[MUSIC] If I Only Had a Leg!

Chris LeBrane

I've been digging around, trying to come up with a good way to present the music of WEBCAMS and, more specifically, the music of one of my regular collaborators, Chris LeBrane.  I think I was expecting some kind of lightning bolt to strike my brain and a subsequent eureka! moment, but that never happened.

So I realized that the least I can do is just start posting his tunes to the blog here and offer to let him write a commentary about the individual tracks.  Hopefully, this will work as well for you as it does for me.

Enjoy the song "If I Only Had A Leg" in the player below, watch for it in Friday's episode of WEBCAMS, and check out Chris's commentary after the break!

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The following was written by Christopher LeBrane.

LYRICS:

"If I Only Had A Leg"
Written by Chris LeBrane
Inspired by WEBCAMS 15, written by Jordan Krumbine
 
I'd run around, all over the town
Do jumping jacks without falling down
And stand up when I'm giving head
Then I could dance with Chris LeBrane
And throw away my dildo canes
If I only had a leg
And a 1,2,3, and aaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

Upon reading the script for "There's Something About Peg", I was literally stumped as to what to create for this episode.  After many, many weeks of relative success with coming up with interesting-yet-funny material, I was quite nervous about this one.  Usually, the names of the episodes alone will give me a ton of ideas.  This one, however, did not give up the musical “ghost” right off, so-to-speak.  So I had to dig further.

I read through the entire script (while trying not to laugh out loud at my job), and stumbled upon the idea from one of the last lines in the episode in which it is revealed that the one-legged Peg would star in a pornographic "Wizard of Oz" remake.  Once it was mentioned that she had an MP3 called "If I Only Had a Leg", I had all the ammo I needed.

Relying on puns dealing with her whimsical outlook, her pornographic behavior, the script-mentioned "dildo canes", and absurd mentions of dancing became the central theme of the tune. I knew that I could do, at best, an interpolation of the original "If I Only Had A..." based on my musical prowess and copyright.  In layman's terms, I still think I kinda suck and probably couldn't pull off the original score.  So without even using the original song as my base I did my best with the electronic tools I have.

Using Propellerhead’s Reason, I basically started off with a simple piano track used as a guide and then added on symphonic elements one by one(Basses, violins, trumpets, flutes, etc).  From there, I used Samplitude Music  Studio 16 for vocal tracking and mixing.

For the vocals, I desperately searched for various pitch shifting ways to alter my voice for the role of Peg.  After not coming up with what I personally needed and wanted from it, I said "fuck it" and sang it in my "female" voice, my higher register.  I also sang in a manner to visualize this Peg character:  full of life, hopping around a recording studio…until it’s too late. It worked out better than I thought it would. 

After the vocal tracks were complete, it was then a process of mixing the entire song.  The tune, while not a long process to create, was definitely a stretch from the styles that I normally do.  Although I don't listen to much symphonic music, I respect the art of composition and orchestration.  I just hope my neighbors didn't mind the screaming.