One of the purposes this website has served for me is to give me an outlet to rant, rave or comment about things I enjoy, or about things that get under my skin. Music has been a regular topic, because that’s what I enjoy; I guess it’s under my skin as well, but in the nicest possible way. I’ve posted a number of my guitar-based musical ramblings on here as well, and these came about as the result of a very close friend encouraging me to stop being a closet musician and to put my stuff on the web. So that’s what I did; it hasn’t quite set the world on fire, thank goodness, but’s been a great deal of fun. But in the background, I’ve always wondered to what extent I could create a virtual band, rather than being a solo guitarist using technology to overcome the limitations of talent. The idea was/is to get other interested ‘musicians’ to work remotely to put together all of the parts to create a piece of music. Well, it was a totally unoriginal idea, going nowhere in my case, …….but then, having caught up with a long lost friend for the first time after an embarrassing number of years, I learned he had a very talented daughter who created cover versions of songs she liked, and posted them to YouTube.
So let me introduce Hayley Carter. Hayley has a cover version of Stay by Rhianna, which I listened to, and despite coming from an out-of-touch generation, realised there were all kind of possibilities to work with, and add to Hayley’s version, along the lines of the virtual band idea. I used some software to hijack the soundtrack off YouTube, then started to mess around – a bit of reverse engineering to get everything aligned, then I added some percussion, some bass, a couple of guitar tracks and a bit of synthesiser. It was a bit rushed getting it done, and it can be improved upon, but enthusiasm was getting the better of me.
This is how it came out: Stay
The big question was whether Hayley would feel I wrecked her efforts, but she did post the new version on YouTube, so I reckon I got away with it.
Thank you Hayley, you’re a star, I look forward to meeting you one day 🙂