Ski Babi On the Making Of “Sweetheart”
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind "Sweetheart" and the story it tells?
Honestly “Sweetheart” was initially inspired by the first synth line you hear in the song. Pretty fucking boring tbh but yeah I just fucked around put down a profession on a vst arpeggiator that sounded good to me, looped the shit and just built on that.
Can you talk about the recording and production process for "Sweetheart?"
So I produced the whole thing in FL Studio as I do all of my tracks for the most part. The drums are a mix of samples I nabbed from my boy Sebastien of TM-88s sound kit (dude from 808 Mafia) and some tweaked Roland drum machine sounds I dropped the decay on. The bass line has a nice rolling situation happening I think. Like most of my shit I kind of just try to build things up like a wedding cake, layer by layer, then rip them into like an equally enjoyable but extremely distorted version. Maybe like a frosting fondue in this example with the wedding cake? Things get jarring at the end and I like that.
Can you describe the emotions or feelings you hope this single evokes in listeners?
I just hope it makes people happy even if it's in like a sad way, like a nostalgic way I guess I don't know. Ideally I kind of just want people to enjoy being comfortable enough to be themselves when they hear it so they can dance to it. It just takes one person who decides to throw caution to the wind to get a whole crowd dancing.
How do you approach the creative process when working on a new project? What steps do you typically take from start to finish?
To be real, I'm typically a little high at the kitchen island in my condo with my MacBook sitting on a stool at like 4 am up from the night before whenever I end up with something I feel genuinely proud I made. I feel proud of this song. I'm always alone, well my dog's always sleeping and peering over at me every now and then so he's fucking with me. He's like the lean dealer in my studio sessions I guess, the only real necessary component for greatness. Then I'll kind of blank out and just start trying things, deleting them to make them better, editing things, mixing the levels along the way. Then about like 8-12 hours later I'll have something I'm cool with pausing on. Something I want to send to a couple people for feedback so I can take like a week sporadically polishing it up between other projects until I think it's ready enough. Then I design a cover and figure out when I'm going to drop it which doesn't really have a thought process behind it. I just wing it.
Can you share a project that holds particular significance to you? What made it memorable, and what challenges did you overcome?
Honestly, the only project I still really cherish is a set of tracks 12 years ago living in London while attending university. It’s like 10 songs. I made them all on ambien. I did a lot of shit on ambien back then though. Never slept on it though. It's just a sentimental set of songs that represent a pivotal point in my evolution as a person and an artist. I was in love for the first time, I was DJing constantly and I felt like I could really do it. It was my childhood dream from when I got into DJing and producing at 13. Solid memories but yeah idk if I'll ever find the complete version of that project again. There's one song on there called "Space Love" that pretty much is the only piece I care to revisit from an unbias perspective. That shit kinda hit.
Hope that was solid. I appreciate the fuck out of you and keep up the really really impressive work. You're doing it and it'll work out - whatever you want from it - it will work out. Let's stay in touch.