How "I Feel (Siente Me)" was made?

The story of our tune "I Feel (Siente Me)" with all those beautiful women and sunny beaches that you remember from the unofficial video could somehow be described as a story of struggle. In November 2012, Manya and I had known each other for quite some time, however, at that point, we hadn't created any music together so far.

Both of us have always been huge and passionate music lovers. However, since we had no proper, formal music education, we decided we should make something new that combines all the elements we like in house music.

At the time, Calavera (left) was into iberican and more organic tech house, while Manya (right) was dealing with pure deep house music. Therefore, we decided to combine the two genres and spice them a bit with a "feel good" vibe that we still aim to preach through our music. 

*Calavera & Manya - I Feel (Siente Me) supported by 3 year old Lana

Given the fact that we both grew up listening to French house and Dimitri From House compilations, we wanted to make a tune that would stuck in people’s minds. The tune they would not forget two weeks after its release, and that was our primary goal.

Our wish was for this tune to have a certain emotion, a catchy vibe and energy, altogether packed nicely, so that the listeners would like it to repeat constantly. Our serious work started in the first quarter of December 2012. The first phase was simply testing sounds with Ibiza vibe in our heads. Our great inspiration at the time was Sean Miller's "Cannibal Royal" and all tunes by Slobodan Trkulja, a Serbian artist who was and still is a self-taught musician and multi-instrumentalist.

Weeks passed by while we were just working on the right sound. There was a time when we were sitting in the studio for literally 10 days straight and we couldn't get one proper sound that we truly liked.

          *Calavera & Manya - I Feel (Siente Me) [Ableton project - click on image to zoom]

After a long period of time filled with testing different sounds - we came to conclusion that it was most suitable for us to use a combination of both the piano and the guitar, as well as random percussion elements followed by a catchy bassline. Of course, in addition to all that combo, the vocal used was the element which managed to bring special emotion to it.

Making summer music during wintertime proved to be a struggle. We had to stay focused in order to experience the feeling of the sand, and the image of beaches filled with happy, enthusiastic people listening to good music. The reality was much different with our heater in the studio also struggling to function properly. We could not even imagine who would sign us as artists, since this was our very FIRST TUNE and we didn't have any earlier references, even though we did have some experience concerning promotion, label management and production.

With many weeks of work behind us, around February and March 2013, we decided to send the tune to a few more experienced producers and possibly get their opinion. Some of them were Mark Funk, Babysitters, Danijel Cehranov and TDI radio production team (Hello Gane and Marchelo!) who told us what they liked and what they didn’t like. This was of great value for us and our future moves. We tried to do everything they told us that could be a good idea. For instance, doing a white noise after a break, making a bigger expectation level in breakdown, along with trying to clear the sound as much as we could.

Doing a mixdown and mastering was also a struggle since we were aware of the fact that we needed someone who would really like and feel the tune. Someone who could work together with us during that process. Then came Babysitters from TeddyBear Records. Really talented guys, experienced and above all- really standing with their feet on the ground.

We sat down with them and all we did for a couple of days was just positioning of each sound. We really wanted to highlight the guitar and vocals in the breakdown, since the tune was all about getting Ibiza, beaches, and all other cool summer stuff. 

Finally, in March 2013 we had the tune finished and named it "Fiesta". It was the original name of the tune, but we changed it to "I Feel (Siente Me)", even though we knew it was not grammatically correct, but we felt that people would easily remember it under this name (marketing stuff). :)

Eventually, it was sent to merely six (6) labels, and all that was left for us to do was to hold our fingers crossed. In the end, it was signed by Peter and Robbie from Taylor Made Recordings, who were totally in love with the tune. They needed less than 24 hours to sign it.

Since we basically had 0$ we could invest in promotion, we asked our dear friend Irina (aka Nairi) to make an unofficial video for the tune, if she liked it. Of course, she loved it and we got ourselves a video for the tune that became so viral and now has over 1.000.000 views, and who knows how many shares, likes and reposts all around different social networks.

To cut the long story short - making our first tune has taught us many important things. We also got many useful advice from artists like Hot Since 82, Argy, Gramophonedzie, Vlada Asanin and others. Some of them are the following:

1. Be true to yourselves! Why are you making music? To be famous and make money, or to spread emotions, good energy and touch people's lives?

2. Build your sound from the beginning. Take something that you like from every genre and combine those fragments in your own way. Don't chase "trendy" sounds at any cost, because you will lose yourselves that way.

3. Finish what you've started! Sometimes it takes time for that, but always finish it even if you know that you can always add something, or tweek the sound more to be better.

4. Try to avoid full construction kits, or full loops because it kills creativity.

5. Make music and don't expect anything from it because if you do expect certain stuff (like gigs around the world/charts etc) you might get disappointed.

6. Ask a few people for opinion who can really help you with the sound or idea. Don't be in "all I know everything" mood.

As for technical details, we used Ableton 8 (now 9), Kontakt with Ethno Music Vocals / Instruments bank, Native Instruments Upright Piano and rest of the Ableton's prebase FX.

We honestly hope you enjoyed our tune and feel free to ask anything because we always try to help anyone if we can! :)