For those interested, I recorded the song entirely in Logic Express using my laptop. I used my lovely guitar Betsy (who turned 11 years old this month) for all the electric guitar parts, through a small Epiphone Valve Jr. amp; Stella, my acoustic guitar joined the fun on the chorus parts of the song.

I would like to than Ryan Flemming, who helped me with the bass guitar. He adds so much awesomeness to this song with his funky fresh groove. Thanks Ryan!

Hope you like it. I’ve embedded two version of the song below because I can.

Enjoy.

Humbly I’ll Fall  by  Samuel Febres

I was able to participate in two ways.

The first way was as a trio with a couple of friends. We did 4 songs that I wrote and a good time was had by all. I was very pleased with how things turned out with just one rehearsal. I’m looking forward to performing more with these guys as opportunities arise.

Unfortunately, I’ve only got a 30 second clip of a song we performed because the memory card ran out of memory, but it gives you a good idea of how we looked and sounded. Check it out below.

The 2nd way I was able to participate was through the Late Night Cafe which was part of a songwriting competition. To enter to competition, I had to submit an mp3 my song and my song was judged based on the mp3.

What was great about the competition this year was that we received the judging score cards to see how we were judged and it included comments from the judges. I didn’t win the competition, and the scoring wasn’t so great, but I am quite ok with that. My purpose for entering is more to get comfortable singing my songs out in public and to get a feel for how people like the songs.

Based on that, my songs are doing really good. When the band finished playing the set, I got quite a few compliments on a great set from folks, many whom I didn’t know (maybe they were just trying to be nice). In addition to that, once I finished performing at the Late Night Cafe, I got quite a few compliments as well from folks I didn’t know, in addition to a “you should have won”, and a request for a website or place to get a CD. I was very encouraged to hear that.

I would actually like to share the judge’s comments later, because I found a couple of them to be quite interesting. I’d like to get your opinion, dear reader, and thoughts the decisions the judges made, as well as your thoughts based on hearing the song.

Here’s the video of the song I entered for the Late Night Cafe. It’s called Humbly, I’ll Fall.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.
(Also, this wasn’t the most ‘respectful’ crowd with regards to performers and you can hear quite a bit of talking all throughout the songs. Sorry about that.)

I hope you like it. Thoughts are appreciated.

I Won’t Remain at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

Sing Alone at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

I really enjoy playing the verse chords on this track, they make me want to do ‘The Rock.’ You’ll have to ask me about ‘The Rock’ later, but I will say that it was born doing Isreal Houghton’s Not Forgotten when I was rockin’ it in San Antonio, Texas. I will say, I miss playing that song. Shout out to my buddy Guti on that one. Keep ‘The Rock’ alive in Texas.

I’m looking forward to playing this track with a full band. It should definitely be a fun song to do. Here’s Humbly I’ll Fall, the 7th song of the evening.

Humbly I’ll Fall at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

Anyway, I wrote and first recorded the song during a hurricane when I was home alone. I opened up the windows and doors and the wind felt great. It wasn’t a really bad hurricane, which just had a lot of wind and I mic’ed a guitar and did two tracks. It was definitely more of a wrist cutter with the slower tempo I originally recorded it in, and finger-picky and stuff but I’ve recently sped up the tempo and with a full drum kit and a distorted guitar, I think it sounded pretty good.

I originally didn’t have a name for the song, so I just called it Untitled, which isn’t very original. I decided though at some point, it should definitely get a more proper title so I opted for Terrible Summer, Bracing for the Fall, which is obviously a lame attempt at a joke, yet I still find funny.

Despite the electric guitar and drum kit being gone, this is the new and improved version faster version. It is the 6th song from the night.

Terrible Summer, Bracing for the Fall at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

I really like this song. I think the chord changes are nice and I enjoyed where I began to write it, which was in the built in amphitheatre in downtown Tallahassee at Kleman Plaza.

I happened to look up at the sky as the sun was setting and I could see it’s rays just shooting over the huge amount of clouds in the sky and it reminded me of a trip I took to Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was a weekend trip and the whole time we were there it was always dark and cold while there was light, you certainly couldn’t see the sun at all during the day.

I had sort of forgotten about the sun, but when our plane broke threw all the clouds on the way back home, it was just so beautiful to see the sun shining so bright. It was beautiful. Think Trinity in the 3rd Matrix movie when her and Neo break the clouds.

Anyway, here’s Clouds.

Clouds Performed at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

Otherwise, I thought it went ok. Gotta love Blake’s chimes and that rain wheel. Yes, I said wheel. You can’t really see it, but it’s a circlular ‘thingy’ that you spin. A more convenient rain stick. Awesome.

Here I Am at Acoustic Ovation, January 2009 from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

This is the second song from the set and it’s called What Dreams May Come.

OH! I forgot to mention, Blake and I didn’t decide to co-ordinate colors that night. Keila and or Nat (thank you girls for recording!) turned on the night vision feature of the video camera since it was kinda dark, so it gave us that green Matrixy kinda look.

Here’s What Dreams May Come

What Dreams May Come at Acoustic Ovation from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

I would like to thanks my friend and brother in law Blake for providing the percussive backgrounds that really actually made me sound good. Without him, I can envision FAIL.

Thanks Blake! Without further adieu, Stop Pretending.

This is only about the 2nd half of the song. The recording got started a little late.
How do you think this song came out?

Stop Pretending by Samuel Febres from Samuel Febres on Vimeo.

I’d also like to send a shout out to my friend Debra Wilcox out in San Antonio, Texas who helped me write this song. She tweak some lyrical things and just made the song better. Thank you Debo!

So, what do you think?

(btw, I love my wife’s funny little laugh after Jon introduces me. Cracks me up… that and her amazning camera skills in keeping my head out of the video in the beginning. J/K… love you babe!)

technorati tags:live music, acoustic, songwriting, performance,

]]> http://samuelfebres.com/blog/clouds-live-performance/feed/ 3 http://samuelfebres.com/blog/come-check-me-out-at-the-expressions-08-late-night-cafe/ http://samuelfebres.com/blog/come-check-me-out-at-the-expressions-08-late-night-cafe/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:25:11 +0000 Samuel Febres http://samuelfebres.com/blog/?p=1353 Dear all you Tallahassee peeps. Friday night, October 31st, I will be performing my song Clouds at the 1st annual Expression Florida late night café songwriting competition. It will be at Christian Heritage Church from 10-12 pm in their Cafe.

I’ve actually previously shared a very rough sounding recording of the song on this blog, and I’ll include it below but the performance of it on Friday won’t sound anything like the recording below, from an instrumental point of view. I was trying to experiment with synth sounds and stuff like that, but Friday it will just be me and an acoustic guitar, so you’ll get to hear what it sounded like when I actually sat down to write the song.

[RSS Readers, visit the site to listen to the song]
 

I’d love for anyone who reads this to come out and hear the song and also check out some of the other songwriters that have entered the competition as well. I’ve heard through the grape vine that ENT’s Jon Owens will be emceeing the event.

Finishing up your trick or treating with a little music doesn’t too bad, does it?

Here’s a video with some more information about the Expression Florida Conference: a gathering of the arts.

[RSS Readers, visit the site to listen to the song]

I’m still working on the song from a lyrical point of view. I have a friend in San Antonio who’s taking a stab at adding different lyrical content so I’m interested in seeing what she comes up with. Very exciting to collaborate with someone else on something, even from long distance. I was able to use Soundcloud for that, which I wrote about recently and it certainly made things easier.

Now, regarding the above mix. I’m certainly not proud of how all of it sounds. Certainly the mix isn’t balanced, the vocals need work and I forgot a few parts here and there, but it’s an idea of where the song is now and helps me hear it better and get an idea of where I would like to take it. It definitely needs a bass guitar and better drums as well, but overall it’s been fun to do.

I’m frustrated with my ability to record and work on things on my computer. I’ve been using a program called Ableton Live, the lite version, which is great for quick and easy recording as well as songwriting since you can record a section quickly and easily, then loop it to keep playing over and over again.

Part of the problem I’m having though is that my computer is struggling to record and use the program. I wanted to do and add more to the above demo, but my computer was hiccuping when it attempted to play the recorded live and midi parts and also and just started making all sorts of static and digital noise and distortion. I got frustrated and moved everything I had (without mixing) to garageband, locked the track so that it would use less processing power (garageband drags as well on my computer) and added the two vocal parts quickly to export them.

Now that I’ve paid off my car, I’m hoping to be able to get a laptop in order to not have to struggle anymore with the now weak sauce computer I own. Lord, haste the day.

For the more technically inclined, this is where I’m at on my computer.

My computer's stats. I got this computer in Jan/Feb of 2002.

So, after hearing the above song, I would love your thoughts and opinions about where it’s at. What do you think about the music? The lyrics thus far? The instrumentation I’ve messed around with?

I’m also thinking of entering this song into the LivetoImpact.tv Songwriting Competition. Do you think that’s a good choice? Would love to hear your thoughts.

In addition to playing guitar, I’m actually going to be one of the artists performing a few songs that I’ve written. I’m pretty excited about this since I have yet had the opportunity to play these songs live.

My set list is as follows:

1. Stop Pretending
2. What Dreams May Come
3. Terrible Summer, Bracing for the Fall

I’ve previously recorded and shared What Dreams May Come and Terrible Summer, Bracing for the Fall (you can press play above to check them out) on this blog. What Dreams May Come should follow pretty closely to the recording (except with live drums) but Terrible Summer, Bracing for the Fall will be considerably different than that recording. That song is gonna be fun and I hope you Tally folks can make it out to hear it. The tempo is a little picked up, and considerably more rocked out (at least my wife thinks so if you believe her, although she’s biased I guess).

I haven’t recorded Stop Pretending yet, which is the newest song I’ve written. It has a nice funky, jazzy kinda groove.

Unfortunately, not everything worked out well for this weekend. I couldn’t find a bass player and my saxophone toting friend has to work and wasn’t able to get the Saturday off. It’s gonna be a little White Stripe-ish I guess since it will be just me on guitar and Blake on drums, with the exception of What Dreams May Come. I will have some keyboard pads in that song to help fill in during the more boisterous part of the song.

Come on out to Lake Ella this Saturday, August 16th at 12:30pm and check it out. It should be a lot of fun, and you should be able to hear some really great music.

I will hopefully have some video to share of the event sometime next week.

Thanks in advance! (I hope…)

Also…

Overall, the song is maybe a bit long but this is the first song I’ve recorded with my new line 6 POD xt (which I am thoroughly enjoying). So maybe I got a little carried away on the length.

I ran everything through the POD except for the drum loops (which should be obvious).

There is some clipping on the main vocal parts, it sounds worse now then when I was recording it, and it didn’t bother me much then, but it does a little bit more now. I should have fixed it, but was having really just wanting to get stuff down. Anyway, I’ll have to fix those at some point.

The solo/instrumental part contains room for improvement as well. I’m no shredder so you won’t hear any of that (yet, maybe I’ll get a little better) and I was really just initially playing around with the POD. Something a little different and shorter could be added into the mix.

It’s been a bit since I’ve played bass, but I’m happy with the bass line I can up with. I think it has a nice flow.

Anyway, enough blabbing, please give it a listen and constructive criticism is always, always always, appreciated it.

Click the blue arrow to play in your browser, or right-click (or control-click) to save the mp3 to your computer and share with your friends. I don’t mind.

What Dreams May Come

PS: yeah, sorry if you think the title is booty. I needed one, it popped in my head, and I thought, why not go with the weird awkward title from a movie? Feel free to suggest alternatives if you want.

We ended up using 6 tracks to record the whole thing. Our demo is very lo-fi DIY budget recording, so we try to do the best with what we’ve got. Two tracks were for the drums, one for the congas, one for the acoustic guitar (played by Royce), one for the bass guitar (played by me. I was quite rusty and the rust kept me from doing more than what I did on the bass, but that might have worked out for the better), and of course, Ramon on the vocals.

I recorded everything into a Fostex MR-8 that uses Flash Cards and then transferred the tracks into garageband for mixing and some light effects.

I’ve included two tracks for you to listen to. One is a rough mix on the MR-8, and the other is the mix done in garageband on my Mac.

Press play on the blue button to listen, or just download the tracks by right-clicking if you’d like and let me know what you think of the songs in the comment. No one will be offended if you hate it, it only helps us get better and improve, so positive or negative, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the recordings:

Rough Mix on Fostex MR-8 Ramon’s Song
Garageband Mix Ramon’s Song

A while back I mentioned a song that I helped a friend of mine record. I took our handy little Fostex MR-8 recorder ( a photo of it can be found by click on Archives).

For your listening pleasure, here is that little demo we put together. Royce has a good song on his hands which feels and sounds great.
The recording is definitely a lo-fi/low tech. We only had and used one mic for everything, but I think things still came out good.

Royce played his acoustic guitar and sang, and his girlfriend, did a little background vocal part.
My brother in law, Blake Griffin played congas and the drum kit and I did a short acoustic guitar solo.

I was surprised at how the drum set sounded. We had a drum kit available that had a semi-round shield in front of it with cracks/space in the corner between the panels so I placed the mic in one of these cracks and gauged the levels.

After the recording was finished, I dragged the tracks into garageband and added some effects and tweaks. I like the sound and so did Royce and Blake, but I’m debating whether or not I added too much effects to the tracks. I think I may have and that might have caused it to lose some of its “raw” sound that was so appealing to me when listening to it immediately after recording the song.

Opinions are always appreciated. Feel free to download and listen or just click on the track below.

Lil’s Star by Royce Lovett