This is a cover of a song by Paz Suay, Josh Rouse’s wife, called “World”. I was actually recording into that little mic you can see on top of that candle, a Zoom H2. Then I took that recording into Logic and put some rudimentary drums, bongos, piano, and vibraphone onto the mix. Then I had to sync the video up with the audio in iMovie (No easy task!) But the Zoom gets a pretty nice “room” sound, and overall I think it gives the video a little life and “punch.” Hope you enjoy!
This is a cover I did tonight of a Josh Rouse song called “Moving On.” Really it was a test of my iPhone 4 video and playing around with iMovie. Also I made a separate recording track on the iPad, a little closer to me with the FiRe recording app. I was testing syncing a separate audio track with video. Actually I want to record audio into Logic with a good mic and higher resolution but didn’t feel like moving my big iMac to the other room just for the test, but actually I think it came out pretty good.
Bola de Nieve – "Snowball" the Cuban "Louis Armstrong" wrote this little cabaret song, "Mesie Julian."
[audio:http://www.stephenpickering.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/mesiejulian3.mp3]
This is an old Cuban song by the artist Bola de Nieve, but what I’m covering here is the Josh Rouse version which is off his latest album “El Turista.” The Bola de Nieve version is on piano and it’s wild! I can play piano a little, but I can’t imagine anyone could play it like him. He doesn’t even look at the piano when he sings. It’s like he, the rhythm, the piano, and the performance are one. Amazing left hand. No one can match it. It’s like the rhythm has a life of its own.
This is the first song I’ve sung in another language. Spanish. Although I think he mixed in a little French with it. I still have to work on the pronunciation, but at least I’ve gotten to the point where I can get through it, and its FUN.
Figuring out the chords has been hard. The verse is straight forward: B7-F#-E. But then it gets jazzy crazy. I don’t think I’m doing it exactly right. I’ve tried to look at some Josh Rouse videos of him playing it, but his fingering looks weird from a regular tuning point of view. He may be using an alternate tuning. I asked on his message board if anyone knew, but so far no one has responded. The chorus is sort of a weird B chord that flattens a note in one bar and then goes to E major 7 to G and back to B or B7. The second time around it ends with a C#m7 and Fmaj7 before landing on the root B chord. When I get time I’ll try to draw out the fingering I’m using. I’ll make a video too.
If anyone out there knows how to play for reelz please leave a comment and let me know!
I’ll keep working on this song and when I feel I can play it a lot better I’ll make a new recording. I have a list of about 30 songs so far that grows every day, that I’m learning to play, so that eventually I can do a live show.
Image by Stef Thomas. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stef3d/
This isn’t my song. It’s by a girl, Paz Suay from Spain. But anyway, I had the thought earlier this month, that if I learned one song a day, that would be a pretty good repetoire by the end of a year’s time. Hehehehehehehehhe. The first one I learned and played was “That’s the Way” by Led Zepplin. I just recorded that with one mic. With “World” at first I did it on the iPad, which was so much fun, but then the limitations, got to me at the end, I went ahead and did these 6 tracks in Logic Pro.
I keep thinking, ok if I keep this repetoire alive and growing, like playing the song live often, they’ll sort of grow in character and then I can record them later for a better, um, how to say, more resonating effect.
Of course I’ll play my own songs in there too. I think learning others songs, helps you in your own song writing. You start to learn what chord changes are possible, what melodies are possible. One time I was in a band and there was a definite how do you say, bias against doing “Covers.” Every band did covers. But now, especially after having read Keith Richard’s Bio and realizing like the first 4 or so Stones’ albums were all cover songs, kind of gives you a different perspective. :-))))))0
