“New Horizons” (Moody Blues Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your fantastic Friday edition of The Laptop Sessions. Today I delve into a new band for me, but Jim has covered this band before. Of course i’m talking about the Moodies themselves.

I bring you a song from The Moody Blues’ album “Seventh Sojourn” called “New Horizons”. Jim introduced me to this song on a past radio show, and I have enjoyed it since. There is no Moody Blues song that I have heard that I didn’t like. I really should purchase some of their albums.

I’m very happy with how this video came out. You may notice I am using a capo. The song is in F and I usually have no problem whatsoever playing a song in F without a capo, but this song does require some barre chords to play. My arm was in a bit of pain today because I took a baseball off my shoulder in a game I umpired today. Barre chords tend to hurt my hand and forearm if I play them for a long time. I can get through a song fine, but today not so much. So I capo’d the song on the 5th fret, and played it using a C transposition. Worked for me, hopefully it’ll work for you.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers

“Long Black Veil” (The Band / Johnny Cash Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Welcome to another video blog in the Laptop Sessions music video series! Today, I bring you a cover song that was written in the 1950s and was covered on two separate occasions by two of my favorite artists — Johnny Cash and the Band. Cash recorded it most famously on his Folsom Prison concert and the Band included it on their 1968 album Music from Big Pink. Both are great albums, and this is a fun song. I hope you like it…

See you next session!



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“Worlds Apart” (Original Wednesday Song by Co-Songwriter Jim Fusco)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to Original Wednesday here at the Laptop Sessions! It only comes but once every three weeks for me, so you know I’m going to make it a good one.

Tonight, I bring you an original song I wrote with the help of my fellow MoU (at http://jimfusco.com/albums.html ) bandmates for our latest album, “Homestead’s Revenge”. The album is GREAT, and you can listen to the whole thing for free on our website.

This song is track two off the album and follows a very interesting pattern. You might notice that the verse never comes back after the first round. It just has the chorus and middle instrumental parts play again and again. You almost don’t even notice it only has that one full verse until you stop and think about it.

I recorded this video last night. That is, I recorded this video BEFORE I made my huge discoveries pertaining to my original and cover songs videos.

First, I found a great program called iGlasses that allows me to manually control the iSight camera in my Macbook. It’s about time- I can’t stand when the camera just decides, “You know what, why don’t I just make it a lot darker for no reason?” Now, I’ll be able to control the exposure and brightness (plus white balance and color controls) BEFORE I record the video. This will save me time and, as we video professionals know, will make the end-result a lot nicer looking. It’s much more difficult to fix something in post-production than it is to do it right the first time around.

Second, I finally got my ZOOM H2 to record at the same time my iSight camera does!! You see, iMovie HD doesn’t give you the option to record using a different audio source. It just says “Record with iSight”.

Well, I went out to the main Apple preferences, switched the input in there, and presto- crystal clear sound without that incessantly loud fan noise that comes from the laptop.

But again, this was all learned AFTER I recorded the videos you’ll see from me for about the next month. BUT, at least we know great looking AND sounding video for me is on the horizon.

And the best part? I don’t have to do any extra work! 🙂

Thanks for watching and keep spreading the word about our great acoustic cover songs and original music!

Related posts

“Something Good This Way Comes” (Jakob Dylan Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

And now, I am proud to bring you another great addition to The Laptop Sessions library. While he is technically not a new artist, his solo work is.

Today, Jakob Dylan released his first solo album “Seeing Things”, and to celebrate this release, I have dedicated today’s Laptop Session to this album. I have been very excited about it and can’t wait until amazon ships it to me.

Meanwhile, about 2 days ago I finally figured out how to play today’s song “Something Good This Way Comes”. It is track 8 and has been one of the songs on his website for quite some time. The album is very heavy on the acoustic guitar, and also finger picking. While I’m not new to it, I don’t do it often. Obviously, a single acoustic guitar (where Jakob Dylan is using 4+ in some songs) will not sound as much like the album, but I think this effort is quite good.

Also, you’ll notice the first verse I seem a bit loud. I sorta forgot “gee i’m fingerpicking I better sing a little softer”. The rest of it sounds fine, however.

If you wanna know the chords (relative to 2nd fret Capo), the verse is:

D G D D G D Em D A Em D A

Chorus is: G A D
Bridge is: F#m, Bm, A, D, E, A7

I hope you enjoy today’s session, and I hope you have picked up (or will pick up) “Seeing Things”. I can’t wait to hear the entire album! Come on amazon…

Meanwhile, enjoy today’s session — and check out Jim Fusco’s original songs in the archive!

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and original music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up. We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session. We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future. But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers