lurksalot

To be fair , you are down under , the guitar probably looks upside down from your point of view 😁

Can you give your dad a couple of quid and send him for a bag of sugar 😁

I’ve had an idea 😂 really got to pull my finger out now !

It the sampling I guess , you can’t just rape youtube for a tune and then claim it 😂

It's official get covering

Its all about Covers No not drain covers No not motor bike covers Not even duvet covers Yes, its song/tune covers just like last December , I knew this was coming all year (as I suspect many others did ) but I still don't know what to do just yet If I recall correctly this can be a piece of work that you have done during This year , so the entry is open a little further afield I guess. Simple rules ✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and recorded this year. X No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on X Bagpipes. please no bagpipes, the Thanksgiving truce now Expired. panpipes only if you have too. X No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you. A line or two offering an insight to your inspiration/track choice will be good as well , it works nicely on the voting thread. Deadline wise , we will go for midnight on 'Christmas Day ' 👍, though you probably have till my head is together on the 26th, ( the clue given here is that 'Christmas day' is the 25th ). I might extend the voting a day or so depending on the entry count , but we can still start January on the dot Go get inspired, play it straight or mangle something up but mostly have some fun

Well done sir , a marvellous win to set up your festive season😁 the urgency of your chosen picture is not as critical as normal as we will use it for January. I will set up the December thread this evening 👍

Woah , it’s proper tight at the top , last call for some last minute votage to bring a solution or it will come down to a quiz on the colour of lurksalittle’s car 😂 just a thought to mention that as tradition demands , the December topic is a ‘cover version challenge’ open to all to enter a recording that you have done during the year.... or start from scratch as soon as you like. the November winner’s chosen photo will be the inspiration for the January challenge 👍

One thing I have been doing recently , is to warm up my voice with simple scales ... but.. recording it with an auto tune on the screen . this gives me a visual of how and why I am missing a note and helps to correct it after that it is just muscle memory , but that comes with the practice and repetition there is no point in practicing the wrong notes , that’s why I use the auto tune as it seems to help my focus more accurately To improve the actual timbre of the voice is the next ambition , but we’ll see 😂

Very much my area of expertise this! 😂

You know when you think you’ve nailed the brief , and then , you think , bring it on, and well, yeah everyone brings it on , yeah , WOW , yeah , that !

......aaand off we go

As if by magic we have arrived at the end of the last true composition challenge of the year and we now need to sort the pecking order. The entries were all based on the picture chosen by Octobers winner , @upside downer Your choices are as follows in order of presentation , please vote for 3 of them 1 @xgsjx Well this pic for some reason really struck me. I decided to write about how much my wife means to me. There's personal stuff in here that I'm not willing to go into, but I think I've said it how I want to. 2 lurksalot what with COP26 going on and still being in a T-shirt, I thought a folky appreciation of the cycles of the seasons was in order , but this happened instead 3 @Dad3353 A celestial sculpteur, modelling a new vision for the night sky, after a fashion. Giving a fresh shine on an old, friendly face; somewhat daft, maybe, but with Good Intentions... 4 @Leonard Smalls This month we have a celebration of the Full Moon, in all its forms 😁 5 @fingers211 I heard a play on the radio a few days after the picture was posted. The play told a story of a clever young woman who manipulated two men, so much so that they ended up in a very bad state. Not with her body but purely with mind games, t'was very clever. So that was the premise. 6 @NickD Based on the picture, I had the idea of a shift tasked with resetting the universe after the day is done, and from here I got the notion that there are folks that do that in a practical, non-celestial way... The truck drivers, shelf stackers, train engineers, office cleaners, etc... so this is for them. 7 @Nail Soup Initially tried to do some thing free-form and moony sounding, but scrapped it and wrote something song-based on the acoustic with moon based lyrics. But even that ended up sounding completely different when transferred to electric guitar etc. 8 @Nicko We've all been there. A night out, moon shining, date looking great, and you spoil the romance by doing exactly the wrong thing. I don't know how you'd describe the genre - maybe indie pop. Unusually for me this is a proper song, with a verse, chorus and middle eight, although it's pretty simple musically. 9 @upside downer Here's my entry for November. It's a slow, mellowish instrumental with lots of chiming guitar to try and get that twinkly, night sky, relaxing feeling while everyone else is doing the heavy lifting to put things in order. 10 @Doctor J I kept looking at the picture... van... moon... van ... moon... and then it came to me... Mooned Ants! The next level of pest control using lunar gravity to discombobulate pesky ant infestations. Call Morrisson's today! 11 @skankdelvar Levon Helm and Garth Hudson are living in my head well that's it folks, another fine selection for your listening pleasure ... But please make your choices based on your favourite 3 Voting ends at midnight 30th November Good luck all

Sounds tough that one , maybe put a post with the title in here , and someone might have a workaround ? I know I had issues but paid a small sub to avast and it cleaned up a shed load of stuff, that really has breathed new life into my recording headroom !

I keep trying to add stuff , but now decided no, no I won't what with COP26 going on and still being in a T-shirt, I thought a folky appreciation of the cycles of the seasons was in order , but this happened instead

Much as I suspected ... the thing has not turned out as intended , I’m not at all displeased , but I often start with an idea , get the guitar/piano out and start noodling with the theme in mind and it takes over and turns into something different. I suppose it’s a bit different to normal writing, in that I might think the subject suits a particular genre so try and head that way, rather than write a tune to a familiar style , then it all falls back into a comfort genre 😂 And once I’ve started on a direction , even if it’s the unintended one , I tend to follow it through 🤦‍♂️ Ah well , I have a decision on how many verses to torture you all with , and a few tweaks to do, but I’ve gone a bit minimal on this one. 🤔

I have a couple of ideas , but not sure what style/genre would suit it. having said that , whatever style/genre I start with rarely runs to the ‘finished’ article 🤦‍♂️

And when you do sing , don’t be afraid of letting us hear it, if you have taken the effort to write some words and bare your soul singing them , we may as well hear them, don’t bury them in the mix 😁 we are all getting better at that ....a bit 😉

November is go