Songs I Have Learned to Play

You may be wondering what have I learned to play on the piano since getting the Yamaha Piaggero this past winter. At first I started with trying to play all the Christmas classics in the key of C. And while that may sound like a really simple thing, keep in mind that most people would not be able to pick out the melodies and chords by ear. I cannot do that myself perfectly but I know when something sounds right and when it sounds wrong, and when I've got it figured out I can play it decently.

I don't have all those tunes mastered yet--and by mastered I mean being able to play without error--mainly due to me not playing as often as I should/could. But in terms of a full, non-holiday song that I have learned to play completely, you'd probably never guess what it is so I'll just tell you: "It's Too Late" by Andy Williams. Yes, Andy Williams. You might question as to why I would learn to play Andy's version as opposed to Carole's or any other version out there. For one, Andy's version is very Marvin-Gaye-What's-Goin-On-ish. It's not the kind of sound you would expect from Andy. Marvin's classic was released in January 1971 while Andy's cover was recorded in the spring following. Clearly it was influenced by that smooth soul jazz type of sound achieved on that Marvin single. As an aside, this new musical direction for Marvin Gaye was refreshing and a nice break from all the love and heartbreak songs he did up to that point. Socially conscious music was slow to penetrate Motown but it started with The Temptations and continued on with the music of Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Rare Earth and Edwin Starr to name a few.

Back to my reasons for choosing Andy's version---frankly, I like Andy. He was one of those--if not the only one--classic era crooners who was able to focus not exclusively on Tin Pan Alley and jazz standards and rather build up his repertoire of music to include pop/soft rock hits of the day (unlike Tony Bennett who would become literally ill at the thought of having to croon "Sugar, Sugar"). And Andy did a great job of mixing the classics and the fresh to create his own sound. I'm happy to say that I have probably all of his albums from about 1962-1975, a period in which 2 albums per year was rather common.

Okay, so he didn't write his own songs. When you've got a voice like his you don't have to. Look at Elvis. Tom Jones. Ella Fitzgerald. The great voices were never expected to write songs. Probably not encouraged to. But if you had a voice more like Bob Dylan's, Neil Young's, Tom Waits', etc., you'd better write darn good songs!

But I've come to appreciate Andy Williams over the last several years. I think it was the Christmas TV specials that did it to me. However, it wasn't even just Andy. It's also been Perry Como, Tony Bennett & Frank Sinatra, someone I vowed never to listen to in my younger years. And it's not even so much how they thing but also the arrangements of their recorded music. I don't see how you can't not like that music. It's just so pleasant, soothing and perfectly crafted particularly considering their 1960s releases.

Anyway. "It's Too Late." Andy's version. I can play along with it now. Not perfectly of course but enough to show a significant improvement in my keyboard skills. And it's not even in the same key as Carole's original. I do add some elements of her version to this one. But it feels good to be able to play along with the recording from start to finish even if I do make mistakes.

I've also learned to play "Time of the Season" by The Zombies. It's definitely more simple than the other song, but interesting nonetheless. Still can't play it perfectly either but that's okay.

With the organ sound on the keyboard I have learned to play that organ riff on "Gimme Some Lovin'" by The Spencer Davis Group. That is really cool! Even though the rest of the song does not have a lot going on in terms of organ parts, knowing that alone is great fun. I can walk into any music store now and just play that riff and I'll instantly appear to be a keyboard wizard.

I also took it upon myself to learn the organ intro and basic song part to "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum. Another really fun thing to play that would raise eyebrows if played loud enough in a store.

Of course, learning to play these things makes me want to record my own versions of these songs. That's great if I were in a cover band or if I could make my own covers in a short amount of time. But these things can take on lives of their own and end up eating a lot of the time I should be using to make my own music. I have to remind myself that it's June now and I haven't recorded anything new this year and the time for releasing an album is growing short. So we'll see. I know I'm going to look back on these last 9 years or so and regret not having used it more wisely. In the meantime I'll just keep practicing and writing more. And recording soon, too! I want to have new material to send to "The Basement Tapes with Nick & Bootsy"! Thanks for reading, Bootsy!!

