One of my favourite Summer Walker tunes is Karma, from her 2018 album Last Days Of Summer. Here’s my remix.
The original is super dark, so I wanted to try giving it a more uptempo funk feel in contrast with the dark vibe of the lyrics and the original beat. I hope you enjoy it and if you scroll down you’ll see a shorter video breakdown of some of the parts.
Summer Walker Remix Mini Breakdown
Here’s a short breakdown video I did showing some of the parts that went into this Summer Walker remix. Stay tuned if you enjoyed this, because I’m going to do a longer one at some point where I explain what’s going on in a bit more depth.
Quick Background
I started by getting the Acapella off YouTube. Once I had the tempo and key down, I imported the vocal into Ableton. I then spent the biggest amount of time playing around and coming up with a chord progression for the main Chorus and Verse.
When I’m coming up with ideas for parts I usually try not to look at the keyboard or guitar but shut my eyes. I find that helps you better get lost in the emotion of the song rather than thinking too analytically. Here I was trying to imagine someone in their car singing along with the acapella, driving down the coast near where I live! I don’t know if it helped but here are the chords I came up with:
Emaj7 – Emâ–³7 – F#/B – Eb7aug
I had to be careful with the Eminor and make sure it didn’t clash with any of the G# in her vocals.
With that in place I then layered in some funk guitars doing a muted part and came up with the bass part in the video above.
After that I added some drums and high guitar held notes in the chorus to beef things up.
For the breakdown I filtered the drums and used lots of FX samples and riser sweeps to try and put it into a different sonic space.
Let me know if you enjoyed it and if you have any questions in the comments below.
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