The Long and Winding Road

Community Recordings Audio-Video Of You Playing
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I like to play a lot of Beatles songs. I can’t help it, their my favorite band. But this one I never really did much with.
I decided to change that so about a month ago I went to learning it.

While I’ve learned a few faster songs, this is one of the slower ones I’ve tried to learn.
My goodness. Playing slow is just near as hard as playing fast. At least as far as keeping tempo goes I found it to be.
Best I can figure, this song (the real song by the Beatles) is at about 64 bpm. I just couldn’t get that slow, so I upped it to 72 bpm. Even that was hard to keep at it’s slow pace.

Anyway.

This one is audio only, sorry, no pics of me doing it.

It’s 5 tracks. There are 2 vocal tracks, one is a copy of the other. Though the original track has mild daw reverb added along with a daw 3 band eq, the copy track is dry.

There are 2 guitar tracks, but are their own tracks unto them selves. Both tracks the same guitar, a Casino. However I used two different amps. Both amps are live mic. The main track (the arpeggios) is a '65 Princeton Reverb-amp, reissue. I had fun with that one. 1st time I’ve turned it up to get some natural tube breakup. Oh Yeah. It was kinda loud to record as breakup don’t start till about 5 on the vol. dial, but I just turned down the recorder to compensate for the loud amp. Man, that was just a whole lotta fun! I think it added to my version of the song. I also had mild onboard reverb and tremolo via the amp to that track.
The second track is just strumming some chords. A bit of reverb on a Supro Blues King 12. That amp was just set for clean tones.
The last track is my maracas. I’ve used the shaker egg before on another track and it worked well. I just wanted to mix it up a bit so used maracas instead on this song.

This was a interesting song to try to cover since the original is mostly a orchestra. In lieu of a orchestra, I used two guitars with a amp set for mild breakup. Surely gives it a different flavor I think.

Anyways.
Like usual. There’s mistakes, hopefully not so audible, but if they are, it’s just ‘the way it is’ for when I play it seems. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to get through a whole song w/o errors. Which would be one of my goals.

Like usual. I’m looking for constructive criticism as I’m always wanting to do whatever song I’m doing better.
Any comments are welcome.

Sorry about the shaky, off pitch (at various places) vocals, I still say, I don’t sing!

8 Likes
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Was about to say “Add some drums”, but it was super enjoyable and soothing the way you arranged it with those organic maraca crescendos. Everything felt “more human” in a enjoyable way.

Well done! :v:

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That was enjoyable Jim and nice production as well. I liked the backing and enjoyed the maracas too.

If you’re not a singing, your not a singer but well done for singing.

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Hi Jim,

that was an enjoyable and delightful listen. Well done! :clap: :smiley:

Even though it’s slightly faster than the Original (as you said, I wouldn’t have noticed), it had this very relaxed feel and vibe. The two guitar tracks fit together nicely and really backed-up each other making the production more wholesome. Great arrangement for those. Also liked the maracas. They added to the laid back vibes and fit better then whole percussion, let’s say. They kind of keep it smooth and calm. :slight_smile:

For a non-singer, the singing went quite ok. :+1:

Overall, a very cool production! Thanks for sharing. :slight_smile:

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Thanks Marcel, I appreciate the kind words. I hear ya about adding some drums. I’d like to do that to anything that I’ve done but alas, I’ve no access to anything, other than what’s prerecorded on the www. I have used that sometimes, but also, sometimes, I just want it to be me as in this song.

Thanks for the listen and kind words, especially on the production. I’m quite new to any kind of production.
Point taken on my singing. I like your attitude and will keep it in mind.

Thanks for the listen and kind words Lisa.
Yep, the slow tempo of this I find hard to do. @ 64bpm it was killing me to keep in tempo. So I sped it up, a shade trying to keep it mellow, as this song is surely mellow. Thanks for the comment on the guitars working together. I was trying to get the crescendos and decrescendos by adding the second guitar. Perhaps it worked? Trying to make 2 guitars sound like a orchestra was what I was trying to do.
Yep, I do think of myself as a non singer. I really don’t sing. Singing is real new to me. Makes me feel good that you think it’s ‘‘quite ok’’. That’s a very nice comment.

Thanks everyone for the comments on the maracas. They seem to work for percussion so will likely continue to use them or the likes when I want a song to be just me.

On a side note and fwiw. I did use a metronome when doing this song. imho, it sure helped me keep slow and in tempo.

Thanks Folks.

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That was a nice production Jim, I especially liked the way the 2 guitar tracks blended together. Might benefit from panning one track right and the other left in your DAW.
May I ask why you used a copy for your 2nd vocal track? If you’re aiming for a stereo effect it tends not to work, as even panned left and right, (and even with effects on one copy) your brain kind of interprets the two identical tracks as one mono track. You get a much better stereo effect, and a “thicker” sound if you actually record a second vocal. I’m no expert btw, I’ve just started experimenting with double-tracking :grinning:

You don’t sing, then with a bit of practice, you do. For a non-singer, you’re off to a reasonably good start. Your timing is good, and that’s really important.

