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What a Wonderful World (a cappella)

I now have my first “cover” song in the music section! It’s an arrangement by GP which I believe he based on Guy Sebastian’s interpretation of the song.

I was literally suckered into recording this – as I don’t know why he actually needed it recorded. But since it was a “genre” that I’ve never really tried recording, it’s all good.

At first he sent the piece and the MIDI of the voices… which I thought I was just going to use as a basis for the main vocal line. Once I was done with that, I sent it to him and the next message I got was:

“Ok, now for the rest of the voices.”

Sneaky little bastard hahahaha!

The original recording had 4 measures more at the intro – which I cut out since it tended to take too long before the verse started.

Another trivia for this is that since I’m a tenor, I can only go so low – so I needed some help on the really low notes. Notes such as those found in the time markers 0:11, 0:34, 0:57, etc. were sung with an aid of a synth (or sometimes a synth only).

No need to post lyrics for this since it’s a pretty well-known song (you can always google it)

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Your Majesty

This one’s for Arjay (as per his comment on one of the previous posts) hehehe.

Reprise of my old song “Your Majesty” with the following changes:

  1. Re-recorded the guitar part with my Taylor T5 – used percussive playing (slapping the guitar) for rhythmic effect.
  2. Added bass track via Reason
  3. Added electric guitar parts
  4. Added ambient pad via Rapture
  5. Re-done the vocal track with some lyric changes

You can compare it to the old one below:

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Fine

The reprise versions continue… this time with the song “Fine”

As stated [verbatim] in the Music Section:

Reprise of the song “Fine” with the following changes:

  1. Re-recorded the guitar part with my Taylor T5
  2. Re-done bass track with hybrid of reason and T5 sounds (for the slides)
  3. Added electric guitar parts
  4. Re-done the vocal track with some lyric changes and added harmonies

What I meant by #2 was that I used the T5 as a bass (thanks to the GT8) for the slides then matched the EQ of the bass module in Reason to make it sound like a single instrument.

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The Way it Should Have Been

I’ve been wanting to redo some of my older songs after getting the T5, because the guitars literally sound like shit when compared to the newer ones I made. I actually started on a couple of them, but I was able to finish the remake for “The Way it Should Have Been”

As stated [verbatim] in the Music Section:

Reprise of “The Way it Should Have Been” (duh!) with the following changes:

  1. A bit faster tempo, so it’s about 20 seconds shorter than the original.
  2. Re-recorded the guitar part with my Taylor T5
  3. Changed the percussion section with better sounding instruments (via Reason)
  4. Added a very subtle ambient pad (via Cakewalk Rapture)
  5. Re-done the vocal track with some lyric changes

Over-all, this is a better version, and it’s just fun to compare it because it shows clearly how much my sound has changed from the last time I recorded it.

If you feel like it, compare it to the old one below:

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Home-brewed Flash MP3 player

I’ve finally finished my own Flash-based MP3 player for my site (specifically for the music section). Let me give you a little tour…

The image you see above is an image (for now) of the new player. Pretty spiffy eh? While you can click on it to load the real player, I strongly advise against it for the time being. Take the time to read through this post first – and you’ll eventually get to play with it with a written commentary below.

I’ve included what I thought to be the more useful stuff a person would normally look for in a player. Aside from the regular stuff (title, play/pause/stop, etc.) here’s some more: Read More