Album Notes

Here are 12 modern groovy instrumentals on the first Happibeats CD!

Light, boppy, and always groovy!

Happibeats is the artist name for me, Robert McDonald, based in Sydney, Australia. I have always had a passion for pop music. I believe anything that says something in 2-3 minutes to millions of people must be the highest art!!

These tracks sound great - mastered by multi-ARIA Award winner Don Bartley at the legendary Studios 301 in Sydney. Mastering was done on the unique Thorn-EMI mixing consoles shipped from the original London Abbey Road studios – these consoles were designed and used for 9 albums by George Martin and The Beatles! A little bit of that sound is in these tracks! How groovily exciting!

Sounds range from electronica to dance to latin to jazz to rock with ‘Summer Nights’ sounding like Santana with strings!

COMPOSING THE TRACKS:
I couldn't wait to express my own feelings in music. I was fortunate to find good advice about how to get started:

1-have a strong mental image picture of what you want to say, what I call a song picture

2-have a definite title for the track before you start

3-speak from the heart!

These ideas worked for me. There were some stumbles along the way. But I kept searching for and creating sounds and beats and chords TO MAKE THE SONG PICTURES COME TO LIFE. It was important to keep trying new angles until things felt right.
Suggestions and reactions from any audience that heard the tracks were a big help.

Here are the song pictures and titles for all tracks on my first CD.

1 Girlfriend - 5:01
Smooth sounds in tribute to all girlfriends.

style = smooth dance groove, multi-instruments, Happibeats unique style

2 Voices In The Night - 4:52
Someone is calling.

style = chillout guitars and keyboards with women voices chant

3 Cha Cha Girls - 3:14
A cheerful dance, really a samba beat.

style = extremely vigorous latin dance

4 Escape From Gravity - 3:23
Leaving the drag of the physical universe behind and
finding a more spiritual point of view, even for a moment.

style = chillout/slow dance beats, multi-synths, strong synth bass lines

5 Summer Nights - 3:59
Walking past beach cafes and restaurants at dusk,
smelling the food cooking, listening to the many
voices talking and laughing, hearing bits of exotic
music from each place.

Inspired by the lively crowded scene at Sydney's Bondi Beach in Summer.

style = Santana guitars meet Soul II Soul strings, plus sax bites and jazz flute at end


6 Run To The Border - 3:11
Got to keep moving, and fast.

Inspired by the frantic race/chase to the border in the Clint Eastwood movie 'The Outlaw Josey Wales'

style = very lively latin guitars dance beat plus western guitar sound

7 Space Jungle - 4:06
Space travellers moving through the cosmos, bringing
their rhythms with them to get the locals up and active.

style = space dance beats from Fatboy Slim, cosmic traveller voices, unique Happibeats style

8 Groovy Smoovy - 2:53
Fast jazzy guitar plus electric piano.

style = very fast funky guitar, inspired electric piano, jazzy beats

9 Angel Puppet Dance - 4:16
An angel puppet awakes when she hears music, and
she dances and dances and dances.

style = multi-percussion, golden guitars, Balinese orchestra sound with modern beats


10 Forest of Galadriel - 4:28
The heroes are making their way through the Forest of Lothlorien and the City of the Trees to have their first audience with Galadriel.
She is very tall and dressed all in white, and very beautiful.

style = horns from an imagined legendary Icelandic saga, with smooth dance beats, unique Happibeats style

When I first got hold of the Lord of The Rings books in the 1970s I read them seven times straight before I was reasonably satisfied and could put them down!

And in the process I fell in love with Galadriel! So I had to have a song for her. Just as this track was finished I saw the magnificent first movie in the series, and God bless Peter Jackson for getting things so right and Cate Blanchett for being the perfect Galadriel.


11 Beach Drive - 4:26
Warm day, soft wind, blue skies, crisp blue ocean, still very early, driving past all the beaches to see where to go for the best day out.

style = fast paced bouncy boppy bluesy chunky and slide guitars

Inspired by the summer ritual of trying to choose between Sydney's ocean beaches before plunging in for the first surf of the day. Complicated by different preferences depending on if you are a body surfer, boogie board surfer, or board rider!

Sydney has 25 full-on ocean beaches plus some off-beach bomboras and reefs that all present waves of varying quality depending on wind and wave direction and the height of the ocean swells - many choices, hence the need for a beach drive!

12 Beatnik Jazz - 2:59
Memories of black-clothed people sitting in the first real coffee bars at King's Cross, Sydney, playing music that might have sounded like this.

style = tuneful modern jazz, inspired by Don Burrows, Herbie Hancock and Dave Brubeck

The CD cover artwork was done by the gifted Peter Hails - who was made to use one of my family photos of my children Scott and Stephanie frolicking in tiny waves at a beach in Scotland of all places!

I want to acknowledge the fantastic tool for music creation in Sonic Foundry’s (now Sony’s) Acid Music Pro 2 and Pro 4 software! All tracks were created and mixed using Acid Music. Anyone can start creating in minutes using this software.

And another huge thank you goes to all the talented artists who created the music and voice samples used for these tracks. A full list of the companies involved is in the CD booklet.

Keep grooving!!