The Soulpass Project

My dad used to sing the chorus to me when I was little, replacing “dear” with “son.” This recording is dedicated to him. According to the Wikipedia article, the song is credited to Davis and Charles Mitchell and was first recorded in 1940.

I didn’t even realize that the song has verses (just knew the chorus), but I just found out that it actually has a lot more than the three sections in the chart I originally found and used:

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms
When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and cried

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away

I’ll always love you and make you happy
If you will only say you’ll stay;
but if you leave me to find another
You will regret it all someday

I think it’s a beautiful song, and there are a bunch of great versions out there. Mine is rough in many spots, but I gave it a shot:

Tommy was humming it in the kitchen and made the suggestion for the recording… it was fun to make, but will probably be the last multi-instrument recording for a while. These are quite consuming, and my room becomes a mess
UPDATE: I found out today that this is the song that my grandfather sang to my grandmother, two hours before he died… whoa.

I don’t normally sing (because I’m not very good at it), and this is a rare case where my voice is in a public recording. It’s “The Bare Necessities,” by Terry Gilkyson, from the Jungle Book soundtrack. The chords are posted in a previous entry. I think it’s a great song!

Downloading is recommended; the quality is higher and streaming can sometimes be a pain.

I was looking for a chord chart for the “Bare Necessities” song from the Jungle Book soundtrack (used to think it was called “Bear Necessities,” but apparently it’s not). It turns out that the only charts I could find on the net seem a little incomplete and inaccurate. I put one together based on those, and I think it’s more useful and accurate:

The Bare Necessities, by Terry Gilkyson

Oh yeah, if you want to play along with the soundtrack, capo the 5th fret… it’s actually in the key of C; I think it’s easier to use the G formations, and that’s what the charts on the net use.

I think that this formation sounds best for the Cm:

e||---|---|-o-|---|
B||-o-|---|---|---|
G||---|---|---|---|
D||-o-|---|---|---|
A||---|---|-o-|---|
E|x---|---|---|---|

…it seems that it could be a cumbersome transition from Cmaj at first, so barring it sounds nice as well (just doesn’t have the open string sound). A barred C7 sounds nice too.

UPDATE: I’ve recorded it!

Patrick Carwile (on guitar) and I (mandolin) were able to get some jamming done last week. He kept a solid groove, and I tried to hack out some chops and improv. It’s just shy of 7 minutes, so to listen to the whole thing might require an appreciation for instrumental jamming. Otherwise, it might make some nice background music for 6 minutes and 57 seconds

UPDATE: Added bass track

Louis’ bodybuilding competition is coming up soon. The contestants are supposed to have a music clip to play while they do their poses, and he asked me to help him make an original recording for this year. He has choreographed a tribal routine, so I used the djembe and mixed in some lion roars using Audacity. Here is the story that he will be telling through his poses and the music: The spear bearer walks in. He hears a lion. He motions for the lion to come and fight! He wrestles the lion, and wins. He celebrates! He puts the lion on his back, but drops it. He picks it back up, and walks off stage.

The other day I dusted off the electric guitar… And an old reverb pedal. As it turns out, if you take a reverb pedal and turn it up as high as it will go, it can provide entertainment for a long time. So I made a recording, but I don’t know how many people are into this sort of thing. It’s around 18 minutes long Only 8.3MB though, which is good for that long a recording. For most people it might make better background music rather than trying to sit and listen to the whole thing. But I think some interesting things came out of it, including some weird rhythms in a couple parts.

Recently, I’ve started playing the guitar a little more often. This semester I had only been playing on occasion. So I need to make more time to do that. I might as well be somewhat constructive while wasting away the hours.

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting with some grooves and ideas for the past couple days. They’ll probably never be finished, but I decided to record what I’ve got. There are two of them, and they are short and sweet so they shouldn’t take long to download. If you have a broadband connection, you can try streaming them if you’d prefer to do it that way.

Unfinished #1 (1:14; 0.99MB)
DOWNLOAD or STREAM

Unfinished #2 (0:40; 550KB)
DOWNLOAD or STREAM

UPDATE: The site is back down, and the mirror is back up.

Dave’s Comprehensive Guitar Chord Calculator is really neat resource for guitarists. It is a “reverse chord calcultor.” When you have found a great-sounding chord, but are not sure what it’s called, this is where you would turn. You supply the finger positions on the fretboard, and it tells you what the name of the chord is! I used to use this a lot, but when I went to use it recently, I found that it has disappeard from the net! Luckily, I had saved a copy of the file. Remember, this is NOT my work, I am simply providing it here so that it can still be used. It is copyright 2001 d@vidwest.net. If I see that Dave has put the page back online, I will take this link down from the net and provide a link to his. One final note: Unfortunately, his script was designed with Internet Explorer in mind. Since I know you must be browsing with Firefox, I figured I should note that you might have to fire up Explorer for this one. Sorry bout that.

The original URL (down):
http://vidwest.net/chords/chords.htm

Here’s the link to the mirror copy:
http://soulpass.com/mirror/vidwest.net/chords/chords.htm

Thank you Dave, whoever you are, for this excellent resource!

Non Plus Ultra has changed their name to Hep Kat… Check out their new site @ http://www.hepkatonline.com/!! I went to the Virginia Chicken Festival today, and they were one of the featured bands. Needless to say, they were very tight and sounded great. It was good to see them again!

Well, I’ve hated “nu rock” (or pop rock, nu metal, whatever… the crap they are trying to pass off as “rock music” these days) since I first heard it. It just all sounds the same, it is annoying, it tries too hard, it fits into a box, it is made of plastic… Same goes for a lot of other new music that comes out today. Anyway, so a while back I found a website that illustrates how much it sucks. It contained an MP3 with two Nickelback songs meshed together; one in the left channel, and the other in the right channel. I just found the link again:

http://www.nintendorks.com/brandon/archives/000475.php (update: original page no longer online)

I saved a local copy of the MP3 for you to download… check it out!!! Alternatively, you can try streaming it.

When listening to it, you can play with the balance. Try moving the sound from the left channel to the right channel, and then back to the center