Monthly Archives: January 2008

“Surfer Girl” (Beach Boys Cover)

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Welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions!

Tonight, I give you one of the Beach Boys’ greatest and most famous songs, “Surfer Girl”!

Of course, the Boys’ version has those great harmonies, but imagine this version as if Brian Wilson was the only one singing. Plus, it’s fun to sing the harmony parts while listening back to it.

I love the chords- those old-fashioned chords that rock music just doesn’t have anymore. It was fun to learn and Chris and I have been playing this for months.

Actually, I love playing this on Chris’ Fender electric, but I think it translates well on the nylon strings.

Hopefully I do this song justice because playing a huge hit like this always means there’s pretty big expectations. Enjoy and stay tuned as the “Laptop Session a day” in 2008 rolls on!

“I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better” (Byrds Cover)

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Here on the Laptop Sessions, I give you my favorite song of all time: “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better” by the Byrds. Gene Clark, the writer of this song, wrote MANY great songs over his career, and you’ll be hearing a lot of them on the Laptop Sessions in the months to come. But, this song is just PERFECT to me, and here’s why:

It’s got everything I love in a song. It’s got a great guitar sound (courtesy of Roger (Jim) McGuinn), a cool riff, great words, chorus harmonies, and a killer jangly guitar solo. I love everything about this tune and hopefully I’ve done this song justice.

Of course, in order for me to give the song the respect it deserves, I recruited Chris Moore ( http://www.youtube.com/user/chrismooremusic ) to help me with harmonies and rhythm guitar.

So, I hope everyone enjoys this version. I’ll be playing one of my other favorite songs in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned!

UPDATE! Video Blog for Old and New Music Lovers

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Hello all! I’m working on a Laptop Session right now (we’re using a new compression technique that takes longer, but also works on our iPhones), and you’ll understand why I’ll be posting it just after midnight!

Also, you should note the new https://guitarbucketlist.com permanent address. After hours of troubleshooting and stumping many overseas tech support agents, the address no longer forwards to the blog, but actually LIVES on guitarbucketlist.com! So, let the search engine crawls begin! 🙂

Well, make sure to catch our post, plus look out for new ones every day from Jim and me!

~Chris

Songwriter Video Blog Update – Where the #*%& is Jeff?

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By Jeff Copperthite:

I hope you haven’t thought ill of me in the past month.

For some reason, the holiday season tends to be the busiest for me. I got the chance to see a lot of family on both my side and my wife’s side, so that is always a positive. I even got a chance to have some of my family listen to FMP’s music. My Quilt bandmate Scott even got compared to Bob Dylan. I find that quite complimentary.

If you’re reading about me, you’re probably asking 2 or possibly 3 questions which i’d like to answer right now.

1) How is Greenlight going?

The recording is going slow, but that is because I want my first official solo effort to be the best I can possibly do. It took me 3 weeks to record “What not to do”, which you now hear in the FMP frontpage player. I went through a lot of takes in most of the instruments, and some of my previous entries dealt with how tough some of those parts were. However, you can tell how much work went into it. I’m very proud of that recording. I am in the middle of finishing up guitars for another song, which i’m still debating the title of. Another song i’m ironing out the lyrics too, and has yet to meet my recorder. I also plan to pull out an oldie from my MIDI library and record it as well. In all, I plan on having 2 instrumentals and 7 vocal songs on the EP. 5 of those vocal songs are primarily finished, while i’m working on the 6th and 7th as mentioned above. If all goes well I plan on finishing primary recording within the next two weeks. It is an optimistic goal, but I know a lot of people who can’t wait to hear it. At the same time, i’m not trying to rush it and if I need more time I will make sure to take it.

2) Where have you been in the Laptop Sessions?

To tell you the truth, I was not all impressed with my $20 webcam and the video it put out. It took forever to get somewhat acceptable settings, and I needed to hook up an external directional microphone to pick my sound up. If you have seen my videos a lot, you’ll notice the video and sound quality is mediocre at best (which is a weird combination of words, but let’s not get into that). And I was also a bit demoralized by a quick rash of negative comments on my “Emaline” video. Due to this combination, and my busy holiday schedule, I let that production slip by. However, over the holidays one of our gifts was a brand spankin’ new digital camera that does awesome video AND has a great condenser microphone. I promise to return to the laptop sessions very soon.

3) What is with that weird Grizzly Adams beard?

Hey, it’s short! It works great for me because now I don’t get asked for a hall pass at the school I teach at.

4) Ignore these four words.

I look forward to using the above mentioned camera to also record some in-studio video for the bonus material, and perhaps i’ll post one or two on this blog. Operation: Studio Improvement will also be commencing in two short months. Watch as I use much effort to paint my studio, put up new doorframe and corkboard ceiling, and a decorative yet inflammable curtain to block out the water heater and furnace from my recording view.

Again, I enjoy hearing from you guys and it really makes me feel great that I have fans on this site. Please email me or post comments for all of us to read.

And, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! May the new year be as fulfilling and rewarding to you as your previous years.