The Making of Make Your Move

After having yet another copy of Full Circle lifted, last week we finally retrieved the album (shouts to Rasputin Vallejo), in large part due to this specific track. Then lo-and-behold, this week Domino posted the making of Make Your Move on Twitter. Below is the story of how it all came to be (directly from Domino's Tumblr):

The main thing I remember about Make your Move was, I made it on one of the rare days Del came over my house. At the time we lived less than a mile from each other and Del used to ride around the neighborhood on his scooter and on this day, he stopped by my house. Del was heavily studying music theory at that time and I recall putting together the beat as he spoke about his new ideas for making music. I believe the original sample of the main groove was in 3/4 time so I had to make cut it up and triggered one part twice to make it 4/4 time. In order to cut it just right, I programmed a basic drum beat and that was my guide to matching up the pieces. I could use a metronome but it works much better to an actual drum. Once the pieces matched right, I reprogrammed the drum to give it a bit more life and fatness. At that point I was done for the time being, saved it as just the main loop and drum.


A while passed and we made plans to record “Full Circle” in a house we rented down in Venice, CA. We all brought our individual equipment, many beats and I brought records to make more during the process. I remember, I had the basic “let em roll” beat , “Shift Shape” beat as well as, “Make your Move” when we arrived there. I played “Make your Move” and Casual and Pep came up with the concept of the “traveling man” once again away from his girl. We all felt the beat conveyed a heartfelt vibe and thus the concept made sense. The verses were recorded and Pep came up with the “I’m leaving on a jet plane” chorus based around the Peter, Paul and Mary original. I recall not liking the chorus for the song because, a) Pep said it in a cadence that threw me off and seemed off beat and b) That hook had already been used in a couple of hip hop songs (Just Ice and Mos Def immediately came to mind). At the time I didn’t have a better alternative and everyone else seemed fine with it. We saved the session and tentatively titled it “Jet Plane”.


Fast forward a few months later, we have moved back to the Bay Area and continued our recording at Hyde St. Studios in San Francisco. Since I was not satisfied with the chorus we had, I gave Goapele a copy of the song (without the present hook) to see if she could come up with something better. She liked the song and after about a week, came in to show us what she had some up with. Her initial recording of the Chorus was: ” So go on and go where you wanna go, see what you wanna see, be what you wanna be….ect” and we recorded this for all 3 chorus’. She then said, “I have another part maybe you can use for a bridge at some point later in the song”. So before the 3rd chorus, coming from Pep’s last verse was, “you know i don’t doubt you, I’ll be there for you, I’ll be right beside you just make your move”. I was totally happy with both parts she came up with and now felt much much better about the song as a whole.


The song stayed that way for a while but I kept listening to a cd burn of the song and started to feel that the Chorus somehow wasn’t right. The way she sung “So go on and go where you wanna go..” hook was a bit too powerful and I felt it was not really matching the vibe of the song. The more I listened to the bridge part, the more I felt it was a better fit because of the calm in her delivery. Having the “so go” chorus was like starting at the pinnacle with no where else to go as opposed to building up toward a powerful bridge like the “You know..” part did. I went in and then flipped flopped the parts and made a CD with both versions back to back. After listening in my car for a day, I was convinced the switch made it a waaaayy better song. I talked with a bunch of guys in the crew and again, there was some strong resistance to the change. Since I was the producer of the song and felt strongly the change was for the better, I over ruled everyone. Wit the new Chorus the song naturally became “Make your Move”. The only other addition to the song was Amp Fiddler who came in and added the xylophone parts that were an extension of small sounds in the original sample. This I felt, made it less redundant and a bit more musical. I believe there may have been a replay of the bass line to give it a fuller sound as I did with lots of the tracks on that album but I’m not sure. It should say on the album credits though.


In the end, I was happy how the song came out and the fact that I didn’t accept the song when it didn’t feel totally right, pleases me every time I hear it. It is one of our most popular songs and that alone tells me I made the right moves and proved there is a big difference between a “producer” and a beat maker.


Make Your Move video can be seen and heard at Clusterfunk Collective's YouTube Channel