By Jim Fusco:
Welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions on the best music video blogon the web. Tonight, I bring you my first Laptop Session on the piano, which I actually learned to play before the guitar. In fact, I taught myself piano- it’s actually very logical in the way it’s set up, so once you learn some of the chord patterns, you can just go from there.
Anyway, tonight’s video is a cover song of the piano master, Ben Folds, and probably my favorite all-time song from him: “Time” off “Songs for Silverman”. Weird Al joins him on the choir-like backing vocals, which is one of the reasons that this track is my favorite. I realized, though, that the song is great on its own, so that’s why I wanted to do a Laptop Session of it.
You may notice that the vocals are a bit “airy”. Well, you see that microphone in front of me? Perfect placement. I even make sure to sing directly into it most of the time. Well, I wanted to get the whole piano sound. My ZOOM H2 microphone actually has 4 mics in it. The two on the front are put in a 90 degree angle and the two on the back are placed at 120 degrees for a “wider” pickup range. I wanted to use that 120 degrees to pick up the piano and my voice.
That only works if you turn the freakin’ microphone around!
So, you couldn’t hear my voice at all and the piano was very muffled. But, through the magic of equalization, I managed to brighten the piano sound and bring my vocals out of the mix and salvage the video. I had two others I recorded at this session (originals) on my fiancee’s piano, but those had to be scrapped. I’ll go back again and re-record those, making sure this time to turn the microphone around…
I hope you enjoy tonight’s music video. I guess I can’t plug the word “acoustic” tonight, but I guess it’s considered an “acoustic piano” as opposed to an electric piano. Have a great Sunday and make sure to stop on back for another video the Laptop Sessions acoustic guitar AND piano music video blog!
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This is one in a series of acoustic cover songs, original music, and free mp3 downloads here on the Laptop Sessions Music Video Blog.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
[...] Terrific Tuesday is next, and Jim Fusco is on deck for that. I hope you checked out his video from Saturday. What a great, great video and great song. You’re really missing out if you haven’t seen it. Here, I’ll even give you the direct link: Ben Folds “Time”. [...]