My rendition of 'Holiday' by the Kinks

Community Recordings Audio-Video Of You Playing
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Well.
This is my second video.
The first was just done via my telephone.
This one is Video from the phone and audio from my daw for better sound quality, I hope.

*This whole video/audio is with much thanks to *
@Siff
Thank you so much Marcel for helping me along with putting this together.
I was having a horrible time with putting video and audio together and @siff gave me many pointers as to how to accomplish this.
I’m still unsure of myself, but I seem to have got the task done.

Sorry about the dark video, again. If you view it in a dark room, it’s better. But not by much. I’ll really have to work on this lighting thing. I seem to be most creative in the early morning when it’s dark out. Again, my normal lighting in my house is what your seeing on this video.

This is a song by the kinks. I believe off their Muswell Hillbillies album. The real song is done pretty much with a piano. I don’t have a piano, I have a guitar, so I adapted it to my version.

This is only me and my guitar. No backtracks involved.

Got me a couple of glitches in playing this song. But I’ll take it for all the grief it caused me in the recording of the song. I think I spent more time with the computer and video camera than I did with the recording of it. And I went through several takes of playing this song before I played it ‘about’ like I wanted it to.

Anyways.
Any and all criticism is welcome as to my playing, and video/audio too for that matter since it’s my first attempt at doing a separate audio and video track.

This is another song I’ve done w/o a guitar pick. I’m finger pickin. Which I am only fair at. But I like to sounds of what I get when I do it that way.

Both parts live miced.
If it makes any difference to anyone.

Guitar is a Casino (China)
Amp is a '65 Princeton reverb-amp reissue.
Amp mic is a focusrite condenser mic that came with the 2i2 bundle.
Vocal mic is a dynamic realistic mic I got from somewhere, sometime. In other words, I don’t know where I got this mic at.

DAW is waveform12
Video is DaVinci Resolve.

Thanks Marcel @Siff

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Love it!

I’m happy I could help. Sounds great and crisp!

Really cozy and cute song with nice old-timey bass lines :ok_hand:

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Thanks for the listen and kind words Marcel.
It really is a fun song to do.

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Jim, I loved your rendition of the song. It was fun and timely for the holidays. I think that fingerpicking was a good decision. I hadn’t heard the song before and did a quick listen of the “original audio” version on YouTube and I can see how that fingerpicking has some parts of the piano and guitar on the original.

I viewed the video in the dark but could not see your guitar. Perhaps a small lamp in your playing area would help with the lighting. The audio sounds good. I’ve only recorded on my phone and haven’t done a live DAW recording yet or tried to combine with the video, so my hat is off to you for getting this done.

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That was terrific Jim. You did a super job of playing a piano song on guitar. Clean, clear fingerpicking and a great vocal too. Well done.

The Kinks are a classic case of “this should be easy enough” but there’s more to their songs than meets the eye. I’ve been trying Sunny Afternoon on and off for ages and can’t get that descending base line. :woozy_face:

Have you paid your electricity bill? :joy:

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Very cool - Vocals remind me of Lou Reed :slight_smile:

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Well played and sung, lovely tone on the guitar, a morning treat. Bravo Jim.

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Hi Jim ,
What a lovely song :sunglasses: :clap: :clap:
It made me very happy, especially after I had shaken this off.

…if you don’t mind, I’d rather not do that… :grimacing: … We call it a darkened room here :smile:

Greetings

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That was great Jim. Great playing and singing, and sounds like you got the video & audio thing sorted.

Some extra light would be good. I could only just make out your guitar faintly and it would be good to see what’s going on. Cameras are much more sensitive to getting light right than human eyes - what we can see in just fine can be way too dark for a camera. I’d suggest you eliminate any bright stuff from the background (i.e. your PC screen) as that throws off the camera’s auto adjustment. Also, get a desk lamp, put it out of frame in front of you / beside the camera (but not close) and light you & the guitar up. That would do it.

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Thanks for the listen and kind words Steve.
Cool ya went and had a listen to how it is really supposed to sound. I’ve heard it many times, but not recently.
Glad ya found that I was able to get some parts of the piano and some of the guitar. It’s the hazard of playing by yourself. A balance between playing all parts (or at least enough to get the idea of the song to others). All in one sitting.

