You are hereThe Intro to Crossroads?
The Intro to Crossroads?
Q .... which movie did you get that sample from that was used at the beginning of Down at the Crossroad?...
Mississippi John Hurt (who also happens to not be Robert Johnson)
A Ah, the vocal sample at the beginning of Down At The Crossroads.
Contrary to popular belief that it's an old black American guy from Mississippi in a rocking chair, it was actually a mate of mine Terry Elston ( white, english, 35 from London ) Apart from being a professional hypnotherapist, he does voices and impersonations. I got him into my studio and gave him a mic...
In fact I ended up recording his performance straight onto a little digital dictaphone with a 20mm speaker and then recording the dictaphone playback into a mic to give it a low bandwidth retro vibe.
I gave Terry just the simplest idea of the theme - Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads - and he took it from there and completely improvised the rest of the story on the spot. Cottonfields, fire in his soul, etc... We did have to do two takes because take one was ruined by me sniggering in the background...
And while I am at it, for for the benefit of those that are interested in these type of things...
Trainspotting: a fun hobby (apparently)
I put the recorded voice through a very short room ambience that I created with a Dual Delay algorhthm on a Ensoniq DP2 to sound kind of like a wooden porch.
Next I added samples of a barking dog and a creaky wooden chair noise from an EMU E4x sampler.
I dug out my old Stratocaster and played the bluesy background piece through a naff little amp. Lastly for the intro after the dialogue and before the track kicks in, I added a recording I made of some live crows to a "Tumbleweed" wind sound which was made on an Access Virus A synthesizer using filtered noise and a er... flanger, if I remember correctly.
Hear the intro here:
Incidentally, the crows were recorded to a DAT machine by hanging a mic outside my studio window early one morning after a late studio session. Those crows were annoyingly loud and used to start up just after dawn every single morning.
With me being somewhat nocturnal when I work in the studio, the crows starting up used to be my cue that it was time to go put the kettle on one last time before wrapping the session up and going to bed. I've lived in several different places and countries since, and for some reason it pleases me that that little piece of Pinner was enshrined in that track's intro...
But yeah a lot of fun to make and, no, not from a film.
Bill
Cosmosis Music Webshop: http://cosmosis.bandcamp.com/
