Busking Cat Stevens

jimcjimc
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 6:57 pm

Stuart,
Good job with picking the riffs and sounding like Cat!
Jim


suziko
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:35 pm

Agreed with the prior comments! Your voice is so similar to Cat Stevens's, it's almost uncanny! Nice job strumming (I like the mutes you did on the first two beats of the measures. I always find that tricky to do correctly) and the riffs sound very clean. And, it looks like you got a nice haircut :)

Suzi


Lavallee
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:42 pm

Hi Stuart, very nice playing and singing. Cat Stevens is definitely your artist, same voice tone.

Greta work

Marc


jayswett
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:43 pm

That was great. Wild World is such a great song. Sorry about being such a loser about getting the Wind to you. I will get you the sound portion by Saturday. I am finding it a bit tricky, but persistence will pay off.


BobR
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:50 pm

I don't know how I missed this.

Stuart nice job. I hadn't heard Trouble before, but your voice is suited to Cat Stevens as a lot have said here. I thought you did a real nice job on Wild World as well. I'm working on it but not there yet.

Brad, Father and Son is coming along nicely. You've got all the parts now just a bit of fine tuning. I like the way you can do both vocal parts.

Nice job guys

Bob


cosmicmechanic
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:11 pm

Hi Stuart, very steady strumming there, I really like the arpeggios, it seems you could do them on automatic pilot.
Quite a credible performance ... waiting for more !

Pierre


MarkM
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Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:38 pm

Stuart that was really good so far. I'll have to listen to it again when I get back home. The audio out of my little work laptop here in the hotel isn't too good. Great voice on this track.



MarkM


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neverfoundthetime
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Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:45 am

Nice job Stuart on one of my favourite Cat Stevens songs. I think you could afford to give the singing a little more attack which would invigorate the song a lot as you already have the Cat-like voice.... and a slightly quicker tempo would hep that idea too. Have you tried experimenting with a capo to see if on ore two steps up the fretboard could add something? Just some thoughts.


rapsidy
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Wed Jan 26, 2011 8:48 am

Hey stuart great job enjoying your posts and i wont say you sound like cat like everyone else ;)

yusef islam is actually back playing a lot of his songs again, he still has it.


thanks

Brad


sws626
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Wed Jan 26, 2011 8:52 am

Thanks everyone. Glad you enjoyed it.

Daryl - I'll work on the camera angle. I played around a bit with an equalizer to try to make the guitar a little brighter, but that accentuated the pick clicking too much. I may try again with a different pick and mic placement.

Tony - Yes, I slowed it down a bit for two reasons -- first because the original tempo just seems too happy for the lyrics and second because I don't yet have that decending scale down as well as you might imagine at a faster pace.

Jim - Thanks. It was a blast to play together in San Jose. I'll let you known when I'm passing through again.

Suzi - I started working on this song to try to get a handle on that palm muting technique. Still some work to go to find the right balance between thump and ring. It's trickier than it looks. Here I'm trying to get the base of my palm very close to the bridge, but I think I'm still striking too hard. Another variation that sounds nice is to do hit muted bass strings on the first beat and muted treble stings on the second. Glad you like the haircut. Sometimes I just need a break from the 70s fashion statement.

Marc - Thanks. That's really just what comes out when I open my mouth, but I'm going to work on it for the song Jay is doing.

Jay - Really looking forward to working with you on Wind. I see from you're other posts that you've been busy.

Bob - Glad you found the thread.

Pierre - Not quite automatic yet, but I'm working on it. By that point, however, I probably won't want to play it any more. So any suggestions for another?

Mark - Look forward to hearing what you think when you have a chance to give it a listen. I messed about for a while on the stereo mix. I think there is still some phase cancellation between the two mics.

Chris - Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try some of these experiments.

-Stuart


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