Yamaha Piaggero

Time for an update? Well, I'm glad to say that I've been honing my keyboard skills a bit since I acquired the Yamaha Piaggero not too long ago. This is a very nice keyboard with some pretty good sounds on it. The price is affordable, though I hate that term because who is anyone to determine what is affordable for anyone else? But it was affordable for me and when you include the accessories package--bench, stand, power cord, sustain pedal and piano book--it was a super great, unbeatable price.

I chose the 61 key version because I felt it would be sufficient for me to use and store in my already tiny and cramped room. The 76 key version would have been nicer but also would have taken a bit more room but not much more. Now that I think about it I probably should have gotten the 76 but really this one here suits me completely.

It has 2 sounds each for piano, electric piano, organ, harpsichord as well as string and vibraphone sounds. I mainly use the piano and organ tone banks. The electric piano sounds are not bad at all with one sounding much better than the other. This is true of the organ as well. I find myself always using only one of the 2 organ sounds and one of the 2 electric piano sounds. The acoustic piano choices feature a brighter and a darker sound. Both sound good enough for recording.

Speaking of recording, it has a built in feature for recording that you can play back while you play live on the keys. That is very useful. Also includes metronome sounds.

A feature that I accidentally came across (and then later read in the manual) is a reverse-sustain effect with the sustain pedal. Normally you plug in the sustain pedal and when you press it you get sustain. But I discovered that if you press the pedal while you turn on the power to the keyboard you get the opposite effect; you'll have sustain all the time except when you press the pedal!

I like having sustain all the time. Just sounds better to me. Of course, this doesn't sound good with the organ sounds. But with piano and electric piano it's great.

And one of the biggest selling points of this keyboard for me was the built-in speakers.  It is so nice to be able to play along without either using headphones or having to connect it to an amp or something.

My goals with getting this instrument was to play every day/night and significantly improve my keyboard skills and to use it to compose music. Using only a guitar to compose all your music is limiting in my opinion and leads to creating similar sounding songs or at best, repeated chord progressions. Using a keyboard opens up a new world in terms of composing.

So while I haven't played this instrument every day/night I have improved my skills already and have even learned to play a few songs albeit not without stumbling and making errors. But it feels good knowing how to play some songs and getting those fingers all independent-minded.

Here are photos of both the 61 key and 76 key versions:

Something's Wrong

I've been working on recording a new song called "Something's Wrong" the last couple of weeks. It's all written out. I just have to make a few changes. I am going for a 60's garage rock sound on this song. The simplicity and lo-fi of some of those 60's recordings beat the over-production of many later recordings hands down.

This is going to be my shortest complete recording that features lyrics so far. Just under 3 minutes. There is no specific song that serves as an influence for this one. It's more of a sound thing that is the inspiration. As of right now I've got an arpeggio electric guitar track with tremolo and the electric bass track completed. Today I did a piano track just for effect and I may add another just to fill out the sound. Not quite sure yet. I am also looking to add an organ track and/or a minimoog one. Of course there will be vocal tracks--at least 2. And I will play real drums for this song.

Other than this song I have ideas for at least 3 other songs. I know musically what I want to do with them. I just have to write out the lyrics. At this point I am thinking they will all be relatively short songs at 3 minutes or less just to keep that 60's vibe going. Once I start to arrange the songs the times may change. I don't want to stray too much from that though because the longer the song the more time it takes to produce it. And if there's any chance I am to release another album this year I cannot spend a lot of time on long productions.

Ideally I think I can finish up this song in about another week or 2. There are 2 things which may not corroborate this. First, the vocals may take me a while to get right. Vocals are always a problem. Second, I'm not sure if I will record the drums as part of the sessions for this song or if I will wait until I have another song or 2 and then just record drums for all of them at the same time. I don't like keeping a song on the side that just needs one more component to it. If I could get a song done in a week or two then I wouldn't mind waiting to get drums recorded. But since I never have a certain timeline for getting a song done I could end up keeping an earlier one unreleased longer than I'd like.

Stayed tuned for updates.

'If I Told You' Recording Progress

Well, I am glad to say that recording of "If I Told You" has been well underway for the last several weeks. Yes, weeks. I wish I had what I needed to just spend hours at a time each day to record. I know for a fact that I would have a lot more recorded work and I would get my songs done a lot sooner. Like the Beatles, who would get songs done in day or 2. This business of recording 90 minutes today, 90 minutes tomorrow and then not the next day is just not cutting it. But that's what I have to work with now until things get better. And they will.