The audio of my phone is my motivator (phone audio sucks imho) to doing the audio/daw combo. So far, it’s making me crazy and taxing my computer skills to the max. Give it a try if ya want to get frustrated. :wink: To me, the frustration was worth it though. I’m way more happy with the daw audio than the phone audio.

Thanks for the listen and kind comment. When I started learning this song, I’d forgotten that it was a piano song. To me, it sounds like it should be a piano song too. For an unknown reason, the feel of the song was transferable to guitar.
Agreed on this should be easy enough. Ray Davies imho is a genius. His songs sound real simple, but in reality are quite complex.
I’ve not tried Sunny Afternoon. After Marcel did his version, I could see myself motivated to give that one a try too at some point. That’s a fun song too.

:slight_smile: That made me LOL. Yep, it’s paid up. Electricity is high on the list of things I gotta pay. No electricity, no electric guitar… :wink:

Thanks for the listen Paul, and glad ya enjoyed it.
Actually, your kinda my motivator for doing daw/video. I’ve watch a couple of your songs and I really liked the way they came out. I wanted to to that too.

Thanks for the listen and kind words David.
Especially about my singing. Up until pretty recent, I never really sang to much. I have no singing in my background, musical instruments, yes, but not singing. So I really appreciate that comment.
Cool, so happy ya liked my guitar tone. That’s the easy part :wink:
A live mic’ed casino into a prri is the tone I was chasing. It just took me a while to find out that was what I needed.

Thanks for the listen and kind words Rogier.
I’m pretty much into happy music. There is much music that don’t meet that criteria. That music I don’t try to play either. So my mission was accomplished. Thanks man.

Thanks for the listen and kind words JK. I’m not so sure I got it sorted, but I’m gonna keep trying as I’m a believer in ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.
I’m only kinda catching on about this camera thing. Agreed. Background light throughs the camera off.
I’m having a horrible time finding a place to put the camera at. So that it can see all of me.
I tried a real camera and the telephone. But finding someplace to set it that captured me and my guitar was near impossible to find. In the end, I used the telephone sitting on a brownie mix box, the back of the telephone rested against a dining room table center piece. I moved that camera to several different places all w/o satisfaction.
I think I’ll keep looking for a new location for it.

Thanks to all for having a listen to me and all the kind comments.
Positive reinforcement is a real motivator I think.

6 Likes
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That was really nice Jim. Loved the fingerpicking and the vocals were great as well.

You just need to make sure you spotlight yourself. :wink:

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Perhaps ya hit the nail on the head there Stefan. I don’t want anyone to see me? Maybe?
But I’ll revert to it’s just my normal lighting.
I really do have intention of improving that. Though I’ve done it twice now. I gotta make more effort to make a change.

Thanks for the listen and kind words and observation (I’ll be considering this thought).

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Excellent Marcel!:clap::clap::clap:

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Like Siff said, man this sounds crisp and nice.

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Thanks for the listen and kind words Raz.
Crisp and nice is really a nice compliment. Thanks Marcel and Raz.

:slight_smile: Agreed Ian. w/o @siff help, I’d have been working for years to get this video/audio made. Marcel went above and beyond in helping me.
With luck, I’ll be using his education much in the future.

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That was very very cool :sunglasses: Jim. Very enjoyable.

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Apologies Jim, I got you and Marcel mixed up. Nonetheless both the rendition and teccy input were first class!:clap::clap::clap:

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Thanks for the listen and kind words Eddie. Much appreciated.

Ian @MadModMcd

:slight_smile: No problem Ian. Marcel helped me so much in this video (short of the dark video, that was my unfortunate idea), that I wasn’t sure ya weren’t complimenting him since he really was instrumental (pun intended) in the making of the video. The way I see it is that w/o his help, I’d still be fighting that davinci program w/o a video. He really does deserve credit for contribution to me being successful in putting that video together.
No harm done at all, glad ya enjoyed the song, and good, Marcel got some noted credit too. :slight_smile:

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Looking forward to your next one mate :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::+1:

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@MadModMcd

:slight_smile: