Little Wing, Jimi Hendrix

This week's song is an acoustic/instrumental version of "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix. No vocals this week, sorry. This is a song that I've always loved, and I first played it in 7th grade for a talent show along with my good friend, David Gross. I'd like to dedicate this post to him, happy travels Dave.

This song is one of those songs that I needed to learn when I started playing guitar, and to this day I still remember most of it. Most of the song is soloing though, and since this week's recording just features me, it gets cut a bit short. It's alright though, I think what I ended up with sounds almost halfway decent. If you've never heard the song, you can find it here. If you've never heard of Jimi Hendrix, I seriously suggest you look him up and spend some time familiarizing yourself with this guitar legend.

I hope you guys enjoy this weeks entry, next week's will be one of the requested songs so keep an eye out; it could be a song you requested.

Pursuit of Happiness, Kid Cudi

This week's song comes off of Kid Cudi's second studio album, "Man on the Moon: The End of Day" featuring cameos from both MGMT and Ratatat. With the enormous popularity of his single "Day 'N' Nite", Cudi has gone from unknown to household name in just a few short years.

If you've never heard any Kid Cudi, you can find this week's song here thanks to YouTube.

Publicly promoting the use of marijuana and recently featured in High Times magazine, this rap artist has become somewhat of a modern day Willie Nelson. His new song and smoking anthem "Pursuit of Happiness" seems to be an ode to his nightly pursuit of getting... happy.

This week's recording features both the guitar playing and vocals of my good friend David Daniels, without whom I could not have gotten this song done. Take a minute to check out his site, it's definitely worth your time.

-Look out for next weeks song.

Nostalgia, Courtesy of MySpace.

-This picture is from a show I played roughly 3 years ago, and God is it embarrassing. Yes, that's me in the middle.(Photo credits to Victoria Schwandt)

So last week I was a little bit sick, and it noticeably affected my performance. This week, I'm even sicker and so I wont be posting a new recording. I'll try and make up for it next week, I promise. But this week's blog post is just going to talk about my music MySpace page. I don't update it too much anymore, but it's definitely worth a look.

I started that page in 2006, and to be honest I haven't looked at the thing more than once or twice in the past year. Most of the music from that page is either from 2006 or earlier. It's really interesting to look back and see the things you've recorded years ago, and that's actually the main reason I started the page. One night I was looking through my files, and found a good 10 or 20 songs that were just me messing around and recording whatever I played. I began sifting through and pulled out a couple I thought were decent, and then posted them. From then I just sort of started posting whatever it was that I was doing at the time, and eventually grew away from it. However, the website still stands as a monument to what I was up to over 3 years ago.

The latest track posted, "Umami" I would consider one of the best ones up there. It's the only one featuring electronic instrumentation, and like the other songs I made it by myself, using up to 6 or 7 track layers per song. The beat in the background is a clip from a 20 minute keyboard session. I had actually recorded that session 2 years prior, but saved it in the wrong folder. I ran across it one day looking for something else, and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. I cut it out, looped it 10 or 20 times and then started recording over it. From that point I just recorded tracks over that until I felt I had achieved a full enough sound.

It's really great to be able to go back and look at something concrete out of your history, because once you start to think about a certain time memories flood back and you kind of forget about the present for a minute. It's a lot like watching a home video, where you can't believe that that's actually you learning to ride a bike, but you know it is. It conjures up memories that are stronger than the video, and takes you somewhere else. So listen to some of my memories and take some time to think back to what you were doing, what you were interested in and most importantly what you were like 3 years ago.

Check out the site, leave me some feedback and let me know what you think!

By The Way, The Red Hot Chili Peppers

(I highly suggest you scroll down and start the video before you read the whole article!)

This week's selection "By The Way" off of The Red Hot Chili Pepper's 2002 album is a personal favorite song of mine, and I am actually rather surprised with how well the recording turned out. Despite feeling a little under the weather, I'd like to think the vocal track isn't half bad.

I assume most of you know who The Red Hot Chili Peppers are, but for those of you who don't they're a funk-turned-rock band out of California (although Anthony is originally from Grand Rapids, MI). They've become one of the largest and most world renowned acts out of America, and to be honest if you haven't heard of them you must have been under a rock for the past 20 years. If you haven't heard "By The Way", check it out here.

I'm going to take a minute to shamelessly plug Anthony Keidis(the lead singer of RHCP)'s autobiography Scar Tissue. This man has lead one hell of a life and really gives you a new understanding of both the music and lyrics of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I've been completely enthralled in this book all week and its probably the main reason for this weeks song choice. If you've got some money burning a hole in your pocket, or a even library card, check this book out; it's definitely worth the read.

Now that I've sung this book's praises, I can blame it for almost making me miss this week's post. To be honest I didn't think this song would come together as well as it did, and with most of my time devoted to this book I had little time to rewrite this song. However with motivation in the form of 6 or 7 cups of coffee, I buckled down, got to work and produced a respectable piece of work. Let me tell you, caffeine is a hell of a drug; I produced this song in just 3 takes, which for a perfectionist like me me is quite impressive.

I hope you all enjoy my take on "By The Way", I can pretty confidently say that it's my best piece I've posted thus far. Let me know what you think!

Seven Nation Army, The White Stripes

The featured song this week is "Seven Nation Army", the arena anthem by Detroit-based duo The White Stripes. The song comes from their 2003 album Elephant, which carried them to stardom and brought them national fame. The song is characterized by a driving kick drum and Jack White's signature highly distorted guitar, making it a great candidate for this project; mostly because my version will feature neither of those.

I produced this weeks song on my own, and has kind of an odd story behind it. The chord progression I play in the verse of this song was from something I wrote earlier this week, for a duet with my violinist friend. It was written for a spur of the moment jam session, however it happened to fit pretty perfectly with the lyrics from this song, and so from that an idea was born.

I know the recording still isn't the greatest quality, but hang in there; I should have a new microphone next weekend to record with. I think I like this week's song a little more than my last entry, just because compositionally this one is a lot further from the original song. I wrote the verse in a 3/4 time signature to give it a waltz-like kind of feel, and it turned out pretty interesting.

So here's to Detroit, and to everyone connected to it in any way, shape or form. Contrary to popular belief, the motor city's still kicking, and so is it's music scene.