Regardless, I have some acoustic guitar tracks down, some electric guitar tracks finished and that's about it. Next on the agenda is bass and some piano. May add some synth later. Drums eventually. Vocals still need some tweaking. They were the first thing I started recording and still not satisfactory.

Today I will try to get the bass down. I'm hoping that goes smoothly. I don't have any special bass part planned out for this song. If I can get it done today I will revisit the vocals and try to redo some parts there. I need to get the vocals down as perfect as possible. When you're performing live it's OK if you sound out of pitch here and there but on studio recordings there is no real excuse for it. Of course, I have a real excuse and it's good, too. My excuse is that I'm just not a good singer and I struggle to stay on pitch. So I have to do take over take over take over days and weeks even to get not only the right pitch but the right delivery.

One thing I have noticed recently is that there are a lot of examples of some out-of-pitch vocal notes on professional recordings by big artists. I don't know if that's just a case of me looking out for bad notes or if I just have perfect pitch, which I know I do not have. It does make me wonder though whether I should leave some bad notes in my recordings or just keep doing hundreds of takes till I get them right. For the most part these out-of-tune notes I have heard by artists are minor and probably not noticeable to most listeners.

To give you an idea of what this new song I'm working on sounds like, here is a video I made of me playing a demo of it:




Inspiration for this song? As I wrote before, it is influenced by early Bee Gees material. I was just playing chords and singing some lines over them and it stuck. For a long time the song went largely unfinished. Just before I started recording it is when I wrote a second verse and settled on the chorus. It's not a very long song, but I managed to make the recording into about 3-and-a-half minutes. The recording itself will feature influences from the Bee Gees (again), U2, Phil Wickham, Charlie Rich & Gordon Lightfoot. Some people may be surprised at the idea that a song could be influenced by a pretty diverse selection of artists. Others may listen to the finished product and not hear any Charlie Rich or Phil Wickham (provided they are familiar with such artits). A long time ago someone asked me who I was influenced by and I answered The Beatles. He then told me my music sounded nothing like The Beatles. I guess there is a difference between being influenced by other artists and trying to copy other artists. I realize that in most of my music I never really tried copying anyone else. As much a fan as I am of The Beatles I do not like everything they put out there. I took the inspiration they gave me from their material that I did like and combined it with inspiration from other artists and put my own touch on it to create my own unique music. So I didn't mind that this person said my music sounded nothing like The Beatles. I never really tried to copy them. Then again some people have said some of my songs do sound like The Beatles. Again, it wasn't intentional. However, in the case of 'Paperback Writer' I may make a song which is heavily influenced by it and we'll see what people think!

Anyway it is time to go do some recording. Off I go!

'Song For A Friend' on YouTube

I still want to post here with some level of regularity despite the hardship I am going through right now. Writing here and focusing on my music is actually quite therapeutic. I just wish I had all the time and energy necessary to be devoted to these things. I notice that many of the blogs that I follow post a lot more frequently than I do. I really do hope that things work out to a level where I will have the necessary means in all respects to keep all this going.

Recently I uploaded to YouTube a song I made several years back. This song has been on soundcloud for a while but I never really spread it around that much. This was a special project creation for a young friend who died from cancer in his teens. Some mutual friends decided to create a tribute to him on what would have been the commemoration of his birthday. I decided to contribute a song. Some songs come fast--words and melody--other songs come very slow. This one came fast and it's a good thing it did because the target date for this tribute was his birthday which was not very far off. The recording and everything was finished rather quickly and in time.

I have thought several times about changing some of the lyrics to make for less specific details and perhaps creating a wider audience appeal. I feel the song has tremendous pop sensibilities and I drew inspiration from at least 2 songs--'Leaving Ninety-Nine' by Audio Adrenaline and 'February' by Ten Shekel Shirt--that I like very much. (In fact, the title of the Ten Shekel Shirt song influenced me to originally title the song in a similar fashion. I have gone on to change the title several times). However, as I mentioned before, I'm not very keen on trying to re-work old songs, or at least old songs which have already been recorded. There are a few things I could do to make the recording sonically superior. But as far as a re-write, there are no plans for that unless I received a professional suggestion to do so.