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Thanks for the listen and compliment and suggestions too.
I just went back and looked at my daw. I find I had the arpeggios mostly centered. I consider that the main guitar track. I did pan the other guitar, the chords to .32 R. Do you think it’d be a benefit to run both further L and R? I will give this a try on whatever the next song is.
As for the vocals and the copy. I’ve had the benefit of collaborating with someone else (who knew how to operate a daw pretty good). This is who ‘was’ teaching me how to use a daw. She’s the one that made that suggestion as for the copy of the vocal. I’ve been running them @ .33 L and R. She said it sounds fuller. I agreed, so I do that.
What I didn’t try was, singing it twice and listening to the first track while I did the second. I did do multi efforts at singing. I did try to mix the two. But since I did them individually, they didn’t mesh, so didn’t use that idea. Thanks for giving me ideas for the next time. Perhaps I’ll try to sing along w/myself and see how that goes. I know I’d love to do that and I have tried to harmonize with myself. Only on one song did that ‘kinda’ work out. But I think I will try what your saying too. Thanks. Appreciate the insight.
fwiw, what I think I need is to collaborate with someone again, specially if they’re better than me at controlling the daw. At playing guitar too for that matter :wink: . It was fun when I was doing that + I was learning some new tricks at playing better when I was collaborating.

I need to get back into the lessons here. Kinda started again today back at square one. The lesson have been modified since the last time I worked with them. I’m starting a lesson one to try and be sure I ain’t got me some bad habits or perhaps have missed something.

Thanks, For sure man, practice makes perfect, agreed. Kind words like that will likely keep me trying and I’m a believer in nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I’m likely to torture folks (for good or bad) with more of my trying… Thanks for your positive comment and urging me forward.

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TBH I didn’t notice any separation until I listened again with the knowledge that the chords were panned right, then I could hear it. If you were after a stereo effect, I’d maybe give the guitar tracks a bit more separation, either one centred and the other at say .40 to .50 R, or pan both tracks .20 to .25 L & R. If you’re NOT after the stereo effect, then it’s fine as it is to give you a fatter sound

Kind of answered this above, but why not try it at the editing stage and see how it sounds? if you like it, leave it in, if you don’t like it, roll it back; then you can tell busybodies like me “I tried that and it didn’t sound good”

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Very good ! Love it ! Thanks a lot :pray:

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@theoldman66, Thanks for the thought Ian. I will give your thought a try on whatever comes up next. These kinda comments to me are most wanted by me. Thank You.

Thank Luc! @BigLuc.
The prri and casino work pretty darn good imho for this song. :wink:

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Well first, I encourage you to keep up with the singing. You have great tone IMHO. Off pitch only a few times but nothing painful to this listener. I have off pitch moments, I’m sure, too. Probably more than I know. So please continue on that :revolving_hearts:

The song is very pretty and you did it much justice. I’m taking in some of the critique from some of the above posts. You got some good advice that I can also use. Anyway, well done, Jim!

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Thanks Pamela @pkboo3 for your kind words on the song and encouragement on my singing. I need encouragement. :slight_smile:

While I don’t know this is true, but I for sure sing bass. Anything above middle C is a stretch for me.
Many songs seem to be sung @ tenor (especially Beatle music, Paul) and above. I can’t do tenor so I gotta drop a a octave. Then the song don’t sound right, to me. I have to learn to deal with this as I can’t change my bass voice.

Very cool.
I do that too. That’s one of the things I like about these forums. The insight is everywhere if ya look for it.

Thanks for the listen and kind comment.

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Hello Jim, some very sweet playing in your performance and such a beautiful song! To be honest while listening I thought you didn’t hit some notes on tune and on some other many notes your voice was very pleasant to the ear…I would encourage you to listen back and detect when you’re not on tune, despite of that I found the performance overall enjoyable, thanks for sharing it :blush:

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Thanks for the kind words SILVIA and the tips on things that need improving.

Agreed. Thanks for the heads up.
I will be working on this for sure.
And I do hear them notes. Please continue with more comments like this. I need to be aware.

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Hi Jim,

Is there a way of accessing the song without having to install additional software?
It’s wanting to install zip extractor on my PC when i click your link.

Digger

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Well that’s a darn bummer Stephen.
Worse yet, I don’t think I can help. Ya shouldn’t need anything to access this. It’s on google drive. It’s set to anyone having the link can access it. It should be just a clickable link (url).

Hope ya can figure a way around that as it shouldn’t need any further software.
Thanks for ‘trying’ to listen to it. Sorry it’s giving you the blues.