a creative endeavour.
Once I had aspreadsheet, I quickly realized that it allowed me to see everything at a glance, from the basic information about each song to the progress of each individual track. As I worked through my production process I added and modified the spreadsheet. The first columns were for basic information, such as the song title, key, tempo, and genre. These seemed like no-brainers, but having this information all in one place has saved me a lot of time and headaches later.
The next key column or field I had that I had ported over from a simple text document was a rating system. This is where a lot of the magic happens. It seemed like a throwaway, joke of an idea when I started doing it but I rated my songs in terms of hotdogs or hotdog emojis like ?. Initially I rated each song demo based on its potential and my level of excitement about it. If it was ok, I gave it one hotdog ? but if it was better or awesome it could have two or even three ???. As I made improvements and relistened to tracks I added another hotdog emoji ?.
The next major column that I got alot of benefit from was a management status column. This is an idea I appropriated from my work as a developer and technical project manager and use tools for managing software development projects. For my music production, this column was where I kept track of the overall progress stage of each song from ideation to mixing and mastering. I used different labels for different stages and it was a drop down with the following options:
The final columns I had were all different forms of checklist columns for tracking progress on the final production work, mixing, mastering, etc. Here is my full list of checklist (i.e. did I do this?) columns:
Overall, using a spreadsheet was a game-changer for my creative process towards finishing my latest album release. It helped me stay organized, focused, and productive, and allowed me to move my songs from ideation to finished production more efficiently.
There were many ways this spreadsheet help me manage my time, track progress, and make decisions. When it came to managing my time, having a spreadsheet gave me a visually transparent way to see which tracks had been reviewed or not. Similarly I could see my notes following the review and I could use these to rework a song accordingly. Since I had removed having to think about what songs I should work on, I could just use my energy and mood level to engage with songs at different stages. For example, just having of a tracks I had reviewed vs. needed to review gave me a clear indicator of my progress in completing the review phase.
Since it was going to be impossible to complete it all in a single session, these checkboxes of steps made it easier to piece-meal work on this over time. Initially it was a real unlock to nudge and motivate me to review each song one by one.
Subsequently, I could filter my full list to just songs I liked but needed a lot more work. Knowing a song was in need of a harder lift to improve ensured I had the right energy to meet the challenges. Having cleared other songs from my pending work allowed me the energy to focus on that song. Additionally by already having reviewed and captured feedback and notes meant it was fast to jump into my DAW and start trying some changes and make improvements.
Having a highlighted and sorted list makes it easier to see where I had taken steps and made progress. Along with my ratings system and some notes on each track, I have cues on where I stand on individual tracks which are the building blocks of effectively moving forward and making tangible progress on your creative work.
As a creative, you should still allow room for creative freedom, flexibility, and joy. Depending on your style of music and other promotional and collaboration needs, you should adapt your spreadsheet or organizational tools accordingly. Ultimately, music production is an art form and creative process that should be fun and inspiring as you start, improve and ship creative work. So take breaks. Relisten to early versions with your latest versions to hear how much progress you are making!
Following my first album release, Take Life Chill, I struggled to get passionate about making music again. I had skills I needed to improve, but frankly I just needed to get confortable showing up and trying to make more songs with the skills and tools I had. My anecdote to my lack of early song creation was a 30-day song-writing challenge.
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