Lyrics with few words but lots of passion. Prophetic, in some cases but sad throughout. This kind of pain is even more difficult to watch. I put it to a slow bluesy ballad with sparse chords and vocals. It is still a haunting tune to me. I only have old reel-to-reel recordings copied and recopied over the years but it still paints the mood very well.
Posts Tagged ‘#ovationguitars’
Cry, Cry MSK 1981
Posted: May 30, 2023 in #poetry, PoetryTags: #audio, #lyrics, #midimike, #music, #musician, #ovationguitars, #personal, #poem, #poet, #poetry, #poetrypod, #recording, #relationships, #songwriter, #sound, #vocalist
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Brighter and Brighter MSK 1980
Posted: April 11, 2023 in #poetry, PoetryTags: #audio, #lyrics, #Martinguitars, #michaelskennedy, #Midi, #midicontroller, #mididrums, #midimike, #midimike.com, #music, #musician, #ovationguitars, #personal, #poem, #poet, #poetry, #poetrypod, #recording, #singersongwriter, #songwriter, #sound, #vocalist, #vocals
This is nothing more than my usual ramblings at people that keep turning on lights every time they come into the room and I am sitting in the dark. Then to add insult to injury, they leave the bright lights on when they go out of the room! AARRRGGGhh. Keep your big bright ideas to yourself.
Baby, You’re so Beautiful
Posted: December 17, 2022 in My TunesTags: #lyrics, #michaelskennedy, #midimike.com, #music, #musician, #ovationguitars, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #singersongwriter, #songwriter, #vocalist
Going over old recordings I finally found one of my gems from 1977. Back then I was learning to play guitar and my friend TR would jam with me. I knew a few musicians even back then and on the weekends we would gather at my place for dinner and a fun evening.
We would have about a dozen friends come over and after meals and a few drinks we would inevitably pull out the guitars and other toys. I didn’t spend much time learning or playing cover songs. That happened, but most of the time we wrote our own material. Our songs ran the gambit between topics of the day and the humorous things in life. I recorded on state of the art technology in those days: reel-to-reel tape recorders. I had a Tascam (Teac) 4-track machine back then so we could record an AMAZING 4 tracks at one time!
This song is one of our funnier songs. It wasn’t like we were trying to be like the Smothers Brother’s Comedy Hour from 1967, but we enjoyed humor in our music. This take starts with TR vocals and Ovation guitar introducing the theme of the song as I join in with my Ovation 12 string guitar.
Here is the only recording of that song. It is just the two of us jamming late after most others had crashed or gone home or to work. I learned a lot about harmonies during these sessions and still get a kick listening to us making up the arrangement as we go along.
Enjoy a funny blast from the past and wait for the end of the song for the lyrical punch line.
Personal Touch conclusion
Posted: July 27, 2021 in Live Sound Reinforcement SeriesTags: #12string, #DollyParton, #forthosewhowait, #KennyRodgers, #Liveband, #livesoundreinforement, #Michael s Kennedy, #michaelskennedy, #Midi, #mididrums, #midimike, #midimike.com, #musician, #original songs, #ourbodiesmove, #ovationguitars, #recording, #ricahlers, #songwriter, #sound, #Yamaha, #Yamaha DX7, #yamahaRX7
As mentioned in the first post of this series, we played original songs in each set. Here is the only recording I am aware of for the song “For Those Who Wait”. We were touring in Corpus Christie Texas and I met with Ric in the afternoon to do a little practice and system fine-tuning. After we were settled he said, ‘hey, whip out the lyrics you are working on. I have a few chords I want to try. We worked for about half an hour going through his chords and arranging them into a song.
In very short time I came up with the melody and we were able to finish the song enough that we performed it later in the tour. I programmed the Yamaha RX7 Drum machine to fit the arrangement. Ann and I sang the lead vocals and Ric did everything else. In the picture above you can see the two silver discs on the lower section of Ric’s guitar. While playing guitar, he would touch one of the silver pads to make a cymbal crash sound from his drum machine and the other one triggered a pre-programmed drum fill pattern for each time he hit the pad. He also kicked bass pedals and triggered string or piano sounds. Pretty amazing when two out of three are just singing to get all that sound.
This is easily the best song I have co-written. Years ago I posted lyrics and said that I wrote this duo for existing country stars at the time. It was my hope to have Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers do this song. I think it would have blown the charts for the time. But who knows. I think we sounded pretty good.
MidiMike 