March 2023 Challenge - Someplace, Anyplace?

blackcoffeeblues

Student Of The Blues
I BEEN SLACKING!

Of the approximately 4000+ songs with Texas in the title or mentioned in the lyrics, I have not learned a single one of them. Benn too busy with other activities and attempting to learn a blues tune or two...

Guess it be time to git one under the fangers.
If you want to play in Texas you got to have a fiddle in the band----From the country band "Alabama".
 

TexBill

Blues in Texas
If you want to play in Texas you got to have a fiddle in the band----From the country band "Alabama".
Yes I have heard that more times than I can count on all digits and toes combined...

I have always liked the sound of fiddles (violin) and have actually made a recongnizable sound once on my very first attempt. I am not in a band, don't play in front of others (wife and private instructors excluded). And only recently have I recorded myself playing and that got posted on BGU Feb. '23 Challenge.

So if I gotta get a fiddler, guess playing in Texas will have to wait...HeHe!
 

JohnHurley

Rock and Roll
I guess Heaven is a place maybe or the opposite direction perhaps.

Added Kathy our groups other singer ( my wingman Johnny's girl friend ) shes doing really good. This clips a tiny amount it has a few flaws but it also sounds pretty good. All live players just merged together at times.

Dylan cover ==> Knocking
 
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MikeR

Guitar Challenged
Staff member
Hey, the Mystic is place! Van Morrison's Into the Mystic...
Yep, it's also a seaport town in CT. Great job Steve!

Finally got a chance to listen to all the recordings and damn, you guys are good! Well done, everyone!

Guess I'm also going to have to up my recording game from using a cellphone. :D Thing is, I've got Studio One and all the necessary equipment, but just have to get off my dead ass and use it.
 

Ted_Zeppelin

I’ll agree with you so that both of us are wrong.
I will call this post..."In Over My Head".

Several weeks ago as I was setting on my couch trying to play my acoustic, I ended up playing around with the "Hotel California" chords. Turns out this is a great practice piece since it uses so many different chords. Also found out that it is played with a capo so I dug out my unused capo that I received for Christmas a few years ago and started plucking away. There are only two chord progressions (verse and chorus) so once I had those down I figured I had the song figured out. When I saw this months challenge was to record a song about a place, naturally I thought it would be a great idea to record Hotel California. Obviously I didn't think this through very well, but got started laying down the acoustic tracks. I realized after listening to my recordings back that my finger picking, acoustic guitar skills are severely lacking!!! I continued on, adding the electric guitar parts. I soon realized this was not going to be a note for note cover, so hopefully my guitar parts capture the feel of the song while utilizing my "guitar 101" playing style. I was smart enough at the outset to decide that I was not going to attempt the guitar solo, so I opted to get the 45 (single) version of the backing track for the drums. At this point I hadn't really given much thought to the vocals, just figuring that I would fake my way through it when the time came. Today I finally finished up the acoustic and electric guitar parts and made a few attempts at vocals. I guess that I should have given it more thought.:oops: For the time being, I am throwing in the towel and using the backing track vocals. No sense in ruining the song more that I already have.:cool:

If there are any Don Henley / Eagles style vocalists out there that want to strut your stuff, let me know and I can send you the track with no vocals.

Hotel California My Guitars - NOT my vocals
 

sloslunas

NM Blues
I will call this post..."In Over My Head".

Several weeks ago as I was setting on my couch trying to play my acoustic, I ended up playing around with the "Hotel California" chords. Turns out this is a great practice piece since it uses so many different chords. Also found out that it is played with a capo so I dug out my unused capo that I received for Christmas a few years ago and started plucking away. There are only two chord progressions (verse and chorus) so once I had those down I figured I had the song figured out. When I saw this months challenge was to record a song about a place, naturally I thought it would be a great idea to record Hotel California. Obviously I didn't think this through very well, but got started laying down the acoustic tracks. I realized after listening to my recordings back that my finger picking, acoustic guitar skills are severely lacking!!! I continued on, adding the electric guitar parts. I soon realized this was not going to be a note for note cover, so hopefully my guitar parts capture the feel of the song while utilizing my "guitar 101" playing style. I was smart enough at the outset to decide that I was not going to attempt the guitar solo, so I opted to get the 45 (single) version of the backing track for the drums. At this point I hadn't really given much thought to the vocals, just figuring that I would fake my way through it when the time came. Today I finally finished up the acoustic and electric guitar parts and made a few attempts at vocals. I guess that I should have given it more thought.:oops: For the time being, I am throwing in the towel and using the backing track vocals. No sense in ruining the song more that I already have.:cool:

If there are any Don Henley / Eagles style vocalists out there that want to strut your stuff, let me know and I can send you the track with no vocals.

Hotel California My Guitars - NOT my vocals
Excellent!!

Steve
 

BraylonJennings

It's all blues
A different Sweet Home Chicago. I think I was much more familiar with this version than the traditional one when it came out. This is a totally different song. Leon Russell on maybe his first solo record, 1970. I had the 8-track. This song seems to be both too high and too low for my voice. The whole thing was a struggle. But its blues!
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
A different Sweet Home Chicago. I think I was much more familiar with this version than the traditional one when it came out. This is a totally different song. Leon Russell on maybe his first solo record, 1970. I had the 8-track. This song seems to be both too high and too low for my voice. The whole thing was a struggle. But its blues!
Very nicely arranged cover. I hadn't heard it in a very long time, so I punched up Leon and Marc Benno's original recording. Trying to cover Leon's voice is always a challenge, but you did it very well. Good one!
 

BraylonJennings

It's all blues
Very nicely arranged cover. I hadn't heard it in a very long time, so I punched up Leon and Marc Benno's original recording. Trying to cover Leon's voice is always a challenge, but you did it very well. Good one!
Yep, as a lifelong fan, I've been singing his songs and that style all my life. Probably not the voice most music people would suggest emulating. I thought it be easy, a nice bluesy song I was very familiar with but had never played. It wasn't. I recorded most of it in one day. The next morning I listened to it and was depressed at how bad it sounded. Particularly the walking bass. It just sat there like sludge and I didn't fancy rerecording it when it had felt fine when I laid it down the first time. Solution? I delayed the entire bass track twenty some milliseconds and it sat better in the track. Pushing ahead of the beat is something I've been working at stopping, thought I had improved, but I guess reared it's head when I was trying to walk the bass through the changes. The song's better now, but I'm not particularly happy with it so I just left the initial guitar noodling alone instead of try to work out something better. I suppose I'll revisit it later, but on to something else for now. Thanks for the listen.
 
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