Everything to lose - (Gm Blues)

Recommendation: This is best experienced in headphones nice and loud! It has a deep solid beat that needs to be felt and there is lots of stuff going on which works extremely well in the headphones!

This is a kind of funky rock piece based around a Gm blues progression. I recently got a new guitar toy... A Gibson Les Paul Robot... In my few hours of playing it and getting to know it I came up with this pattern and really enjoyed how it sounded and felt. So I laid down the primary guitar track. I purposefully went for a little of a live kind of loose jam type feel.

I took a lesson from Mr. VicHolman (one of the real masters here at MacJams!) and laid in some drums manually. In the end I actually spent a great deal of time optimizing them for the sound I was looking for! (a drummer I am not!!!) Next I coordinated the bass with the drum track and things began to fall into place but I still wasn't sure where things were going yet. I also had no name for this tune... It was saved on disk as "Gm Blues".

I started to work on the lyrics and realized that recently I have been watching the world around me and becoming a little alarmed at how things are going, feeling a little trapped in the rat-race circuit. The lyrics blossomed out of these thoughts and the fact that at the end of the day when I see my wife and son, somehow the problems of the world are just not that big anymore.

This time I listened to my good MacJams friend Mr. LenGold and decided to just let go on the vocals. (Thank you so much Mr. Gold for the numerous votes of confidence on my prior songs!) I'm no Micheal2 or McKenzie and probably never will be but I just let go and sang and for the first time I'm actually pleased with the vocals and the harmonies. The harmonies drove me nuts... I kept forgetting how I inflected things, where I paused and it took like 9,999 takes to get a tight harmony track... well tight for me! I'm sure Mr. Micheal2 does this kind of thing his sleep! :-) But for me it was a lot of work! I can still pick out *MANY* flaws and it took a lot of takes and retakes to get it where it is now but I consider this a significant step in the right direction with vocals.

With that bare bones track pieced together I was really not sure if this had enough to really continue with. So I sent a rough draft off to Gail, DavisAmerica, Magnatone, EEFliess and a few others asking... "What do you think? Is it worth it!?" The resounding YES responses I got back kind of floored me... I figured this so far was just a mediocre fool around track but guess my MJ friends thought it had potential.

So I set about adding full sound bed and adding in various accents, cleaning up mistakes etc. As much as I can play guitar, I don't have a great feel for lead solos so I sent out a blanket request for help on that. I also wanted to get a more jazzy keyboard feel so I asked DavisAmerica to wave his magic wand over the track and that he did!

Gail seemed perfect to accent my somewhat weak vocals so I asked her to back me up. As usual in my experience her take fit PERFECTLY! A set of perfectly harmonized vocals that fit right in and added hauntingly good echo sound!

The result is better than I could have imagined. I hope you enjoy the listen as much as I have enjoyed the creation of this piece! It is different than any other piece I've tried and it opened up new avenues of ideas!

On this piece there are:

8 guitar tracks including the lead solos (5 MH, 1 Apocafunk, 2 EEFliess)
3 organ tracks (2 MH, 1 DavisAmerica)
1 bass track (MH)
1 drum track (MH)
1 piano track (MH)
4 vocal tracks (2 MH, 2 Gail60)
2 aux effects tracks

Credits:

MarkHolbrook : Composition, Lyrics, Main Guitar, Accent lead guitar, Organs, Bass, Drums, Main/Harmony Vocals, Arrangement, Mixing
Gail60: Hauntingly great backing vocals
Apokafunk: Scorching guitar solos
EEFliess: Additional sizzling accent guitar work
DavisAmerica: Jazz organ and highlights

I owe a deep heart felt thank you to the following people:

Mr. VicHolman - For some email drum tips and for making quality music that gives me something to aim for
Mr. LenGold - For the numerous strokes of confidence in my vocals over the past few songs
Mr. Micheal_Wark - For a pre-listen with some great thoughts on how to make this better and being an inspiration with his amazing music
Ms. Gail60 - For her enthusiastic reply when I asked if I should bother with this. AND for her killer backing vocals
Mr. DavisAmerica - For the most amazing Jazz Organ addition I would have imagined along with NUMEROUS wonderful comments and support
Mr. Apokafunk - For a sizzling set of guitar solos that rocked this tune and my world
Mr. EEFliess - For additional smokin accent guitar work and help with title ideas
Mr. Drakonis - For a preview and words of wisdom on this piece.
Mr. Dick Langford - For work on the guitar solos. Thanks so much Dick!
Ms. Magnatone - For previews and kind words of encouragement