Tag Archives: guitar

“No Lights, No Sound” (Original Wednesday)

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By Chris Moore:

Well, it’s been a while since I posted a music video, so I figured I’d better make certain my YouTube account was still functional…

This week, instead of recording a cover song, I felt that it was time to kick off The 2010 Project music video series I’ve been planning for a while.  You may be wondering, what exactly is The 2010 Project?  It is the working title — and, based on a recent conversation, very possibly the official title — of my forthcoming album.

Thus far, as of April break, I’ve chosen the thirteen songs that I plan to record and completed the writing of both music and lyrics.  Since then, I’ve recorded acoustic demos of each song and begun listening them in order to help me think of and decide on arrangements and various aspects of how I’d like the final products to sound.  I’ve been experimenting with GarageBand drum loops, and I’ve been practicing the songs quite a bit since April.  Every weekend since then, I’ve taken an hour to sit down and play through the album in order.

As with any big project like recording an album’s worth of material, anything’s liable to change by the time the final product is ready to be heard.  That being said, I plan to string together thirteen installments in this music video series, each featuring one of the aforementioned songs.  And, understanding that anything can change, I’ll be releasing them here on the blog in the order I plan to sequence them on the album.

The first song up is “No Lights, No Sound.”  Laptop Sessions regulars may recognize this as a video I’ve already recorded and posted over a year ago.  However, this is the finalized version, with some slight lyric changes and additional verses.  This song is a rare case of old lyrics re-emerging on a new song.  The story here is that, a few months ago, I came across the lyrics for an old song that I never really committed to, but had always liked a few lines from.  I thought they might fit nicely into this song, and with a few alterations, I think they do.

In a lot of ways, this is one of the simplest songs on the list, a tune that started as I walked around my room in the dark almost two years ago.  I was home alone, my capo on the second fret from having played another song (which I’ve since forgotten), and the first line sort of came to me: “The lights are off; there’s no one around…”  I wrote this and the first chorus, but that was it for a while.  It wasn’t until months later that I added the middle section and new verses.  Then, this past April, I deleted a verse and added two more in.

“No Lights, No Sound” is a song that has weathered several phases in my recent life, a track that has been conceived, shaped, and reshaped by these phases and survives in its current form with a scheduled slot as the opening track of The 2010 Project.

I hope you like this one.  For some reason, even though my allergies haven’t been hitting me as hard as they probably will soon, my voice wasn’t at its peak today.  That being said, I feel that worked for this solo acoustic performance.

So, without further ado, here is the first installment in the series — hurry back every day this week and both days of the weekend for new posts!

See you next session!

“She Belongs to Me” (Bob Dylan Cover)

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We’re looking for more Guest Sessions submissions! So, sit down, pull up your acoustic guitar and camera, post the video on YouTube, and CLICK HERE!

As I always say, it’s never too soon for another Bob Dylan cover video!  Personally, I’ve attempted to restrain myself from recording a comfortable, enjoyable Dylan cover this year.  However, tonight’s installment of the Guest Sessions is a Dylan cover song music video with an interesting twist.

First of all, this is a song from Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home.  This is perhaps one of his best albums, and it was a transition point for him, half of the album being full band renditions and the other half being classic acoustic-only compositions.  (For his next album, Highway 61 Revisited, he would dive deeply into the world of electric rock…)

So far, I’ve recorded two covers from this album — “Subterranean Homesick Blues” for the members-only area of the site and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.”  No one here has yet dared to take on the more noteworthy songs, such as “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” or the song that the Byrds launched to chart success, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”  This being said, I was truly impressed with the apparent ease with which Stan Denski, our guest tonight, played “She Belongs to Me.”  Granted, this is a fairly straightforward song, but he changed the tuning and plays in an interesting fashion.  His version is true to the original, yet very much his own and sung well.

Thank you, Stan, for sending this very entertaining video!

I’ll let him introduce the video — Stan writes,

This is a cover of Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me.”  It is played on an old Guild 12-string tuned to an open D and played by barring chords from the top of the neck which allows the highest strings to ring open and create diminished chords.  It also uses a lot of harmonics struck at the 12th fret.

I was showing a friend how to play this version and he videotaped it and, later, stuck it up on YouTube.

Stan Denski, Indianapolis

“Farmer’s Daughter” (Beach Boys cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Hello all! Here’s another song for the Laptop Sessions! This one is by request for an early Beach Boys tune called “Farmer’s Daughter”.  It’s a pretty cute little song (only four chords!) made exponentially harder because of the fact that it’s ALL sung in falsetto!  But, as Brian Wilson was about when he recorded this, I’m in my early 20s, so I think I hit the notes!  I, for one, love the songs from the very early Beach Boys albums.  It was definitely a different time.  It was before the Beatles made it big in America and there was an innocence to the music.  Of course, that’s why I love the music I love- I try not to listen to too many depressing songs.  For instance, I was starting to get in to Elliot Smith’s music.  But, as anyone who has heard of Elliot Smith knows, his songs are almost always dark and with an overtone of suicidal thoughts.  Elliot was a great musician and songwriter.  But, I could never become a huge fan because of the songs’ subject matter.  Listing to music has always been a source of joy for me, so I’ve decided to stay in my happy pre-Vietnam music world, smiling all the way. 🙂

Although, I will admit, “Farmer’s Daughter” is a bit too “vanilla”, even for me.  But, Brian Wilson sings it so sweetly and it works.  In fact, many of the songs from their early albums are a bit embarrassing to listen to now.  Remember “Chug a Lug”?  Probably not- it’s not that memorable.  But, basically, it’s about drinking beer…root beer!  I’ve played that song for people over the years and it’s embarrassing every time I do.  But for some reason, I really like that song.  It’s just a song a bunch of teenage friends, brothers, and cousins wrote and sang together for fun.  And their voices are so “cute” that you can’t help but smile while singing.

Speaking of SMiLE, I wonder if these early songs gave Brian Wilson some influence over his most notable work.  He wanted SMiLE to be something fun- something that was brilliant, but also made you not take the music so seriously.  He always seemed stuck in a child-like state.  I wonder if he looked back on these early songs and thought, “Yeah, I’d like to get back to that fun again.  How do I do that while still sounding cool, complex, and relevant?”

One other album I love so much (which you’ll see plenty of videos from here on the music blog) is the Beach Boys Christmas Album from 1964.  It’s one of my absolute favorite albums of all time.  Why?  Well, it fits all the criteria I listed above!  It’s great music with the wonderful innocence and happiness of Christmas built right in.  Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face (musically) than their Christmas songs.

I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for many more updates to the Laptop Sessions Acoustic Cover Songs Music Video Blog in the coming days.

“Wonderwall” (Oasis Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your wonderful Monday edition of The Laptop Sessions!

Wait, did I use the words “wonderful” and “Monday” in the same sentence?  Why, yes I did!

I woke up this morning to the awesome news of there being a 90 minute delay to the start of my school day.  Always good news to wake up too.  Then, all I had to do today was finish one lesson I started Thursday, and give a quiz to two classes (one of which was very adamant in not taking the quiz today, despite the multiple times I mentioned to them Thursday that the quiz would take place on the next school day).

Well, despite that, I close out today with a great new band to add to our session library.  It’s a band that has been around for almost 20 years now.  The band is Oasis, and today’s song is possibly their most popular song called “Wonderwall”.

Here’s a song that i’ve known how to play for some time.  One thing that always bugged me is a person I used to know (was a boyfriend of a family member) who also played a cover of this song, but repeated the verse chords throughout the whole song, and couldn’t realize the fact he was doing it wrong!  Ugh, it was hard sitting through that.

So i’m glad I can provide you with a solid version of the song tonight.  It’s one of my better videos, despite my forgetting the 4th and 5th words of the final chorus.  Oops.

But regardless, it’s here for you and I hope you enjoy it.  I’ll be back for your holiday edition of The Laptop Sessions (my first one of the year ironically) on Thursday.  Each of us has 3 videos to go for the year!

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!