By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to a new series here on the Laptop Sessions that I like to call “Ask the Musician”.  On a daily basis, I get questions from young (and old) YouTube viewers that saw my tutorial and informational videos about recording and writing songs.  They ask me questions about my process and the equipment I’ve chosen.  Well, I decided I should share my advice with the world in this new series here on the best music blog on the planet!  The questions are first, followed by my responses in italics.

Our first question comes from TheBeatlesFan1991 on YouTube:

The way i record my songs is through an mp3 because I still am in high school so I’m kinda limited to an extent, and so the way I record is I take a track with just the guitars the rhythm and the lead and then I go and record another track with the guitar parts in the background playing while we record.

I haven’t done this yet its more of an experiment and since I’m guessing you’ve probably have gone through something similar to this and I was wandering if you could tell me if it’ll work or not.

You know, it’s not a bad way to record.  When I was recording with my band, though, we had four of us playing music parts.  So, we recorded the instruments live, then went back and over-dubbed the vocals.  We’re very vocal-based, as I’m sure you can tell.

I’d say the best way to go is to keep the recordings of the music and vocals separate whenever you can, because you want to make sure the vocals don’t get buried or stand out too much.  But, you know, I’ve been through a lot of ways of recording and I think I’ve changed my definition of the “best” way to record about five times.  So, hopefully you try this for a bit and make some changes accordingly.  I hope you’ll keep me posted!

If you have a question, please feel free to write to me on YouTube or leave a comment here on the blog- I’ll be happy to answer it and continue the conversation.

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome back again for another edition of “Ask the Musician” with me, Jim Fusco!  Tonight, I answer Meagan’s question, who posted on my cover song music video of “Shine” by Trey Anastasio.  Meaghan left a cool message here on the blog, so I had to type out the chords to this great tune for her.

“Shine”

Trey Anastasio

Intro: C         Dsus2        A

A                            Em
You know, all of you know
D                        A
To grow, what to feel
A                     Em
And so, follow me low
D                      A
You are what you lean on
A                            Em

Come out of the cold
D                A
And drift, into water

E               D
Ooooooohh
A                                   G
And the light shines on
D           A
While we all ride on
A                         G
When the days come and gone
D                A
You know we all ride on

Post-chorus:        C              Dsus2            A

Lines thicker than ground
You surf and its real
To soar over and down
To bend and to breathe on

CHORUS

C              Dsus2
Through water when
C            Dsus2
We are falling
C                                Dsus2
The sounds of bells are ringing out
A
We’ll ride on

C             Dsus2
Slipped over
C              Dsus2
The blue lighting
C                            Dsus2
Springs alive to circle down

E               D
Ooooooohh

CHORUS (2X)

By Jim Fusco:

Hello all, and welcome to another edition of “Ask the Musician” with me, Jim Fusco!

Tonight, I’m answering a question I’ve gotten a lot: “What are the chords to the Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls (1957)”?  One of our readers, Albert, left a nice message on my cover version of this song here on the blog, so I wanted to thank him by posting the chords so he can play it himself!

If you want to see the song played solo and acoustically, CLICK HERE to read my blog post and see the music video!

“Disney Girls (1957)”

Bruce Johnston

Capo on the first fret.

Intro: F / / Fmaj7 / / Gm7/F / / F F/G F/A Bb / / Dm/A / / Gm7/C / C7

F                                Am/E                      Gm7/D              Gm7
Clearing skies and drying eyes now I see your smile
Gm7/C                      C7                          Fmaj7               F.Bb  /   F.Fdim
Darkness goes and softness shows a changing style
F                    Am/E                               Gm7/D                Gm7
Just in time words that rhyme well bless your soul
Gm7/C                        C7                 Fmaj7             F6
Now I’ll fill your hands with kisses and a Tootsie Roll
Eb               Bb/D                     F/C                       F7
Oh reality, it’s not for me and it makes me laugh
Eb7                          Bb/D                   F/C                 F  /  Fdim  /  C7  /  Gm7  /  D  /  C7  /  E
Oh, fantasy world and Disney girls I’m coming back

Patti Page and summer days on old Cape Cod
Happy times making wine in my garage
Country shade and lemonade guess I’m slowing down
It’s a turned back world with a local girl in a smaller town
Open cars and clearer stars that’s what I’ve lacked

Eb7                          Bb/D                   F/C                    A7
But fantasy world and Disney girls I’m coming back

Dm                                                                Gm7
Love…Hi Rick and Dave Hi Pop…good morning mom
C7                                                                        Fmaj7          F6
Love…get up guess what I’m in love with a girl I found
Bb                  C7/Bb                          Gdim/A            A7                  D7+5         D7        Fdim/G  /   G7  /   C7+5  /  C7   /   Gm7/C   /    C7
She’s really swell ’cause she likes Church, bingo chances and old time dances

All my life I spent the night with dreams of you
And the warmth I missed and for the things I wished they’re all coming true
I’ve got my love to give and a place to live guess I’m gonna stay
It’d be a peaceful life with a forever wife and a kid someday
It’s early nights and pillow fights and your soft laugh

Eb7……………………….Bb/D………………..F/C
Fantasy world and Disney girls I’m coming back

By Jim Fusco:

Well, back earlier than expected for another edition of “Ask the Musician” with me, Jim Fusco!  If you’ve never seen this column before, let me give you a brief introduction.  I’m Jim Fusco of the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs and original music video series on YouTube and on our blog here at LaptopSessions.com.  Every day, I get thousands of views on my cover songs and original music videos on YouTube.  With that popularity comes some great questions from people all around the world.  They want to know technical questions, music theory, and other great general music tidbits.  I’ve completely submerged myself into making music these past few years and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned- hundreds and hundreds of hours reading, researching, playing, writing, singing, and recording.  I’m glad to answer these questions here on “Ask the Musician”!

Tonight, we have an email from christianamagic on YouTube.  She writes:

Hi.  Just wanna ask. So when you record song, do you only record the audio? or record both audio and video??
and what did you use to edit it all together? Thanks

Well, that’s a good question.  She’s asking about the acoustic music videos I perform on YouTube.  You know, sometimes I’ve considered going back and recording the audio over the video to make a better take, but I can never bring myself to do it.  To answer your question: I record the audio and video at the same time!

That’s not to say that I don’t have to tinker with it sometimes.  I remember on a Ben Folds song, “Time”, I recorded the video with the microphone facing backwards!  So, you could hear a LOT of piano and a little of my voice.  Well, I had recorded this in a remote location, so I couldn’t go back and re-record the video.  My solution was to work some EQ magic.  I brought out the vocals in the mix.  It’s not perfect, but it made due for the video.  I guess I could’ve gone back and re-did the audio, but believe me, that would be much more of a burden than it seems.  Imagine syncing the vocals up perfectly to a live performance like that?

For hardware, I use a ZOOM H2 microphone that plugs into USB.  This thing is great.  I used to use the built-in microphone on my Macbook laptop.  It’s actually a pretty decent condenser microphone, but my computer’s fan would run so much (and SO loudly), that I had to think of a better solution.  Sometimes, you’d hear more fan than song!  So now, I keep the microphone close to me (and only turn the front mics on as to not hear the fan noise behind it) and record on the laptop.  For ease of production, I use iMovie to edit the video and audio.  If I didn’t do so many videos, I might use Final Cut Pro, but even still, it’s nice to have a simple solution to get the song out there in a nice neat package.

I hope this helps and answers your question.  Just like Peter Griffin’s advice on Family Guy is “To grow a beard,” my advice to you here is, “To get a Mac!”  It’ll make your life a lot easier when putting music videos on YouTube.

Submit your question to admin@laptopsessions.com and comment below to tell us how you record your videos!