Jeffstunes on Youtube

I made a decision to seek out some local musicians to help me out with my album project.
The biggest problem with my composing is on the music side of things. I think that I pen good songs, and that has been confirmed by many musicians and industry pro's.
I am satisfied with my lyrics, and the general melodies, and hooks etc. The problem comes when I try to get the song out of my head into musical form. Because I only play basic guitar, I cannot seem to add the expression I want from the musical instruments. Like I do with the vocals. I'm sure that I will in time, but I really want to get this album out before the end of this year.
I was talking to a mate of mine who goes to occasional karaoke, and I found out that he was in a band. He has requested my company a number of times at an open mic night. So I finally went on wednesday.
Towards the end of the night I got up and performed 2 songs, with the aid of a friendly guitarist.
I must admit that I really enjoyed the night. The venue sort of reminded me a bit of the cavern club (of beatles fame). It was all underground, and mainly arches. The acoustics were great because the long arches created a funnel effect for the sound. Nice and loud.
At the end of the night, I was approached by a few of the musicians. Who asked me to come down and perform again. So I said I would learn one of their songs if they would learn one for me. We were all in agreement. So it looks like I'll be doing it again soon.

This experience sparked an idea. I could visit a number of open mic nights and get chatting with some of the musicians. Then see if any of them are interested in helping me out with developing my album. I'll make a CD of a few songs for them to listen to. If they like it then we will take it from there

I'm going to be putting more about this in my blog, as it happens. I found 2 potential musicians on wednesday, though nothing is in concrete until they are sitting in my studio, recording with me.

What's been going on with the Youtube figures. They have a habit of changing things, and this time they've removed the total video views from their statistics. So I had to do a manual count up. Here's the latest:

Subscribers have climbed to 746.
Channel views have increased to 17,049.
The total video viewings are now at 262,877.

You can visit my Youtube channel at the following link:

Jeffstunes Youtube channel

Right. I've got to go and learn "Afternoons and coffee spoons" for the next open mic night

I chose to do a different song, but remain with the same band. Coldplay. After I had put up "Violet hill", I got a large number of requests to try "Viva la vida". Too many requests to ignore really. So I set about recording that one. It's another one from their latest album with the same title.

I know that some people think that it's a bit of a cop out to do cover songs to backing tracks, but I always find a use in everything I attempt in music. I really want to improve my production skills. It's great to record all the musical parts perfectly, but if the mix doesn't sound right, then all your efforts are for very little.

I've recently been trying to match the vocal production in the last few songs, to the original songs. I think it's made a big difference in the result, and I'm learning how to produce my vocals in different ways, for different types and styles of music.

I've used a vocal boost on this one. Plus low to moderate plate reverb in the verses. Chorus and a heavier plate reverb in the chorus.

Here it is. Viva la vida.

Now for some up to date figures from my Youtube account.
Subs have come and gone, but yesterday I awoke to the pleasant sight of 6 new subscribers. That puts the figure at 727.
Channel viewings are currently 16,529.
The overall video viewings have made it! They've gone past the quarter million views. All of this within a year of putting up my first Youtube video. The current figure now stands at 254,512.

I'm hoping I can now do that old album track cover that I said I was going to do in the first place

Now for some covers. This one is a relatively new song, and it's called "Violet hill". It's covered from the new coldplay album "Viva la vida".
I've got a number of Coldplay songs lined up to do, and this is the first out of that selection. It was extremely hard to get the falsetto on this song, so I dropped the music by a semitone. I still struggled to reach the highest note, but did get there in the end.

It's been a bit noisy above my village this past weekend. I live quite near to a place called Goodwood. One of the annual events they hold is called "The festival of speed". So while it was on, I snapped a few of the aircraft from my back garden. I have added those to the vid. All I'm going to say is that one in particular got very close, and it wasn't a small aircraft!!!

Check out my cover of this brilliant song, and see my snaps:

The Youtube stats are still moving well.
I've now got 721 subscribers.
Channel views are up to 16,254.
The overall video views are so close now. 249,532. Barring disasters, it will pass the quarter of a million tomorrow

It's quite likely that my next song will be another Coldplay tune. I've got my eyes on an album track from a few years ago

This is the third of my old original songs selection. The title of this one is "Winner". The lyrics can be interpreted in many different ways, but I wrote it for mistaken friends who need support.

This is another number that was written with Mick Paul. I've put some information about what Mick is up to now.
If you watched the last vid I posted, you will have learned that Mick played bass on a David Hasselhoff single. I don't think there's many individuals who don't know who the Hoff is. He's been in smash hit shows such as "Knight rider", "Baywatch" and "America's got talent".

This is "Winner" by Mick and I:

Mick is quite busy doing the touring thing at the moment, with an outfit named "The David Cross band". David Cross was once part of a band called "King Crimson". They had quite a big following. If you come from Italy, There's a good chance that you've heard of David Cross. He's pretty popular there, and it's one of the reasons why most of Mick's touring takes place in Italy.

Now for some youtube statistics news.

My subscribers have seen a really good jump in the last few days. Racing past the 700 barrier to 717.
The channel views have rolled along to 16,017. Another barrier broken.
Finally the overall video views are still racing forward. They are now at 246,003. I was hoping that they might reach the quarter million by the 17th July. Which is the first year anniversary of my first video upload to Youtube. It's looking like it's going to get there on the 15th!!

I'm probably going to do a few coldplay covers in my next few videos, and I'm hoping to bring some more news about my forthcoming album release.
I've set up a mailing list for first hand news about progress on the album. I will only be using the email addresses for that purpose. It's so I can tell anyone interested about events regarding the album, before the information is made public.

If anyone wants to to join it, they can go to the homepage on my website and register. Here's the address:

Jeffs music

Bye for now

It's the 2nd of 3 songs written by Mick Paul and I a while back, that I have chosen to put on youtube. Ths one shows off Mick's Bass skills a bit. I just wanted acoustic guitar and Bass in this, and I think it worked quite well. The vocals drift off key in a couple of places. This song, and most of the others written with Mick. were written hours before they were recorded, so I'm not really surprised at the mistakes.

The song is about a contreversial subject, though I'm not going let you know what it means here. You'll have to watch the video to discover it. I reveal the meaning at the end. It puts a whole new angle on the lyrics.

Returning to Mick. Here is some information on the history so far of this very talented guy:

Played on 2 singles in 1970.
Joined "The Hotshots" in 1973. They had a number 4 hit.
Joined "Union express" in 1974 and toured around Europe for 2 years.
From 1978, he did some session work for the B.B.C. and for a various number of publishers.
He was also an in-house bass player at Abbeydale studios in West London.
Co-wrote the Labour Party campaign song in 1987.
Joined "More tea vicar in 1990.
He wrote and performed on a single called "Aquarius" for Yello records, produced by Tyrrell.
Played on the "David Hasselhoff" single "If we could only say goodbye" (Yes. The Hoff).

and more..

I'll give a web link to his recording studio in West Worthing, southern England:

Froosound Recording Studio

Mick is the person doing all the music in this song. He also did the music for the song in the previous post, and the next post I do.

The title of this song is "Losing my mind". I hope you like it, and the Bass playing

Now for the Youtube stuff.
Subs are up to 692.
Channel views are now at 15,540.
The overall vid views are 237,970. Still on target to hit a quarter of a million by the 17th of July. climbing at about a thousand views a day.

Coming next is the third of the old original songs, featuring Mick Paul.
I'm still working hard on the album. I had a song in my head, as I was waking up yesterday. A strange way to discover a song, but I thought it was very good. I'm going to put the track together to see what it sounds like in real life, and if it's good enough, it can go on the album.

I'm going to go back in time a little with three selected songs I wrote when I first started to record music seriously.
A few years ago I wrote and recorded 9 songs in about a teo week period with a very talented guy called "Mick Paul".
Mick is a fantastic bass player and has done a lot in his career to date. He owns his own recording studio, and that is where all of those 9 songs were recorded.
I've picked 3 of those songs to upload to youtube, and this is the first of them.
This one is called "Amber falls". It's a pretty dark song. I wonder if you can work out what the song is about, before the video tells you near the end.

Check out the video here:

I have put some snippets of info about Mick in this first video, and I will be adding more to the following 2 videos. It's possible that you may recognise a name or two from the information to come.

I added a warning in the video description of this particular song, because the song has what is known as "Speaker busters". Extremely deep high volume bass notes, that can cause damage to a bass speaker when it's turned up full. I just thought I'd let you know that.

Now for a youtube update.

I'm only 10 away from 700 subscribers now. So I've currently got 690.
The channel viewings have increased to 15,424.
The overall video views are up to 235,621. The way things are going, I might hit the quarter million by the first year anniversary of my first video upload.

Coming next is the second of these three old original songs.