As it stands the song is officially called "Song For A Friend." Here it is:




On this recording I used 2 guitars which I no longer own. One was the emerald green Carvin CT-6 and the other was a Rickenbacker 350V63. I'm not completely sure but there may have been a third guitar used. I did not keep recording notes at that time so I can only go by memory. Bass used was a Fender Jazz bass. This song also features some prominent slide guitar playing which I incorporated during a slide phase I was going through. I certainly do plan to add more slide to my recordings as I see fit.

So what do you think of the song? Someone upon hearing this song for the first time said it sounded like the Beatles. I found that to be interesting.

Song For A Friend

Back in January of 2010 one of the kids from my youth group passed away at the age of 18 due to cancer. Later in October of that year as we were getting ready to commemorate what would have been his 19th birthday, I wrote and recorded a song for him. It was probably one of the quickest songs I ever wrote, as everything from the lyrics to the melody just came to me amazingly fast. At the time I had a Ten Shekel Shirt song, "February," in heavy rotation. That song was also about the passing of a person or persons. Definitely a sad sounding song but something really attracted me to it.

I had been listening to a lot of piano driven pop/rock songs at the time such as "Leaving Ninety-Nine" by Audio Adrenaline,  "Look What You've Done" by JET, "Bedshaped" by Keane, "Brighter Than Sunshine" by Aqualung and various others. So this song I wrote for my friend was styled on these aforementioned songs. At the time I was also interested in playing slide guitar so there are some slide guitar parts on this song.

I have changed the title of this song various times over the last few years. It started off as "Song For Chris" then "October 24" and currently it is "Song For A Friend." I have been flirting with the idea of rewriting the lyrics for a more generalized sentiment because I feel the song has a very strong modern pop feel to it and may even be the song that helps me break into the music biz. I don't know. But I do know that I have to be flexible and ready, willing & able to rewrite lyrics if I am serious about a career as a songwriter/composer.

This is one of my very few and rare songs that do not feature me playing the drums. Well not real drums anyway. I don't think I had my own drum set yet at that time and going over to my church with all my recording equipment was a major hassle, not to mention that it wasn't sounding all that great on the last few songs I had recorded that way. And this was a song I was trying to get done quickly so I opted to use the drums sounds from my Yamaha S90. Sounds authentic enough but not very practical for doing any kind of genuine sounding fills.

This song also features: piano (Yamaha S90); slide electric guitar; rhythm electric guitar; electric bass; vocal; and 'drums'. I used that blue Rickenbacker guitar I used to have for the rhythm parts.

There are also a few electric guitar parts with volume swells during the verses that I played on the Carvin. Here is the song:




Since I may end up rewriting the lyrics I don't think I will go back and fix up some of the 'too soft' vocal passages or some of the flatter notes on the high parts. One friend when first hearing the song said it sounded like The Beatles. Interesting, but definitely not the sound I was going for. You decide.

My Scary Halloween Video #3

Here it is. My 3rd creepy, unsettling video for the Halloween season. Another simple concept. Just going down a staircase with some spooky sounding notes played on a piano.

So I just made a video while going down a staircase and then slowed it down and distorted it a bit. The music comes from a band called Starfield and a song called "My Generation". I just used the intro, looped it, slowed it down, changed the equalization and added a scratchy record sound to it. I think that together with the video it is absolutely chilling. Upon retrospective consideration I perhaps should have made the film black & white and also more grainy.

Anyway, here is the song I borrowed the music from.

There it is. I uploaded my video to YouTube nearly 2 years ago and it hasn't done exceptionally well. There's always now.

I don't have any additional scary videos that I made. I didn't make any last year and I have not made any this year, but perhaps if I get the right idea and right sounds I will make a few more clips.

My Scary Halloween Video #1

I had created a few musical pieces/videos for the Halloween season. Here is the first of three I made and my personal favourite. It includes my own original music and a 'scary' video. I have always felt that atmosphere makes for scariness, and that 'gross' is not equivalent to 'creepy.'

It is 2 days shy of 3 years that I have uploaded this video to YouTube. And 1001 views in that amount of time. Nothing to write home about, but the fact that something original I made received that many views is pretty cool. So here is the video. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The music comes from the ending of one of my songs called "Erie's Song." I created the recording of the song to have an overall scary, lonely, dark, somber, unsettling, uneasy vibe to it. This particular part of the song features a sampled, heavily reverbed piano loop playing forwards and backwards along with some trailing reverb-heavy vocal and bowed acoustic bass.