Songs

“I’m on Fire” (first attempt) πŸŽ€

Since I posted about jumping in and trying to sing, I thought I’d post my first attempt. I got inspired to see what I actually sound like now that I’ve had… let’s see… one voice lesson. πŸ˜†

I thought Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire would be a good first song since it’s short and simple. And most especially, the vocals (I now know!) are exactly in my natural range, aside from the really high “wooohoo hooo” stuff, which I pushed through and tried anyways.

I wanted to give this song my own sonic touch, with a more modern sound. I think Springsteen was basically trying to do a Johnny Cash song here, so this is me trying to sound like Bruce trying to sound like Johnny. πŸ˜†

Here’s Springsteen’s original for comparison.

Songs

From a barber shop to an AirBnb to a kitchen table to a “metro gnome”, we made a song πŸŽ§

It took us a few months, but my barber Emily and I made a real song, and now it’s out on all the streaming services!

After picking a song tother, I recorded the initial backing track at an AirBnb in Miami. Then came recording her initial vocals at my house, her adding more vocals on her iPhone in her car, a spreadsheet picking the best vocal parts from 14 takes, figuring out when (and when not) to use left-and-right vocal tracks, and most of all, learning when to call it done.

At Emily’s wise insistence, our first song is a cover (let’s start slowly), of Sir Chloe’s song Animal. This is our first toe in the water of making music, published as the band CRIMELESS.

Here is Sir Chloe’s original version.

And finally, there was also the metronome, aka “metro gnome”, that came up in a late night chat.

God now I gotta find a fuckin garden gnome and paint it as the GNOME OF TIME

Or… a well-dressed, sexually ambiguous gnome.

Our expectations are grounded; this is just a hobby. We are not expecting to get rich off of this, or even make a dime. We just wanted to see what we can do musically and make something real happen. βœ…

Songs

Coming soon: Animal worldwide

With our cover of Sir Chloe’s song Animal in the bag, it’s time to make it official. Cover rights are being secured (thanks to DistroKid) , and then it’s headed to streaming services worldwide.

Did you really think we’d just say, “Oh that’s cool, we did a cover.” and that would be the end of it? Nah, we want you to be able to just casually look us up on Spotify, Apple Music. We want you to be able to play this song using Siri.

We’re releasing Animal under the band name CRIMELESS.

Picking a band name was a fun but involved process. We came up with 90 good band name ideas (still under secret file), eventually narrowed it down to three finalists that we both liked, and then I told Emily, “If you have a fav of these, I’m down with it!” She liked Crimeless, adding:

Ok do all caps. SO ITS IN YOUR FACE. LOLOL

Go big or go home. πŸ’ͺ

Songs

Animal cover, final cut πŸŽ§

At last, my friend Emily and I have finished our first song! It’s our take on the Sir Chloe song Animal.

The total process took about three months from “Hey, let’s record a song! How about this one…?” to this final version.

I love Emily’s personal style and improvisations on the vocals. I’m hearing a hint of Gwen Stephanie and some Christina Aguilera. For the instrumentation, I was going for a slightly more mysterious guitar and drum sound than the Sir Chloe original.

Next up: take a breather, post this song somewhere more official, and then hopefully tackle another song? πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Maybe an original?