Tag Archives: acoustic guitar music

“Some Flowers Bloom Dead” (Wallflowers Cover)

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 By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your Monday Night Football….er, edition of The Laptop Sessions!  It’s the man, myth, and legend Jeff Copperthite tonight with your latest acoustic cover video for the series.  I hope this song is familiar to you, because it is a good one.

The song is another one from The Wallflowers called “Some Flowers Bloom Dead” from their album “(Breach)”.  I think the album as a whole is one of the most underrated of their albums.  It has some really awesome tunes on it and I know that my friend Rory would belt out the tracklisting in order.  I’d put down $40 that he could do it.  I hope to do another song from this album called “Murder 101” because I think the tune is that good.

You may notice I enjoy covering this band a lot.  It has something to do with the fact I haven’t had to filter many (if any) negative comments about ANY of their covers here or on Youtube.  Maybe my singing style is similar to Jakob Dylan, or you can tell that I’m a huge fan when you watch me play their tunes.  Regardless, I love bringing you more videos of their songs.  However, I had to include a little text after my title in the video.  I must admit that I was getting a little tired in this recording session.  I’m have to sit down and record some videos this week so this doesn’t happen in the future.  My guitar playing isn’t as clean as usual, but I was trying my hardest to not ruin another take.  I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but when it comes to recording these videos, sometimes I just have to relax and just play the song.

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

“Time” (Ben Folds Cover- Jim’s 1st on Piano!)

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions on the best music video blog on the web.  Tonight, I bring you my first Laptop Session on the piano, which I actually learned to play before the guitar.  In fact, I taught myself piano- it’s actually very logical in the way it’s set up, so once you learn some of the chord patterns, you can just go from there.

Anyway, tonight’s video is a cover song of the piano master, Ben Folds, and probably my favorite all-time song from him: “Time” off “Songs for Silverman”.  Weird Al joins him on the choir-like backing vocals, which is one of the reasons that this track is my favorite.  I realized, though, that the song is great on its own, so that’s why I wanted to do a Laptop Session of it.

You may notice that the vocals are a bit “airy”.  Well, you see that microphone in front of me?  Perfect placement.  I even make sure to sing directly into it most of the time.  Well, I wanted to get the whole piano sound.  My ZOOM H2 microphone actually has 4 mics in it.  The two on the front are put in a 90 degree angle and the two on the back are placed at 120 degrees for a “wider” pickup range.  I wanted to use that 120 degrees to pick up the piano and my voice.

That only works if you turn the freakin’ microphone around!

So, you couldn’t hear my voice at all and the piano was very muffled.  But, through the magic of equalization, I managed to brighten the piano sound and bring my vocals out of the mix and salvage the video.  I had two others I recorded at this session (originals) on my fiancee’s piano, but those had to be scrapped.  I’ll go back again and re-record those, making sure this time to turn the microphone around…

I hope you enjoy tonight’s music video.  I guess I can’t plug the word “acoustic” tonight, but I guess it’s considered an “acoustic piano” as opposed to an electric piano.  Have a great Sunday and make sure to stop on back for another video the Laptop Sessions acoustic guitar AND piano music video blog!

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“Strummin’” (Original Jim Fusco 12-String Acoustic Guitar Song)

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to yet another edition of “Original Wednesday” here on the best music video blog in the universe: The Laptop Sessions!  “Original Wednesday” is the once-a-week occurance where we put aside our acoustic rock cover songs and play you an original from our vast catalog.  Tonight, it’s my turn, which comes but once every three weeks, so you know it’s going to be a good one!

“Strummin’” is a song off of my album “That’s All Folks” and was also a bonus track on my earlier album “Formula”.  It actually appeared as my first music video on the Enhanced CD portion of that disc.  I put the video up on YouTube- you can see how much thinner my face was then…and it was only 2004!  Watch the song HERE.

This is a very simple song…well, actually it uses a few jazz chords that I learned while taking my only guitar class in college.  I already knew how to play, but this class filled in a lot of the music theory for me, and I was the best student in the class.  I was actually the only person in class to play Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”.  So, I took a couple of those great sounding jazz chords and turned them into a song of my own.

I needed to finish this song for that music video, which we were going to film the next day.  We even got clearance to use my old high school’s auditorium to tape it, so we had to get it recorded and done right.

So, I wrote the rest of the song quickly and tried out my newfound soloing technique that I also learned while taking that guitar class.

All the lyrics in this song are true-life lyrics.  But there’s a line at the end, “Highly doubt this song will make me a star.”  For some reason, I always thought that this would be the song to make me a star- just because it’s so different and clever.  I hope all of our loyal visitors will send this video around to their friends- if anything, it’ll give you a smile.

Enjoy this song tonight and make sure to come back on Saturday, when I’ll be premiering my first-ever Laptop Sessions cover song on piano.

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“Lost!” (Coldplay Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening, and welcome to your Tuesday edition of The Laptop Sessions. It’s Jeff today bringing you another great acoustic cover video. We’re continuing to roll along with session-a-day in the middle of August.

It feels weird to bring you an acoustic cover video that isn’t from Pink Floyd, after nearly two weeks of the Pink Floyd Hat Trick. I hope you enjoyed those, but I also hope you’re ready for another familiar band here at the Sessions.

The band today is Coldplay, and I am covering my first song from the album “Viva La Vida”. The song is “Lost!”, which isn’t really an acoustic song. It has a rock beat with an organ playing the main chords. There is a guitar solo (what song isn’t complete without one) and there are a couple of electric guitar riffs in the recording. I love this song because of its infectious chorus (“Oh and I’m just waiting ’till the shine wears off”) and its straightforward chord progression. It is cool to here this song with the acoustic treatment, because neither recording that I have heard of this song (the piano and album versions) has an acoustic guitar.

You’ll notice the unusual background – I recorded this song in our hotel room in Vermont. So if you’re in the VT area listening to this, it could’ve been recorded down the street from you. On that note, the acoustics are not that great, and I didn’t want to play louder than usual because I didn’t want to attract too much attention from the neighbors.

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