Category Archives: Articles from the Laptop Sessions

Random thoughts and asides

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By Jeff:

Welcome to your written version of Thumpin’ Thursday – the first in a long time.

I have been at the University of New Haven during this week, and am taking a course to teach the Saturday program I taught this past year (and will hopefully be teaching this year).  The training program has some obvious positives.  #1, I get fed breakfast and lunch (and if I stayed late enough, dinner).  #2, I get to work with some awesome people that I have worked with for the past year, including two teachers that also teach at my school.  #3, I get to learn something new, which I always enjoy.  And #4, the training staff treats us very well and goes out of their way to make sure  everyone is as happy as can be (There is a 5th perk, but you’ll have to ask me about that in person).

However, there are some drawbacks.  The first and most important is it takes a HUGE chunk out of the day, and consequently the week.  The training is 2 weeks long, five days a week from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.  It’s technically a bit longer than that since breakfast opens at 7:15 a.m.  It is in New Haven, which is about a 30 minute commute for me.  That means that if I want to eat a (actually great tasting) hot breakfast, I have to leave the house at 6:45-7 a.m…in the summer…where i’m supposed to be recharging after a tough school year.  Again, there’s another drawback but you’ll have to ask me about that in person.

Because of this, I failed at planning ahead far enough to select another line of songs to cover for the site, and therefore I do not have a new video to debut this evening.  I do plan on recording a few videos in advance on Sunday, since I will be elsewhere for most of Saturday.

So, to tide you over, I mind as well enlighten you on some recent things.

I finally finished off my George Carlin DVD collection.  I am the very happy owner of all his HBO specials after I ordered “Complaints & Grievances”, “Life is Worth Losing”, and “It’s Bad For Ya”.  This comedian is my favorite of all time.  Hands down, no contest.  He was funny when I hear or see his routines from the 60’s, and he was funny and enlightening in 2008 when he debuted what would be is final HBO special.  Ever since I got interested in his material, I always said to myself “I hope he comes out with some new stuff soon”.  And he did.  Books, CDs, and DVDs.  I myself was a sucker for the DVDs because seeing him perform is half the fun.  I was also fortunate enough to go see him in concert at Jorgensen at UConn when I was a student.  As usual, he was his old hilarious self, but I found it rude that the crowd wanted him to perform older routines instead.  George is well known for his critiques and observations of the English language, and I recall one thing I heard on my shuffled Ipod today “If you have 24 odds & ends on a table and 23 of ’em fall off, what do you got – an odd or an end?”.  He did lean more towards social issues, but continued his usual goofy antics all the way to his death.  I do miss the guy, but i’m glad that he has helped me laugh quite a bit for the past 15 or so years.

I still play Final Fantasy XI periodically (not much this week due to aforementioned training), and I recently applied to something called a HNM shell (High Notorious Monster).  The object of these groups is to seek out the biggest and baddest monsters in the entire game and take ’em down.  Most of the fights require 12-18 people, and they are pretty tough on their standards for acceptance.  My character has 3 leveled jobs, and they took a long time to gear to where they are now.  They still want me to get a few more pieces before I would be considered accepted.  I am going to hopefully get one of them tomorrow late at night (as a reward for getting through week #1 of training I guess).  The trouble is the rate it drops is about 30%, and we are fighting it up to 6 times.  My friend in game is also after this same item so we’re hoping our luck is good for the run.

I’m also resistant on getting a Twitter account.  Jim and Chris will have to convince me.  Until they do, I have to say no thanks.

I hope you enjoyed a little insight into my recent happenings, but again I promise I will have new videos to debut next week.  Until then…

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

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Ask The Musician: “How To Record All Instruments of a Multi-track Song Separately (and still have it come out right in the end)”

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to another edition of “Ask the Musician” with me, Jim Fusco!

In lieu of recording another video, I decided to finally respond to an inquiry I got on YouTube about how to record a multi-track song separately and still have it come out right in the end.  The YouTube user writes:

I have one big problem.  When we record, we obviously record them in different parts (by that, I mean we record the instruments separately).  But, we can’t record them at the same time and we have problems recording them apart.  When we try to mix them, something gets messed-up and we have to record over again and again.  Have any tips?

Why yes, I do!

People like Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) had many musicians at their fingertips.  So, it was easy to get all these professional musicians in the same room to record a track.  And these studio musicians never mess up.  They are the cream of the crop, so it was easy to say, “Play this,” and watch it get done.

For us that record alone, sometimes it’s hard to keep a beat constant through an entire song.  Actually George Harrison was known for having a great built-in timeclock when recording.  He could play a song in-time with no percussion behind him.  That’s one of the reasons why it was easy to finish his last album, “Brainwashed’ posthumously.

And that brings me to my first tip: the most important thing about a recording is to stay on-time and on-beat.  So, if you’re by yourself, make sure you lay down the drums first!  Of course, you have to have a drummer that won’t speed up or slow down on you, so that’s an important step, too.

Now, knowing that everyone’s human, you should also consider keeping even your drummer in-time by using a metronome.  Just lay down a track of a metronome in the right tempo first (you can always delete it or silence it later) and then have your drummer go to work.  Actually, at that point, you can lay down any instrument you want.  The only time this gets tricky is when the song changes tempo.  One thing you can do is program a very simple beat as a MIDI track (I used to use a program called Noteworthy Composer way back in the day- wonder if it’s still around?).  Then, you can map the song out, put in your tempo changes, and then just play it into your recorder as a track.

Another thing to keep in mind is software and hardware latency.  If you’re recording on a computer, you’ll run into this.  Even the fastest computers fall victim to it.  Have you ever recorded a video on a webcam and seen the audio/video sync go off?  Well, your computer is having trouble recording everything at the same time and it’s not making up for the latency (time lag) in either the software or the hardware you’re using.  And, like I said, even on the best computers, you can run into this.  I have a top of the line Mac Pro here and I get hiccups in my videos sometimes because my backup machine will kick in or a popup box will interrupt.  It’s that little blip in the continuous stream of processing power that can really screw things up.

Now, you may have good luck for one or two tracks, but consider this- each time you record another track on the computer, you’re playing back each additional track.  So, you can be playing back 24 tracks and recording another one at the same time- a recipe for audio latency.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m still recording on a DAW (digital audio workstation).  I never run into those problems because recording 24 tracks is the machine’s sole purpose.  There’s no internet, no downloads, no popups- just pure recording power.  I’ve never had a problem with it, unless it’s my own bad timing that screwed it up.

So, I hope that gives you something to think about.  It’s so difficult to record a whole song alone- only the best can really be great at it (Paul McCartney comes to mind).  If anyone else has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them- leave a comment below!  I’ll see you all next week- hopefully in full high definition- for another Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music video.

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

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Free Internet Radio: WCJM.com is Your Free Christmas Music Source!

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By Jim Fusco:

By this time of the season, most people are actually getting a bit sick of Christmas music.  And, really, how can you blame them?  At work, we have the local radio station, Light 100.5 WRCH, playing all day.  And I heard that Mariah Carey song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, literally five times in an 8-hour span.  And I tell you- that’s way too much.  I know most people don’t listen to the radio for eight hours at a time, so they want to hit the morning and rush-hour crowds with the same popular songs.  But, as we here at the Laptop Sessions have tried to prove, there are TONS of Christmas songs that never get played on the radio.  And these are great songs that would provide some variety throughout the day.

Which brings me to my topic for this evening: WCJM Free Internet Radio!

You see, WCJM is an amateur internet radio station that I started (well, let’s just say “continued”) with my brother and some friends back in late middle-school.  The best part, for me, is that it still lives on today!  Even though many members of the cast (which ballooned-up to seven) have either moved-on with their lives or have changed in many ways, I still listen back to all of the shows online and remember the “good old days”.  Ah, to have all my friends back the way they were in 2001…

Of course, Christmas for me is always about nostalgia.  I just love reminiscing about past Christmases and always going through our traditions on a yearly basis.  I think my parents can see very well that my wife and I have really made a duplicate of their Christmastime house out of our new home.  And that’s the way I always want it to be.  I’m a fan of consistency, folks, as if you haven’t guessed that already.

