Jeffstunes progress on Youtube

I made a decision to look for local musicians to get involved 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'm very happy with my lyric writing, and the general melodies. 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 can with the vocals. I'm quite sure that I will be more capable of that in time, but I would really like to release the album before the end of this year.

I was chatting to a friend of mine who goes to the odd karaoke, and I discovered that he was in a band. He asked me several times to come with him to an open mic night. So I did 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.

All of this gave me an excellent idea. I could go to various open mic nights and get to know a number of local musicians. Then find out if they are interested in helping me develop 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 check out my channel on the following link:

Jeffstunes Youtube channel

Now I have to go and learn "Afternoons and coffee spoons" for my next appearance at the open mic night :)

It's all good fun.

I decided to change my choice of song, but stay with the same group. Coldplay. After I had put up "Violet hill", I got a large number of requests to try "Viva la vida". There were too many to to pass it off. So I deided to record that one next. 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 way of learning something in most things I do. I really want to improve my production skills. It's ok to record all the right bits for your song, but if the mix isn't produced properly, then all that work means very little.

One of the aspects I've been concentrating on is vocal production, and I've been trying to match that of the original song. It's made a big difference to my ears, 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 I'v added a measure of moderate plate reverb in the verses. Chorus and a heavier plate reverb in the chorus.

This is the result. Viva la vida.

Now for the statistics digest for my Youtube channel.

Subs have come and gone, but yesterday I awoke to the pleasant sight of 6 new subscribers. That puts the figure at 727.

The channel views are now up at 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. At the last check, the number stood at 254,512.

Hopefully I can now go back and do that old Coldplay album track :)

Now for some covers. This one is quite a recent tune, and is 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. I really struggled with the falsetto in this one, so I had to take the music down a key. 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 a few miles away from 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've put those in the video. 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 now have 721 subscribers in total.

My channel viewings are now up to 16,254.

The total viewings of all my videos are a shave away from that milestone. 249,532. If nothing drastic happens, it should pass the quarter of a million tomorrow morning :)

My next one will probably be another Coldplay song. There's a track on one of their albums that I've always wanted to sing :)

This is the third of my old original songs selection. This is a song called "Winner". The words can be interpreted in different ways, but the meaning I attach to it is for mistaken friends who need support.

This song was also co-written with Mick Paul. I finish off with details about what mick is up to now in his music career.

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. After being in such shows as "Knight rider", "Baywatch" and "America's got talent".

Here is "Winner":

Mick is spending a good deal of his time touring at the moment, with a band called "The David Cross band". David Cross used to be in 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 here's the regular Youtube numbers update.

My subscribers have seen a really good jump in the last few days. Racing past the 700 barrier to 717.

Channel viewings cruised to 16,017. That's the 16k 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. At this rate, it looks like it's going to get there on the 15th!!

I'd like to get a few Coldplay covers done for my next videos, and I'll hopefully be bringing some more news on the progress of my upcoming album release.

I've created a mailing list for album news. 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 gives you a taste of Mick's bass skills. I just wanted acoustic guitar and Bass in this, and I think it worked quite well. The vocals are a little off key in 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 vid to find out. I reveal the meaning near the end of the video. It gives a completely new angle on the words.

Getting back to Mick. Here's some information on 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 Europe for 2 years.

From 1978, he did some session work for the B.B.C. and for a various number of publishers.

Did a stint as an in-house bass player at Abbeydale studios in West London.

He co-wrote the Labour Party campaign song in 1987.

Joined "More tea vicar in 1990.

Wrote and played on a single called "Aquarius" for Yello records, which was produced by Tyrrell.

Played on the "David Hasselhoff" single "If we could only say goodbye" (Yes. The Hoff).

and there is 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 here is the latest youtube account stats.

Subs are up to 692.

Channel views are now at 15,540.

The total video views are now at 237,970. Still on schedule to reach a quarter of a million by the 17th. Rising at roughly a thousand views a day.

Next up is the third and final upload of my three old original songs.

I'm still beavering away on my 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 makes the grade, then I'll consider putting it on my album.

I'm going to revisit 3 chosen songs I composed when I first started recording my music seriously.

Several years ago I penned and recorded nine songs in roughly 2 weeks with a very talented musician going by the name of "Mick Paul".

Mick is a fantastic bass player and has done a lot in his career to date. He also runs his own recording studio, and the nine songs I recorded with him, were done in that studio.

I've selected 3 of those 9 songs to put on youtube, and this one is the first of those choices.

The title of the song is "Amber falls". The meaning is quite dark. Let's see if you can work out the theme of the song, before the video informs you close the end.

Here it is:

I have put some snippets of info about Mick in this first video, and I will be adding more to the following 2 videos. There may be a name or two that some music lovers might recognise.

I put a warning in the video description of this song, because the song contains what is known as "Speaker busters". They are very deep and loud bass hits, that can possibly cause some damage to a bass speaker when it's on high volume. 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.

My channel views are now 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.

In my next post, I'll be bigging up the second of the three selected old original songs :).