So I've always rebelled against covers. I played one or two here and there, but guys like Leo Marrichiolio (Frog Leap Studios) on Youtube helped me rethink this. I had this particular song's sheet music in my music book forever. Literally the last 20 years or so. I think I got it while hunting for songs to play when I was still a teenager and learning guitar. I have never seen "The Godfather" till earlier this year, but I did play and learn the song on piano from sheet music, recognised it from radio play most probably, and started singing it here and there while sitting alon with a guitar ... and wow, that is a long sentence.
Anyways, earlier this year I came to the conclusion that this song will do well with a bit of metal/hard-rock treatment .However, when I sing it, I sound like a crooner. So, well, I thought, why not do some crooner metal? Well, that is what came from my efforts over the last couple of months. Tom Jones, you'll thank me when one day you go metal. Or you, Bubleè.
All my releases are now available at Bandcamp with a an instrumental version for each! Jeremiah's complaint is still available absolutely free.
A sale at Bandcamp gives me more than double wat iTunes gives me, and 500x more than a Spotify stream. Literally. Having said that, as long as people are enjoying it, I don't mind how they do it. So go ahead, add me to your Spotify, Google Music or Apple Mussic playlist. Even your Youtube playlists.
The more people listen to the music or watch the videos, the better.
I'm not great at doing cover versions of songs. For many years, I actually did not learn any new covers. As a guitar player I obviously cut my teeth on learning cover songs, and I will not deny that this is vital for learning an instrument. I quickly got tired of it though, and chose just to try and write my own material.
I listen to a huge amount of music, and I'm always learning by listening, but as for simply learning to sing and play songs by other bands, in the past I just couldn't be bothered. And maybe I was a bit insecure and afraid of criticism too. And maybe not that good at learning songs properly. Or executing it. (This is a hugely cathartic blog post!) There is also the way people judge how good of a musician you are based on how well you can copy someone else's song, that frustrates me. If that was true, we would probably never have listened to Bob Dylan.
I have had a bit of an issue with playing covers "exactly so". Carbon copying the original artists, if you may. Steve Hofmeyer, a South African artist, did a cover album of Neil Diamond songs and sold mountains of these things. He certainly has the voice for the material, but the fact that the songs were sung and produced exactly like the originals begs the quesion: why not just buy the original? Nobody sounds more like Neil Diamond than Neil Diamond, surely. I can't argue with CD sales, so obviously there is a need for this type of cover, but I've always looked for artists who interpret songs in new ways.
Take Metallica for example: they pay homage to bands that influenced them by playing at least one cover version per live set, and having brought out an EP and a double album of cover versions, along with tribute projects to Ronnie James Dio, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed (not Lulu, but live versions of "My Sweet Jane") and some more that I can't recall right now. What they do is interpret the songwriter and original artist's vision and effort with their own set of skills and styles.
They even tackled some more commercial pop and rock songs in this medley performed at a MTV-event. There are many other examples, such as their rendition of "Turn the page" by Bob Seger, or "Whiskey in the Jar" by Thin Lizzy, which in turn is actually a cover of an old Irish folk song. In turn, Metallica's catalogue has been covered many times, by so many different people, and often these versions can bring new appreciation for the song. Just listen to anything by Apocalyptica, or Pat Boone 's version of "Enter Sandman" to appreciate how far you can go with covering a metal song.
Nirvana loved the odd cover as the MTV unplugged album shows us. "The man who sold the world" became my favourite song on the album, originally written and performed by David Bowie. And I don't even much care for Bowie's music. So the new "packaging" actually helped me appreciate Bowie more to some degree.
I saw Saron Gas (now known as Seether) cover "How You Remind Me" live, when it was okay for metalheads to like Nickelback. I stage dove on it. I headbanged to it. Don't tell anyone now.
I especially appreciate it if artists can reinterpret songs into completely new genres, or parts of the song, a lick or hook, and almost rewrite the song around that. A client of mine, Loki Rothman, has become an internet hit with his "one man band" covers of well know songs. The fact that he is a prodigy on guitar and does things to strings that should be considered unlawful is part of the draw of this type of cover. And to see him do this live, is quite something. Without creating an alienated version of the song, he re-purposes it, in a matter of speaking. From jazz to pop he puts his own touch on any song. See what I mean below:
Ok, I can probably do a thousand page blog post on songs that different bands covered in their own inimitable way. And that is beautiful, and a huge compliment to the songwriter, me thinks. But, I have to make mention of one last artist, that has become an internet phenomenon: Leo from Frog Leap Studios.
A metal musician, re-purposing pop and more mainstream songs into metal madness has introduced a huge amount of people to heavy music, that normally wouldn't have listened to it. He plays all the instruments bar the odd collaboration with other musicians. Seeing his version of Adele's "Hello" blew my mind wide open. And then Pete Cottrell ripping the hardest solo over the breakdown I have seen in years... I saw the light properly: doing covers can be mad cool.
So I really like the song "Aerials" by System of a Down. I would sing it at top volume in my car on many an occasion. All their quirkiness, creativity and commentary is just perfectly distilled in this tune. I would often wish I could write a song like it. And I still do.
Well, I tried, and I couldn't. I wrote my own songs, and that is great. Inspiration is needed now and again, but I couldn't write my own "Aerials". So, I started jamming it along with them. And I thought, hmmm, some fingerpicking could work...., but I don't do covers...yet. Then I Youtube'd some covers of "Aerials" and the one below showed me that maybe I could bring my own acoustic feel to it. Not like the girl obviously, but do it in line with my own skill-set.
So, I decided to go all in. With my own set of skills. My voice, my playing, my own solo written for the song, and my weird instruments. Below is a pic of some of the things I used.
I really really enjoyed reproducing the song with my own vibes, and here is my effort. Let me know what you think. I'm busy thinking about some more songs that I can cover. Not necessarily in this exact style, but in my own way. Whatever that might be.
Getting "The Reaper" final release ready took a while. I've released it previously in what I now refer to as "demo" or "first pass" version. I basically remixed it and remastered it.
I've wanted to do a video for a while, but I couldn't quite make time to shoot something elaborate, and shooting and editing and performing and whatnot, by myself, makes it even a tougher task. For some reason I've always like archive images from wars in music videos. Yes, yes, I know it's probably old hat and even cheesy, but I haven't done it, so, it's not a cliche for me. Yet, anyways.
In the public domain there are some great clips available for use in all sorts of projects, so I got my fill of clips at the Pond 5 Public Domain Project. The lyrics of the song is not directly related to the footage, but it supports the atmosphere, and the gist of the lyrics tie in with the idea of wars: humanist thinking led to war. War in the "name of religion" does not make it God's war. It makes it the war of people, using God as an excuse.
The song is about standing up and taking a stand the is not philosophically popular, but essential as a Christian. We have to value God's judgements and views above that of common philosophy, pop-psychology and popular opinion. Especially in our post-modern world where having a conviction about something is a worse sin that simply agreeing with everyone. (Till you try and disagree with a post-modern thinker, then you see what true intolerance is!)
Anyways, I also took the opportunity to take some pics for my publicity and online profiles.
I find it very hard to do these "very serious" band pics. I'm more likely to take pics of myself in goofy poses, but I suppose it's time I have some more serious imagery. Here I am shown with my NEL "Angry Bird" Guitar. One of the guitars I built. This one was built with pieces of rubbish pine I had lying around outside, with an extra neck and odds and ends to make this guitar.
You might've noticed that suddenly "Reuse Reduce Recycle" is no longer available in the links, or in previous posts on Facebook, or in Twitter. Well, I've decided to relook some of the tracks, especially on the mixes, and then to go ahead and release the album in bursts of singles. I'm also typical in my artistic regret, so every now and again I wish I did something differently. Luckily, I can redo things. However, once it is released now, it'll stay released, because through this network it costs money to get it to you.
Part of the reason is that I'd like it to be available on most streaming platforms, like Spotify, Apple Music, Xbox Music, and thousands of radio stations online, Youtube monetisation etc. Yes, it'll help me get the music out there, and in time recoup some of the costs at 0.001 cent a play!
