Zoom - Behind the Music

The story behind the song

Zoom is one of my favorite songs, despite its simplicity (or maybe that’s why I like it). It’s also the first song I’ve fully produced on my own, which, when you hear the lyrics, is aligned with the journey of the main character of the song.

Zoom was written before the pandemic hit, when Zoom meetings became a household name, but prior to the pandemic, I had been using Zoom daily for my virtual sales coaching business. I joked that I lived on Zoom (and it’s more so the case now!).

Zoom was inspired by wanting to escape from where you are to somewhere so far away, only Outerspace would do.

It’s a story of escapism but also a love song. She wants to escape, but she doesn’t want to do it alone. She wants a companion, someone to take care of her. Kind of like Wonder Woman and Superman. Powerful in her own right, but still longing for the strength and support of her companion. In the end, he chooses not to escape with her, so she goes on her own.

We all have ways of escaping reality, and Zoom can be synonymous to any of them - drugs, alcohol, running, meditation, over-eating, under-eating, drama, love, sex… Fill-in-the-blank.

I hope that Zoom takes you on an escape as well. Listen to it with headphones and enjoy the journey I’m taking you on…

Production

My first fully self-produced song…

Zoom is special to me because it’s the first song I fully wrote, produced, recorded, engineered, and mixed on my own. I knew I had to take control of my production so that what I heard got its way to you, but I always thought it would be better left to people with years more experience than me. I thought it would take too long to learn the minimum standard to release my own music.

But I was mentored by Isobel Anderson, who has a PhD in Sonic Arts and mentors women on music tech, and she taught me not just the tech portion, but to be confident in my own ear, that what I thought sounded good was good enough, and if it’s unique, even better. Of course, there are some basic rules like not having the music clip or peak too high, but other than those few ones, music is an art and the only “rules” are the ones we’ve created for it.

Since it was the first, it took me about four months to complete, because I was still learning all that my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) does. I used GarageBand to create this. It’s not the best platform on the market, BUT I wanted to learn on GarageBand because part of me was worried I’d quit halfway through and didn’t want to invest in a more complicated software. So far, it has done everything I need it to do, with some little glitchy things I’ve been able to work around like, once you add automation to a track, you can no longer control the entire track, which is a pain when it comes to volume. So I control the volume of a track with gain instead so I can control the volume of the entire track in the mix without losing the dynamics I’ve created in the track.

Changes to the original…

Originally, Zoom’s third verse was similar to 1 & 2, and there really wasn’t a bridge because performing it live, we would take turns doing solos and that would be our bridge. That works live because it changes up what’s going on in the song, brings you someplace else for a bit, so that when you return to the original melody, you feel at “home,” which is exactly what a bridge is supposed to do.

So when I was offered the opportunity to take a song to a free ASCAP workshop (ASCAP is my music publishing rights organization), I took Zoom. There I was mentored by Alex Forbes and Valerie Ghent, two more female powerhouses. Their feedback was that it was catchy, intriguing, and new. However, it was repetitive and needed a bridge to give it a break. They also described the song as “escapist,” which helped me understand where the bridge needed to go.

The NASA Sample…

So I took two or three different takes on the bridge but was getting frustrated because it sounded forced. Then I had the idea to sample a rocket launch countdown to build anticipation. I was searching for countdowns and found the original Apollo 11 countdown on the NASA website, which is in the public domain to use for free. This was an even better option so I took it. I loved how it had the mix of the vintage sound recording to bring some color to the song.

When I placed the sample in the song and adjusted the tempo to fit in with the current time signature, I realized this is the bridge. So I let go of trying to find a new melody and vocal for the bridge.

Breath Samples…

Another part of the feedback was that the lyrics were repetitive in the original. I was saying the same thing over and over in the verse and the song wasn’t moving along fast enough. They were exactly right. So, not only did I need to do something melodically different by the third verse, the story need to do go somewhere.

Since Valerie had described this as escapist, I decided to focus on that rather than the love song aspect of Zoom. So the end of the third verse focused on feeling suffocated by Earth. That’s when the lyrics changed from “The gravity’s just too much for me; take me away to your galaxy,” to “The gravity’s pulling me under the sea; I’m drowning in my own anxiety.”

The gasping for air was a beat fill, and then I sampled it in the rest of the song as part of the beat. I really love the sound of the breath and how much we can do with our own voices to create music. In the future, I’ll probably experiment with this more. It is not part of a traditional jazz sonic soundscape, but I am drawn to exploring it more.

The breath is the very last thing you hear as well, as if she’s tumbling in space, gasping for air.

Percussion

The drums are a loop I found on GarageBand. Once I found one I liked, I tried not to overthink it too much. It worked for what I was going for, but I had to choose where it was and wasn’t in the song. I used Kate Earle’s most recent album as a reference, and she dropped the drums under the chorus, so I tried that as well and it worked.

The other percussion instruments are made with the beat machine in Garage Band. I chose a bit of a Latin flare for them because I just love Latin rhythm sections. The wind chimes were a part of the original pack which seems to work perfectly at the end of the song, but I added them to the verse as well.

I chose to go very bare in the beginning, with snaps under the verse and build toward the ends of the song.

The whole mood I was going for was that this started out very small, as a whisper, a seduction, in someone’s ear, and one by one other people and instruments join in and it grows into something much bigger, like space!

Mastering

The mastering was done by CD Baby. I sent the first proof back because the S’s in the first verse were painful. I had eliminated them with a De-esser (it does what it sounds like, decreases the “S” sounds) and cutting some of the very high frequencies, but in the master, they snuck back in. I’m glad I sent it back because it came back so much more palatable.

Overall, I’m very happy with how this moved from a song to an experience. In just 2:30 mins I feel I’ve successfully taken the listener on a journey. I have a much better appreciation for music production and what’s possible. I will also never listen to music without headphones or great speakers again :) You really lose so much of the detail! Hopefully, this breakdown will help you appreciate it as well.

Lyrics

I want you to take me to Outerspace
I just gotta get, get, get, get outta this place
And fly around on a spaceship with you
And zoom beyond the horizon blue. Oh...

I just wanna soar, soar above the stars
Just you and me, on a trip to Mars
I'm done with this mundane scene
I wanna take a ride on your Rocket Machine!

Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom
Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom
Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom!

Take me away, take me away from here
I just gotta get free, gotta get my mind clear.
The gravity's pulling me under the sea...
I'm drowning in my own anxiety...

CHORUS 2x
BRIDGE: NASA Apollo 11 Sample
Zoom!

If you don't come, I'll go alone.
I'll figure out how to use all those controls.
I'm goin' up, you can come with or stay
'Cause I'm zoomin', zoomin' away today.

CHORUS 2x
OUTRO

COPYRIGHT JESSICA PAIGE MAGOCH, ASCAP

Grab your copy:

You’ll get Zoom prior to the public release when you support the album here: