After playing around with some funky music tools, I’ve come back to the singing, which is my ultimate goal with Thunder Road. And going with the Show Your Work philosophy, here’s an early and very imperfect take of me figuring out how to sing this song.
I only sing up to “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright,” which is such a funny line. The rest is just guitar.
I ended up kind of channeling Elvis here, which was wholly unexpected and fun. I gave Elvis a little nod to a few weeks ago as well, if you look closely.
The song is long and fast and has lots of words. It does not follow anything close to a standard rock song format. The chords are complex and unpredictable.
Being a total amateur, I specialize in covers of basic three-chord songs, so this craziness is hard for me.
But I like the challenge.
To a point.
Always an AI skeptic – but seeing glimmers of fun and utility – AI seems to have come to the rescue again. I don’t want AI to create music for me, but rather to help me create music.
it started when this music app called Moises recently won an Apple Design Award as iPad app of the year, so I decided to give it a try.
👉Btw I’m not trying to sell anyone’s apps here – this isn’t advertising. I don’t make a cent off of this blog. I just think it’s cool, so keep reading…
With Moises + GarageBand on my iPad, I was able to:
Separate out Bruce’s vocals from the instruments in the original Thunder Road track
Slow the song down from 141 bpm (wtf?) to a slightly more reasonable 134.
Transpose the song down one key from F to E (because apparently I sing lower than Bruce??)
Get the chords simplified and displayed for in real-time me as the song plays, set at a capo on the second fret (because I just like that sound). So I could just basically play along and record that.
Finally keep my guitar recording (a very dirty shoegaze sound) and mute Bruce and the E Street Band.
So I ended up up with my very rough guitar and kept Bruce’s vocals – all in one take (which is why it’s so rough). It’s just a proof of concept, but here it is: me playing grungy guitar while Bruce sings. Crazy!
Pardon it’s so messy. Sure, the sound is meant to be messy, but also this is the very first take and only a proof of concept.
My next step will be to sing the song myself, remove Bruce’s vocals, add my own drums and bass and maybe keys. And that will be my cover.
I’m personally full of contradictions. I’m a straight, middle-aged man who’s into gardening and Lana del Rey. Is that a contradiction? Only if you think it is, my friend. And that’s the place to be.
Mental Break Town 