Tag Archives: acoustic song

“For My Lady” (Moody Blues Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to yet another edition in the session-a-day project at the best acoustic cover song music blog on the web! Yes, that’s right, we don’t post a cover once a week or a music video every once in a while like most other sites — no, we have committed ourselves to posting one cover song a day in 2008. (And, if it goes much longer then that, we’ll probably end up committing ourselves. Not to another “session-a-day” project, just “committing.” And not to a relationship. I mean like to an institution for the mentally unstable!)

That’s how hard we work around these parts…

But, let’s get down to acoustic cover song business. Today, I bring you my second track from one of my favorite bands, the Moody Blues. “For My Lady” holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons. First, it is on their Seventh Sojourn album, which is one of their first seven concept albums — one of my favorite collections of all time. But second, and more personal, is the fact that this is the very first song that Jim, Mike, Becky, and I learned and performed live together as a band. It was the first of many and happened long before Cliff came into the picture. By the time Masters of the Universe came together we had long forgotten how to play this song (and, by we, I mean me and probably Becky too, and maybe even Mike, but not Jim!) and it was only played once at Jim’s parents’ anniversary party.

And now it is officially added to the list of acoustic cover songs available here at the Laptop Sessions. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ll check out more great cover song music videos by Jeff…

See you next session…



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“Maybe Katie” (Barenaked Ladies Cover)

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Welcome to your Terrific Tuesday edition of the Laptop Sessions!  Tonight, I’m the first person to post using our brand new WordPress 2.6.1 version of the blog.  Of course, on your end, you shouldn’t see any difference, but on our end, the difference is vast…and great.  For one thing, our visual editor won’t mess with our code anymore, so we’ll be able to post chords to our cover songs more often than before.

Okay, on to tonight’s video.  Tonight is a classic one in terms of my live performances.  The “band” of Chris, Jim, and Becky (see Chris’ post a few days ago) was formed in 2004 and we loved to sing this Barenaked Ladies song, “Maybe Katie” in concert.  Then, we didn’t realize we were singing it in the wrong key- a half step below the original key.  Rest assured that for this video, we fixed the error, as all the Laptop Sessions songs are always in the original key- the ONLY way it should be!  Listen up, cover song musicians on YouTube and elsewhere: YOU REALLY STINK IF YOU DO IT IN THE WRONG KEY!!!  There’s no exception to this- if it’s out of your range and you change the key, then you don’t deserve to do the song.  I sang “Baby Please Come Home” by Darlene Love at our Christmas party in the original key and that song is ridiculously high.  You didn’t see me take the easy way out.  And this is why our motto is “Putting an end to bad YouTube covers FOREVER!”  Wow, the tangents tonight…

Moving on, this song is off of one of my favorite albums, “Everything To Everyone”.  I do believe that it’s probably their fourth best album behind “Gordon”, “Barenaked Ladies Are Men” (the almost 30-track version), and “Maroon”.  This album has some input from the other band members, which if you’ve read some of my past rants, means a lot to me in a band.

We do “Maybe Katie” a bit differently than the album’s version in the sense that the BNL version has some heavy electric guitars on the chorus and middle sections.  Our version is completely acoustic and has more of a “folk” feel to it.  That’s what happens when you don’t have a drummer handy…that isn’t already reserved to play the solo like I am.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Laptop Session.  Thanks again!

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“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!

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“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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