Jamendo is still doing fantastically well for my back catalogue, like "Painting with Light" has proven, with my catalogue having received more that 1.5 million streams already. Certain releases will still fit the Jamendo model better, so I'll continue there.
Once you buy the song on iTunes or wherever, you can even use it for your videos on Youtube. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you do. Through clever micro-sync technology, I'll get paid a micro-cent every time it is played.
So the first remixed, remastered song is the very first from the album, "To where our souls call home". It has been released and should have digested into the the iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and the like's roster in the next 1-4 weeks.
I wrote this tune about 19 years ago! Alice in Chains Unplugged was on my player a lot back then. I think that might've influenced the grunge chord progression and slightly demure mood!
It is a song, mainly about Christ and his sacrifice and suffering on our behalf, but now, looking back, I think the metaphors might be stretched and vague in some areas of the song, but it works in the phrasing and that's what I felt then, so I didn't feel like rewriting it. It is what it is.
The acoustic guitar bit is exactly like I wrote it back then, in my flat in Goodwood, Nevside 26, Spencer Street. (My song "My Plek" from Painting with Light is about that flat). As I started recording I wasn't sure if I was gonna go slow, or fast with arrangement, heavy or stripped down, but given electric guitars and time, I will lean to adding more and more guitars, most of the time.
I really really enjoyed writing and playing this solo. I doubt I'll get it exactly right again. It took literally about 50 different takes and I got the final down at something like 2:30am one morning, almost 18 months ago! Yes, this song has taken almost 2 years to record in it entirety.
Up to this morning I was still contemplating re-recording the vocals, and trying to write a better melody, but I feel like this song has existed long enough to warrant no further structural and basic changes.
Anyways, enjoy listening to it, share it with your friends, download it and burn it on discs, make mix-tapes and just go wild.
I've briefly mentioned where the name of the "label", Vortex Afternoon, comes from, but actually, the whole era of electronic music I made in the late 90's, I labelled as "Vortex One". Why "Vortex One"? I couldn't think of a cooler name, or something like that, I suppose. I was 17 when I started.
My brother came home from university one holiday, and on his kick-butt 486 (pre-Pentium days) machine with a Genius sound-card, was a program called "Impulse Tracker"; a mod-tracking programme in the vein of Mod Tracker and later, Windows versions like "Fast Tracker" etc. Some who are in the know might remember "Future Crew", "Enigma" (my brother's name) and a bunch of others, who featured in this underground music scene. You can read about the software, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_Tracker. Come to think of it, he first arrived with Scream Tracker, and I very well might've written and composed my first songs ever, on Scream Tracker. In time - probably a couple of months, we ended up doing our thing on Impulse Tracker, due to it's superior workflow. I still wish modern tracking programs, or midi, could be this easy.
Herewith a screen-shot of Impulse Tracker:
And the pre-cursor of Impulse Tracker, Scream Tracker.
As you can see, it was like staring at The Matrix. However, it's actually deceptively simple, intuitive and quite powerful, once you understand the basics. It's pretty much a drum machine, with more sounds. Some of the music composed then still rivals any of today's uber-electro-compositions in terms of complexity and quality.
Tracking consisted of using sound and instrument samples and programming the notes and effects into a scrolling tab. A bit like midi. The samples in our case were ripped from other peoples .IT files, the native file format in which these compositions were saved. It opened as a project, and you had access to all the bits and bobs in it.
In my case, most of the samples were 8-bit, but some guys were next level and was doing 16-bit. Because of the lack of guitar samples and way to use it, this music gravitated towards dance, and post-rock type styles, highly progressive in some cases. I did manage to record some guitar on a pc-mic and integrated bits into the music, as in "Serious News". That line I was playing around with on my 12-string President, and I ended up recording a single middle-C note from the guitar, and used the program to program the arpeggio I have been playing on the guitar. The quality, understandably, is not fantastic. Nowadays people use effects-pedals to get a guitar sounding that bad, mind you.
But enough about the intricacies of the software we used. Let's talk songs.
