Due to popular demand (well, none at all, actually) I am posting some more of my musical efforts. When I recorded a lot of tracks a few years’ ago, I tended to leave the projects incomplete – there was always the the odd misplaced drumbeat or the slightly ropey guitar solo I meant to rerecord, but somehow never got round to.
Well, before I posted my initial efforts a while back, I made sure they were as free of unintended blemishes as I could manage – and that seems a useful discipline to maintain, so I will occasionally post some more: it’s to keep me honest, rather than in the hope that anyone will enjoy them.
First up is “Showdown in Cimarron”, which sounds – to me, at least – like incidental music for a Western (a film genre I can no longer stand, oddly enough). It’s little more than a series of chord progressions played in a jangly, fingerstyle fashion on my old Telecaster, with a few crunchy strums, drums and filmic strings added. Doesn’t go anywhere in particular, but I enjoy it.
The next one is 'Chuck It!", a pure Chuck Berry-style jam, along the lines of those he used to fill out his LPs with back in the Sixties. Bass is probably too loud, and the endlessly-repeated tinkly piano figure will drive you mad well before the end. I’m quite pleased with the lead guitar parts – I cheated by recording them at a slower tempo and speeding them up afterwards, a process which works well unless there’s heavy delay, which tends to sound comical at altered speeds. Drums are good, too.
Next up is a version of the old Chantay’s classic, “Pipeline” – the greatest of all surf singles. This was musically unchallenging, but mine is still a horribly pale imitation of the original – the rapid descending guitar runs, the lovely warm electric piano sound and the extempore drumming all defeated me. Trying to recreate old singles doesn’t half make you realize how much excitement live ensemble performances can generate - even in a studio - and how brilliant the technicians and producers were in capturing atmosphere and verve with ridiculously limited resources.
Finally, there’s some cod classical music with "Dives and Lazarus" – a very dumbed-down version of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s achingly beautiful Five Variants of Dives & Lazarus. Due to a lack of musical ability, I confine myself to one variant (the basic tune of the original folk song) and repeat it five times, merely changing the instruments around to try to lend it an entirely spurious sense of progression. (The strummed classical acoustic guitar is real, while the individually plucked notes were done via a keyboard and a software instrument – the fake instrument is far more convincing than the real thing.)
In case there are other music-making enthusiasts reading this, can you help with my voice? I have, I have been led to believe, a pleasant, deepish speaking voice. When I sing, I can hit some correct notes. But recordings of my voice all sound horrible! Should I admit defeat and give up the attempt? Or is there some secret to making even ropey voices sound okay? (In return for any help, I will promise - absolutely - never to post anything with my voice on it.)
One other thing: I know that many producers, especially back in the 1960s, used to test out their singles on a transistor radio, as that’s how every potential buyer would first hear them. When I put my stuff on a CD and play it on the Sony radio/CD player in the kitchen, it sounds atrocious - the drums are always too loud, for a start. Is there a simple way of testing this beforehand?
Any advice would be gratefully received.
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