I am mildly obsessed with the song Champagne Year by St. Vincent so I made a cover version with a guitar as vocals. ugh, the loose timing of everything in this was difficult to copy. But it was a nice musical meditation and challenge over the holiday break.
Sometimes I have insomnia and I get a little dorveille time. As a treat. And there's nothing like using this quiet time to make a bunch of noise layering electric guitars in GarageBand. I've found that making 60 seconds of instrumental metal is just enough metal before bed ™. I have three now which is a trilogy.
This was fun to noodle on over the last few months. I studied Ewan Cunningham's drums cover and played them on a midi drum pad over three tracks. I also watched HarryAndAGuitar's Breathe video several times to see how he played a few parts. Pretty quiet at the beginning so you'll have to add your own heartbeat and screams, sorry.
I haven't had a chance to mess around in GarageBand recently so I thought I'd release one from the vaults. Listening through the basement tapes from last September I found this version of The Rain Song. It's me struggling through the alternate tuning on acoustic, the electric guitar on lead vocals, and my favorite mellotron sound on strings. Apologies to Zeppelin.
Shape note music is hard to describe. It's protestant a capella hymns from the 1800s that were written in an unusual music notation that was meant to be easier for people to read. Singing in a shape note group is a great experience and I recommend it even if hymns aren't your regular cup of tea. I found a video on YouTube that explains shape note singing in a way that's very similar to my experience: Art Zone: Kevin Barrans explains Sacred Harp singing.
I've been missing the music so I arranged a few of the songs in GarageBand and thought I'd share:
Africa by William Billings
Poland by Timothy Swan
Antioch by F.C. Wood
If you're curious about what shape note music is supposed to sound like, there are many examples on YouTube. Here are versions of these songs: Africa, Poland, and Antioch.
Really looking forward to a time when it's safe for people to get together and sing.
I started wondering what an orchestral version of these a capella songs would sound like. As you do. I found some music for Wellerman and had fun arranging it in GarageBand:
It's a sad but hopeful song that somehow rhymes with the times.
More guitar noodling in GarageBand. Having fun recording the piano chords and bass and then wondering if I can make a guitar line work. I tried something different with the drums this time but it still feels pretty far away from what I'd like to hear.
