The Hotsynth version of Duke Ellington's "Caravan" is not directly
based on any existing recording, but a free arrangement. After finishing
the piece though, we have noted some unintentional stylistic inspiration
from the song "La Habanera" with Yello, especially in the beginning
of our Caravan.
Unlike most other SHotQ productions, we used no analogue synthesizers
for this. There were none at hand at the time.
This was also the first time we made serious use of ReBirth, which (synchronized
to Cubase via ReWire) supplies all drums except for in the solo section
(where a customized Nord Lead drum kit is used). The original ReBirth drum
sounds (emulated 808 and 909) are used, since we hadn't at that time created
our "SHotQ Jazz Machine" mod (see Topzy). Caravan also is the
debute number for our handy Zoom Studio 1202 effects processor, which acts
as reverb, vocoder and pitch delay (in the solo).
The foot steps in the slow part (after the tap dancing solo) is a recycling
of sounds from the "Watchmakers Workshop" section of Limehouse
Blues
The annoyingly distorted voice at the end of the song speaks a quote
from "Caravan of Love" by The Housemartins. This cannot be heard
though. The quotation is even wrong.