Chords for The Making Of Travis Scott's "CAROUSEL" With Hit-Boy | Deconstructed

[Cm] _ _ [Fm] _ _ [Eb] _ _ The crazy thing is, [Abm] I remember after we had done the song and was just playing it back,
I was just chopping it with Travis and I was telling him, he got the Astro World concept.
I was like, this sounds like the carousel moment of the album.
So essentially, I guess I named the song and he was like, this is what I want to name it.
_ [Cm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Bbm] _ [Cm] _ _ _ [G] _
[Cm] _ _ _ [Ab] Just got a call one day from my homeboy Sycamore, who's Travis A&R.
He told me, come to the studio.
He was like, it's a big session, so just come like dolo or with like one person.
So I just slid up there and I had a pack of beats.
He told me Frank Ocean was going to be there.
So Travis had played some of [N] Astro World and Frank was playing records and then they told
me to play beats.
Carousel was like the third one or something like that.
So I played a few after that and it was like, go [F] back to that one.
And [Eb] I literally saw him freestyle the whole song. _ _
I got the Beastie Boys sample from my homeboy EY, producer. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
Basically, it started like this from when I first got it out the pack. _ _ _
So I mean, I literally just pitched it down one semitone. _ _
_ When I pitched it down, I was definitely, that all is just going to add dirt to it and
just make it more grimy.
_ After I looped that up, I had this VST.
It's called OVO R&B and we started going through sounds and I came up on [Eb] this bell. _ _ _
I literally just looped that little measure up. _ _
_ _ _ _ [C] The sound is like some futuristic type shit already, so it needed some chords behind it.
So the same bell that I used for the arpeggiated part of the melody, I also played the chords
with from this same [Db] OVO VST.
_ [Cm] _
_ _ [Fm] _ _ [Cm] _ [Fm] My mom would listen to a lot of Mary [Cm] J.
Blige and [D] just whoever was [Ab] popping in the early 90s.
So I feel like me being [D] interested in chords and stuff like that comes from that.
I mean, I remember being four or [Ab] five years old and I can still remember [D] how chord progressions
[Db] made me feel back then.
I didn't even know what it [Fm] was.
So then when you put it all together, you get this.
_ [Eb] _ _ [Fm] _ [Cm] _ _ _ [Fm]
[Cm] I just went straight into the drums program and I [Ab] programmed the hi-hats and then a sound
behind the hi-hats [N] and made it have even more of a groove.
_ _ _ _ After I got the hat, I wanted to do something to give it even more of a bass.
So I found these clicks.
When you put them together, it sounds like_
So it's kind of just skating along with the hat and giving it that crazy groove.
Yeah, so once I got there, I'm like, I got it locked in pretty much.
I just got to obviously do the kick and the snare.
So once I found the snare, I was like, this is just wild.
It's heavy.
It makes you feel a way.
So I just put a distorter on it, gave it a little more oomph.
And then this parametric equalizer, just put the snare drum enhance on it.
It only comes in every other bar.
So it's like, _ _ _ _ _ I found this crazy_
It's like a kick and the 808s together.
_ _ _ Put a wave shaper on it.
Took that up a little bit.
Then parametric, put the bass drum punch on it. _ _
_ As far as the 808, it gave it that bottom I was looking for.
Because it got the brightness with the keys and the dirtiness with the sample.
And then that bottom is just disgusting, I feel like.
After I laid the 808 and put it with the rest of the layers, this is what it came [F] out to be.
[Ab] _ [Cm] _ _
[Fm] _ [Cm] _ _ _ [Fm] _ _ [Cm] _ [Ab] _
I wanted to add one more sound.
I was going to take it up a notch.
It comes in for like four bars and that's it.
It just gives it that moment where it's like, what the fuck is going on?
_ [C] _
_ [Ab] _ _ [C] _ _ _ [Ab] _ [Cm] _
_ _ [Fm] _ [Cm] _ _ [Ab] The feeling I want people to get is that feeling that I had being able to be up at [G] seven in
the morning jumping up and down.
When kids are getting ready for school, they listening to Carousel, getting hyped. _ _ _ _
_ I _ didn't hear the Tuck voicemail until after the album came out.
I've dug further in to understand what it was about.
I'm from California, so I didn't know about the song.
But once I heard it, I was like, this is hard.
This makes sense.
It just connects the story.
[Cm] _ _ _ _ [Cm] _ _ I pretty much heard the final version of Carousel when it was done.
Like I said, [N] they freestyled it in front of me, both parts.
Travis went in, then Frank went in, and [Eb] then Travis went in [Ab] again.
I thought they were just going to use Frank's vocals from the prior part, but he was like,
no, I got to get back in on this.
[C] So that's when he did [Ab] the other verse.
I'm like, wow, this shit is a magic moment.
Travis was doing his thing, jumping up and down around the studio.
Everybody was loving the song.
So I knew it was [Eb] something then.
_ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Gb]
When you work with him and you do a song, and then once [Ab] he gets to the end and he wants
to throw the ad-libs on it, that's when you know it's lit.
_ _ That's how I know we made some shit. _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ I've super been a fan of Frank before his name was even Frank Ocean, way back in the day.
We would chat, we would talk on iChat all the time, and I was sending him beats almost every day.
Both of our first placements was on a Brandy album back in the day.
He wrote it, I think that might have been his first placement.
That was my second or third.
So just for us to come full circle 10 years later with this Carousel