Anyway, so each year, I bust out the Christmas radio shows (which are now on my iPod) and listen to them at least two or three times apiece.  Here’s a rundown of the shows and what they feature:

The Everything Is Christmas Show: This radio show is a very important one for WCJM Free Internet Radio, because it has the debut of Alberto Distefano, probably my closest all-time friend.  We were all so young during this show- it was 1999 and I was 15 (with my brother being only 13 at the time).  But, it’s a really cute show and there’s a lot of great music.  There’s also some pretty good “early” comedy from my brother Mike, including his all-time famous line: “Updates on Parcels- they just pulled the plug on him…yes, he’s breathing by himself.”  Gets me every time.  And now ten years old, this show is the ultimate trip down memory lane.

The Comedy Christmas Jam: How do I know that the “Everything Is Christmas Show” was a success?  Well, that’s because we had such a great time that we did another show a week later!  I remember it so well- we all went home on my bus route (I was a Sophomore in high school) and we just had the best time.  This show is a little more disorganized, yet more professional because we had a practice round the week before.  This show features both some really classic Christmas songs (like Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) and comedy songs, too.  I remember laughing so hard at Weird Al’s “Christmas At Ground Zero” that I hit the table and the CD skipped.

The Rock’n’Roll Christmas Show: For some reason, this show always seemed “hesitant” to me.  It’s not as laugh-out-loud as the others, but still a classic.  It’s actually the live on-air debut of another one of my oldest friends, Jeff Copperthite (who called me today- it was great to finally catch up and I’m glad all is going well with his new family!).  This show has some unique rock Christmas music, and some skits, but this was only 2000, so we were still getting the hang of doing these shows.

The Best Original Christmas Song Show: This show is truly a classic (done in 2003)- a Christmas countdown with many people voting on their favorite Christmas songs.  I was the only one who knew the results, so it was exciting for the rest of the cast.  And this one has almost all seven cast members (plus my girlfriend turned-wife, Becky, too!).  This show is hilarious, with some ridiculous Dr. K material (Don’t know who Dr. K is?  Click HERE to find out!) and plenty of skits and promos.

The Christmas Vacation Show: This was our reunion show in 2006, as we hadn’t done a show for three years prior to it!  It was great to get the entire cast together after all that time.  We had a great time and played an even different array of Christmas songs, new and old.  The music is really fantastic on this show, but if comedy is your thing (my personal favorite parts of these shows) then we have you covered here- all of our classic characters made appearances (including Stuffy D. Bear) and there were many promos, as well.

In closing, you should really check-out these radio shows if you’re at work or just hanging out online.  They’re really great ways to make you laugh, get you in the Christmas spirit, and save you from the same loop of overplayed Christmas songs on the radio!  So, how do you listen to it?

Listen to ALL the WCJM Free Internet Radio Christmas Shows Online (for FREE, by the way) by visiting:

WCJM.com (the Moore Hits in the Morning Show section)
and scrolling through the shows!

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

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Famous Fans of the Laptop Sessions with Jim Fusco

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Okay, so they might not be household names, but Jim Fusco’s acoustic cover song music videos have gotten some pretty interesting comments over the years.  Here’s an ever-growing list of notable people that have become fans of Jim’s videos:

Geoffrey Cushing-Murray: This late-70’s Beach Boys lyricist wrote “Goin’ South” with Carl Wilson and even “Love Surrounds Me” with Dennis Wilson, which appeared on “L.A. (Light Album)”.

I enjoyed seeing this very much. It’s gratifying to know this song still has a life. Carl and I were very proud of it and hoped it would find an audience over time. Thanks again and good job. Geoffrey Cushing-Murray

Greg Douglass: He wrote the music to the #26 hit “Jungle Love”, made famous by Steve Miller in the late 70’s.

Wow. I co-wrote this tune, and this is impressive. Works well unplugged! Good work, dude…Wrote the music & played guitar on the track, as well as touring with Steve for a few years. Again, cool job. Always fun to see something I’m involved with re-interpreted.

More to follow!

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

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