thecolourbox music thread

thecolourbox

Had a rare night to myself tonight so was playing some music and thought I'd try to record some acoustic playing and vocals through my condenser to see if it worked. If you have a spare 20 mins would be great if you would have a listen and let me know what you think. I don't often share my music here, so instead of my whinging about glasses and being miserable thought it might be nice to share some actual music.

All recorded live, one take straight through, through one Marantz MPM1000 condenser on my home office computer desk. Added a nice room reverb but otherwise it's "as is".

Here's full playlist:

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/fxmWa

And each track, in case you can only listen to one, pick the song that appeals to you

Father & Son (Cat Stevens)
Dreams/Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Fleetwood Mac & Led Zeppelin mash up)
Steady This Ship (cover of a mate of mine's song)
Stand By Me (Ben E King)
Wayfaring Stranger (trad.)
Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden)
Blackbird (Beatles)

Hopefully you don't hate it

Gandalph

I had a listen to Father and Son, Dreams/Babe and Wayfaring Stranger. 

Really enjoyed it, very nice playing and you’ve got a really good voice. Particularly liked Wayfaring as it’s more my sort of tune. 

Bravo!

Would be interested to know what acoustic guitar you recorded on? 

CMW335

Will be having a listen to this tomorrow, @thecolourbox is a very talented guy and genuinely top bloke to boot.

thecolourbox

Thanks @Gandalph that's very kind. It's a Taylor Big Baby I'm playing, not a great instrument but it does the job. Generally sounds better with capo (all of these except Blackbird are with capo) but an ok Instrument overall.

@cmw335 your bribe is in the post mate

IMC1980

Listened to Black Hole Sun, nice take on it! 

thecolourbox

IMC1980 said:

Listened to Black Hole Sun, nice take on it! 

Thanks mate, in truth that arrangement is because i can't handle the barre chords of the original haha especially on Acoustic, but I do quite like the mix up of the depressing lyrics and slightly cheerful rhythm. 

thecolourbox

I've been working on a version of a great song written by the extremely talented songwriter and generally lovely bloke @CMW335 which I am enjoying very much but rather than creating a new post and scaring those easily offended by the sight of a new post from me, I thought I'd share the current draft here. It's just piano and voice at the moment but when I'm back off honeymoon I will experiment adding some extra instruments, strings, guitar, bass maybe.

So behold the latest theFB collaboration in the works, credit to @CMW335 for the lovely song

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/XvQY8

CMW335

Thanks @thecolourbox doesn't seem right for me to gush over the track but it is such a different tone to the original it feels very much like a song in it's own right. I can however heap praise and thanks on you for a fantastic performance and for taking the time to do this despite the busy pre-wedding schedule.

Thanks also for the kind words, I should add this (and all of our other songs) was co-written with my mate during High School/Uni years so I am only 50% of that talent & lovelinees 

This is the sort of interaction that makes the forum for me, a very talented guy has invested his time to cover one of my bands original tracks and has done so with great enthusiasm which feels like such a privilege. There are a few other members who have done similar acts of kindness such as @poopot who continually helps with all sorts of mixing and recording stuff.

Thanks again @thecolourbox , @poopot ; and the others who I called out in a thread before, keep it up.

Funkfingers

Your vocal delivery on Black Hole Sun has an hint of Buckley about it. (Not sure yet whether it's Tim or Jeff.) Stick with it.

Steady This Ship is begging to have Danny Thompson double bass and McGarrigle family harmony vocal stylings all over it.

Consider trying a stripped-down piano/vocal arrangement of Tempted by Squeeze.

I'm afraid that the Baez/Mac mash-up reminded me too much of One Song To The Tune Of Another from I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. 

jimmyguitar

Lovely cover of @CMW335 ’s tune mate, you have a great voice!  

thecolourbox

Thank you both for your very kind comments, very grateful for the kindness and the feedback

thecolourbox

I've been working towards some new song ideas lately so as a bit of a confidence boost I thought I'd see if some of my reading/learning of how to improve my production quality (largely theoretical without having anything new to work on) has indeed worked on something existing that I did a few years back

Hopefully this works and sounds decent.

Funkfingers

thecolourbox said:

my production quality

The multi-part guitar towards the end is fine sonically but the timing needs tightening up. Otherwise, it sounds like an argument. 

I hear the guitar overdub as an Eno/Fripp "sky saw" idea. I would have chosen a more ripping Big Muff style distortion, then, rolled off the tone control on the guitar to smooth it all out.



"Sky saw guitar" is how Eno described his naïve doodlings on consecutive solo albums in the Seventies. The appropriate Oblique Strategy card would be, "Honour thy error as hidden intention." (Could just be art school pretence.).

thecolourbox

Thanks, yes my timing is always a problem. As a piano player, timing was never that important in my formative years as I was playing solo so I could just call it "rubato" or expression.

I was given a half day studio experience voucher for a birthday, which I did not get on very well with. But the solo for this song and one of the others I did in the same collection of song was the only thing I could use from the day. I suppose I should just re record it at some point. I think the Fuzz on that was a clone of a Zvex Woolly Mammoth

I will look up what I can find out about Fripp and Eno, at present I know very little other than Heroes and those terrifying videos with Toyah.

If I recall correctly I was trying to do a solo that sounded like if Brian May got drugged by the Velvet Underground

thecolourbox

Been a while since I posted on this.

I recently did a solo piano arrangement of a "guitar and voice" song I wrote for the composition challenge, so a bit different than is normally shared in this sub forum I guess but to be honest I'm much better at playing piano than I am at singing or playing guitar.



Been writing quite a bit recently but not really getting anything finished, will try and share some demos here for my own record as much as anything, when I can get around to recording something coherent

thecolourbox

Oh I also did a cover of a song written to the tune of Dvorak's New World, was for a music event I played at recently where I was playing a mixture of classical piano and singing classically inspired other songs. I liked the words a lot, and I've always liked the tune (even before the Lord of the Rings soundtrack which has to have been...ahem...inspired by this one )