How we made the Last Night song by Vernsai Sany

How I made the Last Night song by Vernsai Sany

Today’s post is more of storytelling on the making of “Last Night” by Vernsai Sany and I’m hoping my writing doesn’t bore or offend you! Be quick to let me know in the comment section when it does!

So let’s jump right In:

Every song I’ve ever made has an interesting story behind it. Telling you these stories is my way of bringing you behind the curtains, to show you how I operate as a music producer, songwriter and musician.
Vernsai Sany is my daughter and little sister and I’ve been mentoring her for about 3 yrs now.

Yesterday 23rd, December 2022, Kovapot released her single titled “Last Night” produced by Marc Eff Of Kovapot ( yeah that’s me!)

And so, the story of Last Night by Vernsai Sany begins:

It was September 2017 and my country Cameroon was in crisis. The Anglophone Crisis had reached its climax. And so many fled the town of Buea because of constant gunshots and random deaths from stray bullets. I was stuck with my big bro in my house for weeks simply because I didn’t have anywhere to escape to.

Once again Music became my distraction amid chaos. And I had to make beats while lying on the floor on my belly to avoid getting shot by a random bullet. There were days we couldn’t set foot outside because of gunshots in the neighbouring quarters. So I hatched a plan to keep me distracted. I didn’t want to die a virgin!

My plan was simple:
Master the ins and outs of the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation.

The timing was just perfect so I immerse myself in youtube tutorials from Kenny Gioia of Reaper Mania. A few weeks passed and I could finally wrap my head around the Reaper DAW.

Precisely on the 29th of September 2017, I had the inspiration for the “Last Night” beat. On that faithful morning, things kick off in an experimental fashion. I had been a sucker for Major Lazer and their unique way of using vocal samples like synths in most of their songs. So I started that morning by recording some random vocal samples of my voice using my Beringer B1 microphone.

Vocal Synth Creation:

With the help of the Kontakt Sampler VSTi by Native instruments, I quickly set up a vocal synth preset in no time. It’s the same preset I use in every verse of “Last Night” by Vernsai Sany. All I did was throw in a vocoder Fx and some surgical EQing, Autotune, Reverb and some Ping Pong Delay. And I think it worked out nicely!

By afternoon that same day after I had my puff puff and Lipton tea ( it was cold that day and I love puff puff balls) the inspiration for Last Night hit me:

The Beat Concept:

Last Night was the third beat I made with Reaper 5 DAW, after my crash course. I initially wanted to make a hip-hop makossa bottle dance beat. Also, I had intended to use “John Minang’s Fine fine woman” as a sample for the beat but changed my mind, later on, to avoid copyright issues in the future.

So I layered some synths from Xfer Serum instead, drawing some inspiration from the music duo, The Chainsmokers.

The beat was finished by the 30th of September 2017. And I had to bounce the complete project into .wav files Trackouts because my laptop was already glitching at that moment. I was maxed out on CPU resources and archiving was inevitable. It was during archiving that I named the beat “Last Night”.

I only got back to this project in 2019 when I was preparing beats for my Beat store. It was actually then that I got the beat mixed and mastered so I could create a tag version for my Beat store showcase.

A few months to the end of that same year, I gave the beat to a friend of mine who wanted me to be her music mentor. She had been an aspiring music artist for years and “Last night” was supposed to be her debut. But later her plans changed from wanting to be a musician to pursuing a career in health. Once again, Last night was back in my storage.

And then came Vernsai Sany

It takes a good artist and a good producer to make good music. The two must understand each other creatively and I think Vernsai Sany brings out the producer genius in me! Her musical expertise is unmatched and I’m not saying this because she is my daughter! Our musical worlds kind of align when we are in the studio just the two of us.

Note: By the time ” Last Night” was recorded, I had already relocated my music studio to Douala permanently.

It was on a faithful morning in 2021 during one of our songwriting sessions. We were sitting, wondering what to do for the day, goofing around in the middle of our casual discus. And so I decided to throw Vernsai a bone so that we don’t end up losing the day to writer’s block. Among the beats I played, the “Last Night” beat stood out to us that day

At first, Vernia was reluctant. Then almost like the holy ghost, inspiration caught her. Before we knew it, a song idea was on the horizon.

Vernsai had been shying away from writing love songs. She claimed she had very little experience in expressing in words the emotions expected in a love song.

A claim that was too cheap for me to buy!

“Last Night” was born:

So we started bouncing ideas back and forth until the chorus took form. I didn’t ask Vernsai to write about Long Distance relationships oh! “Experience is the best teacher” even though she denied having no Long Distance relationship at that time.

Whoever is the director of her heart, I’ll know one day. I also suspect the “Makossa dancing” she speaks of in the second verse of “Last Night”.

The location of that word in the sentence just feels too convenient for me.

If you can decode Vernsa’s Lyrics to ‘Last Night” tell us in the comment section.

When it concerns the French language I’m Vernsai’s “kokoh” considering how savvy she is with the French language. Of course, I wanted us to make a bilingual love song, so I insisted she writes in both French and English.

Vernsai Sany kicked me out of my Studio:

Once we got the chorus and the hook section, Vernsai kick me out of my studio because I was suggesting too many bad ideas. So like a good boy I carried my ass outside and sat all alone in the hot Douala sun while she basked her gorgeous self inside my studio with the AC on. So unfair

A few hours later I was called in and humbly I came. My ears fell in love with what I heard immediately and it was just amazing. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all!

Vernsai was done with the first verse of ‘Last Night” and somehow my container of Bambi chocolate which was sitting innocently on my shelf made its way into her lyrics. Who knew?

Here is lyrics to the hook section of “Last Night”. See for yourself:

Tu es mon bébé

Mon chocolat Bambi

Directeur du société

Société de mon cœur eh (2x)

A door inside Sany was Unlocked that day. She became a lovesong guru, bombarding me with kind-by-kind love stories like she is the granddaughter of William Shakespeare.

I’ve heard love stories of her boyfriend caught in her mother Bandha.

I’ve even heard love stories of her demanding 100% attention from one rich boy lydat. The stories are so believable yet Vernsai tells me it’s all a fantasy! Where there is smoke, fire is possible.

And so I patiently wait for when the wind blows.

Maybe the anus of a fawoh will show.

The Recording Session for Last Night:

Last Night was written and recorded on the same day and I initially wanted to scrap the song because of too much noise in the recording. My neighbours were very noisy that day! Thank God I didn’t.

Mixing the song was a challenge on a whole different level. It took me a few sessions to get the harshness in Versnai’s vocals tamed. Once I had it mixed and mastered, the rest was history!

I hope Vernsai Sany gets a true fan through this post.

She is a light that deserves to stay lit and be visible to everyone and I believe the gift she possesses has the power to change many lives.

You can Listen to her music catalogue on:

Youtube

Spotify

Apple Music