Whilst at Woodford Folk Festival I played around with a few little ditties on guitar…In the end I had two little ‘somethings’ which I deemed would one day become compositions. With one piece in particular, as I played it over, a little chorus got stuck in my head….”Be the better man I know I should be”… over and over. At first I was determined to ignore this and try and write something a little more substantial and ‘deep’. However, the more I played it, the more I realised that the tune lends itself to lighter sentiments.
Thus, rather than fight the chorus, I flowed with it and came up with this little ditty…of course it’s still well rough! It’s basically just mucking around an A chord, although I’ve got my guitar tuned down a whole step so effectively it’s around G 
The dream is to have 100 people singing the chorus “TO be the better man I know I should be”… that would be awesome!
4 Responses.
Hey James. Very good, I could see some violin or cello in it.
Can you tell me how you record? What equipment?
Yeah, I’ll have to hit up Lucy for a couple of tracks
These are all just rough drafts and upon hearing them a few times often go “there’s a mistake…oop and there…”. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or surroundings to do anything too decent.
Setup -
M-audio FastTrack (Cheap USB box thingey)
Shure sm57 (with added sock)
Half decent soundcard (although it’s possible the Fast-track actually negates its utility)
At the moment I just sit on a chair and sing and play guitar into the mic. This is recorded using Ulead Audio Editor. I then use Acid to make it louder and convert it to MP3. There is no editing done, hence the apparent mistakes. When I have time and a room without cicadas, I’ll think of increased sophistication.
I heard you have some new recording toys…do tell!
I bought an m-audio duo usb preamp, and a condenser mic. The m-audio doesn’t work, so im just buying a new behringer mixer.
I also recently bought a maton em225c acoustic, and a fender deville 2×12 60 watt amp. Needless to say that im a very poor man.
I have a copy of Cakewalk 5 if you want it. Its a pretty damn good audio recording program.
I was going to say – you should get a artist myspace page, so you music can be auto played to people who visit.
My band just signed up – myspace.com/geebanband – its a pretty good service for getting your music ‘out there’