My Brain is Still Cloudy, But I Did Finally Finish a Song. Click Here to Listen

In anticipation of my move to the High Plains, I started working on a cover of a Bob Wills song called 'Brain Cloudy Blues.' Some of you will recognize it as a slight reworking of Wills' standard 'Milk Cow Blues.' I prefer the first verse in 'Brain Cloudy' so I covered it.

I've had this one sitting on my hard drive for a few weeks now. I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the takes or the arrangement. Then again, I never am, so there's no reason to wait any longer.

Of course the track doesn't sound great. It was arranged and recorded whenever I had a minute, using a laptop microphone and whatever gear was handy. The key doesn't suit my voice, nor do I have a deep background in Western Swing.

So what? Excuses are for rich women on diets.

It's time to cut myself a break and release it here and now. Here's the URL.

https://soundcloud.com/honkytonkhero88/brain-cloudy-blues

It was while producing this song that I realized, 'Adam Levine wakes up every morning with no reservations about singing in public. Therefore, I have no reason to doubt myself.'

My biggest takeaway is that singing is a confidence game. The history of pop music is littered with those with 'bad' voices or limited technique who still succeed.

Consider one great singer from the past century. She had a brittle vocal tone which only wore down with age. She had no range, poor projection, and a raspy Baltimore accent. Her name was Billie Holiday.

For a contemporary example, consider Sam Smith's American debut on Saturday Night Live. When I saw it, I first thought, "It's cruel that they put Annie Lennox's addled eunuch butler up there to make an ass of himself."

I still think he sings like an emphysemic duck, but I've come to realize how others could overlook this. He makes his voice work for him and his material. His strained phrasing feeds in to his Sad Girl persona, and builds him up as Lana Del Ray with (maybe) balls. Anyways...

In the final assessment:

What I did well:

-The intro is solid. It was fun to write and record, and I think that comes through.
-Everything is generally in time.
-The vocal track is more confident (insomuch as it's less pensive) than my earlier efforts.

Things to improve on:

-The guitar solo should be tweaked. The first few bars were an attempt at dissonance that just ended up sounding out of key. My guitar parts on the last verse are a more successful experiment with this idea. I also should have been more patient and gone for a cleaner take.
-I need to mind my tuning more carefully.
-I will experiment with recording environments. I'm still figuring out the best acoustic setups in my apartment. In particular, my acoustic guitar parts suffer from bad setup.