Hey Joe

For the last week or so I've been working on recording a 'vintage sounding' version of "Hey Joe" in the sonic flavor of Jimi Hendrix's version of 1966. "Hey Joe" has always been a song I liked but especially after I discovered Tim Rose's version. I used to play his at home and anywhere I'd go. Sometimes I'd have it going for hours at a time. To me, his take on the song is the penultimate version. I like Hendrix's version as well and both versions are similar in terms of tempo and feel. Major difference being that Hendrix's version is all-out electric and Rose's is acoustic.

So when I found out about an opportunity to record a period piece version of the song for a special project I jumped on it. Fortunately I had just enough time to do it and I started and completed within 6 days, just before the deadline.

I'm a fan of Big Brother and the Holding Company when they backed Janis Joplin so my sound may have been influenced by theirs. I made a version that sounds rock, bluesy and psychedelic (perhaps) but definitely reminiscent of the late 1960's. In fact, if the recording weren't mine and I heard it and had to guess the year I would say 1968. Comes complete with fuzz guitar! Finally put that Analogman Peppermint Fuzz pedal to solid use!! It's a superb pedal for that 60's fuzz sound. Best one I've tried and I highly recommend it if you can find one.

My 'Hey Joe' comes complete with 3 layers of electric guitar, an organ track, bass, drums and vocal. Speaking of drums, I finally experimented with recording the drum part on 3 different tracks: one for the kick drum, one for the overhead mic and one for the snare. I'm still experimenting with tweaking the snare sound. It sounds good in the latter portion of the song where the overall volume is louder. But I do have more control over the overall sound of the drum set by recording this way. And since I had the drums and mic's all set up I went ahead and recorded a new drum track for my Christmas song, "It's Christmas." I have not yet mixed that new part into the song. One additional item of note is that I used my piccolo snare for this recording session. I had tried my full size snare but was not pleased with the recorded sound so I went with the piccolo and the move generated rather good results.

Anyway, let's get to the song. I uploaded it to soundcloud.com:



I also uploaded onto YouTube a mono version of it that includes the sound of old vinyl in order to simulate an old record:




The photo I created to look like album art from that era (minus the outfit discrepancies of course). It was an all-out effort which I found fun and very rewarding.

The Moment of Truth

This next song has been the longest in the making. I started recording it in 2002 and only finished it in 2010. I was satisfied with the instrumentation and arrangement but the original vocals left much to be desired. Originally I had sung the main vocal an octave lower that what you will hear in this version. I didn't like it. It sounded too laid back and wasn't a good match for the subject matter of the lyrics.

I worked on the instrument tracks for much of 2002 and 2003. I was very pleased with the music itself and definitely felt it was my best work up to then. Even to this day it remains one of my favourite songs and I really love the semi-psychedelic folk rock sound I created on it. Even a fellow musician of the reggae/rap genre had shown some interest in sampling the instrumental version for his own music. As far as I know, that never came to pass however.

The drums on this song sound very good to me just as on the previous song. The overall balance of sound and instruments is also very good.

I recorded multiple takes of the vocal track but none every sounded right. So for years I left the song alone until 2010 when I decided to try something different with it. What I tried was to sing the whole song an octave higher than originally planned. To me, that gave the song a much better sound and a sense of urgency that complemented the lyrics. It also made it much more difficult to sing the chorus without going flat. Nonetheless, I think it sounds great. And I added a falsetto harmony track on the verses. Icing on the cake!

Instrumentation includes: acoustic guitar; several electric guitar tracks; electric bass; drums, electronic keyboard (organ sound); and digital piano. The electric guitar used in this song was my very first electric. It was an Epiphone Les Paul Special which I no longer have. I don't have any pictures of it either.

Here is the song:




Since this is one of my personal favourite songs and one of the best sounding ones, I included this song in my 5-song EP which I released in November of 2011. This song can be found on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and various other music websites.

I never entered this song in any contest mainly because I stopped entering songwriting contests in the mid 2000's and this one was completed in 2010.

On my next post, I will have another one of my favourite songs. It's a song that also took on a life of its own for a while and some people can even sing some lines from its chorus even to this day.