Monday 24 October 2011

'Child Of Nature' / 'Here Comes The Sun' (Home-Recordings)

This month I've been going back and forth between angry protest rock and sweet Beatles-covers. Tossing a coin on which ones to 'entertain' you with (first), the choice fell on the Beatles-covers. Lucky you! Maybe because there has been a lot of sunshine over the weekend? ...

Anyway - time for a thematic 'virtual single', I thought. Or afterthought, it was. But is somehow seemed to fit ...


A. Child of Nature (Lennon)
Or 'Jealous Guy', as most of you might know it. I started to record this song as 'Jealous Guy', but these 'great classic' compositions are always a bit daunting to pull off. I found that once I decided to re-instate John Lennon's original 1968 lyrics, suddenly things were a whole lot easier: now it made sense to have a sitar in the arrangement and to replace the whistle-solo with a vintage synth sound. At least, that's what I thought.
The vocal is way too high for me, but as usual, I did't let that stop me ...


B. Here Comes The Sun (Harrison)
Finding that I was able to play the acoustic guitar riff of this one (after 15 years of looking for it, haha), I gave it a quick recording. The sound turned out quite nicely (despite the barking dogs outside and the crying daughter in the background), so taking my cue from the original Beatles arrangement (not trying to copying it, but thinking of this as a quiet acoustic song with some surprisingly robust band-backing), I added drums, bass, percussion and synth.
Let's see whether you can spot the dogs and the daughter! 

 

Monday 3 October 2011

'I Want You' (Home Recording)

After a long wait, here's a new song - recorded last Friday!

'I Want You' has always been one of my favorite Elvis Costello songs, and I even managed to include it in the early setlists of The Absence. Its moody, bombastic, pathetic protagonist sort of fits my singing style :)



Despite its repetitive chord-sequence and length (at more than 6 and a half minutes this is one of my longest recordings ever!), I believe that it holds some wonderful musical tension, that carries the listener all the way through. At least, *I* don't tire of it. Let's see what you think. (For those who don't know the song: don't worry, the acoustic, cheesy-folky introduction is TOTALLY different from the main body of the song)

What have we got? Acoustic guitar (in the intro only), electric guitar (through 2 effect pedals at the same time), real bass, two quiet organs, a crazy 6-second solo-guitar (expressing utter desperation) and drums. I meant to do this with live-drumming, but the sounds kept triggering badly, so I had to revert to finger-drumming on the keyboard. Nevertheless, the initial kit-drumming had given me a few idea, which I then imitated on the keyboard, and which I would not normally have doned had a started straight from the keyboard (for one thing: the bass-tom fill-ins).

Here it is: