Reply To: Video Killed the Radio Star – Cover – Electric and Unplugged

[Peter DeLegge]

On Ross said

I like your vocal work, very Lennon-esque. Also like the cool processed vocal effect on this tune, I guess it’s coming from Ozone. I get it though, recording and mixing vocs can be challenging! I can also relate to your struggles physically. I’m in my early 60’s, have some chronic arthritic and tendon type pain/mobility issues as well. I do very little live playing anymore, in a church group for the last couple years, before that virtually nothing for over 2 decades. I have concentrated on honing my studio skills and techniques, but I’m mainly a musician and not an engineer, so the technical side has been a struggle to excel at. I basically fiddle until it sounds good to me, even if it’s some unconventional workflow! I use MIDI extensively as well. I have enjoyed collaborating with some other musicians online over the last couple years.

~Ross

Another comparison of my voice to Lennon! On SoundCloud someone even PMed me and gave me a compliment and told me to stop imitating John Lennon and try to sound like myself. I showed his message to my kids and they told me that the vocal sounded like my regular voice. In my 12 years playing semi-professionally, I only sang lead vocals one time. I was 18 and my musician and music teacher mother gave me the number of an agent. I spoke with him and he gave out my number to bands he maanged who needed a drummer or fill in drummer. He called me up one day and said, “My brother has a little band and the have a gig scheduled for next week. His drummer quit the band. They do Beatles songs. Could you do me a favor and do the gig?” Of course, I said yes. So I called his brother, Dave, a bass player obsessed with Paul McCartney (I was too, so we immediately hit it off), and the guitarist. We played around 10 songs, Dave sang. Dave and the keyboardist loved my drumming and we agreed that I would play the gig the next week.

So, I get to the gig — a dive bar in Chicago — for a sound check. We play a song and Dave looks at me during the song and says, “Sing!” I tell him that I only do background vocals. We stop the song and I tell him that I expected him to sing, he tells me — for the first time — that the drummer was their lead singer. I tell him that he has a better voice than me and needs to sing. He says he’s cancelling the show if I don’t sing. So, for one night of my life at a dive bar I was a singer. I got what seemed to be everyone at the bar to sing. And when I did, “All You Need is Love,” I realized that my voice fit John Lennon songs really well. Before that, I had never played drums or sang any Beatles songs, and I don’t think I ever preformed Beatles music again until around 4 years ago when I attempted to start recording music. I got my entire family — my wife and kids to join me on the harmonies for “All You Need is Love” and our cat also joins the production. Although, purists will hate that I did it in 4/4, purely due to the fact that it I didn’t want to deal with the odd time in my DAW. Pretty much, every cover I’ve done has some meaning to my life. But I’ve done a lot of songs Lennon sang, purely because they’re easy to sing. But it seems to invite the comparisons.

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