Andy McKee cover - Ebon Coast

[kwakatak]

I've been working on Andy McKee's ever since the tab was printed in the accompanying CD to Fingerstyle Guitar magazine. I know the new type of tap playing isn't everyone's thing but lately I've been looking for new influences and like the jazz/funk vibe this one has.

Now for the technical issues regarding this recording. The original is played on a fan-fret baritone - the likes of which I will never be able to afford or justify. I tried it on each of my acoustics and finally decided that my Larrivée was most comfortable because of the neck and body size. It turns out that surprisingly the guitar's tonal balance also suits this song nicely as well - even when the medium gauge strings are all tuned down to baritone tuning and are super slinky. This time around I also made use of the K&K PWM pickup and with the help of a virtual VST EQ and reverb plugin in my PC recording software I think I actually got a pretty natural tone out of it.

So here's how it came out the last time I hit the red button:
http://www.box.net/shared/bqks2aict6

OK, so I admit that this is a work in progress. There are still a number of rough spots but in my way of learning songs being able to play start to finish without getting too hung up is a major milestone. I'll be continuing to work on this one and once I've reasonably mastered it I'm gonna record it once again, possibly with video. The tapping parts are giving me the most trouble (as you can probably hear) but I feel like I'm almost there. It's been a major undertaking but I feel that once I do this I may be able to go back to some other tough fingerstyle covers that have confounded me over the past few years.

[Will Fly]

Hi Neil - that was very pleasant listening. I'd look forward to seeing a video of you doing the piece. I also use an OM-03(RE) Larrivée - what tuning do you use to go down to baritone? Not that I'll be doing it, because I don't do alternative tunings on guitars these days (too darned lazy!), but I'd still be interested to know.

Cheers,

Will

[ncognito]

Neil--

Nice job!  What is baritone tuning?

            DAVE

[kwakatak]

Thanks!

FYI: baritone tuning is BEADGB; basically you drop each string down so that the low E is actually a B, the A string is tuned like the low E, the D like the A, etc. The strings become nearly slack, which why the tapping sounds so "clanky."

[BenF]

Neil, I am really seriously impressed with that effort. You nailed some of the most difficult parts, certainly have the tapping sorted pretty well.

Slightly different, but I have been working on 'may you never' by John Martyn, and the slapping was the part that got me. Nothing makes it perfect, other than hours and hours of relentless practice. Slowly it began to get a flow to it rather than an abrupt pick slap pick slap pick pick slap type of stumble. I am sure this makes sense to you. Much of your version of this great Andy McKee track have that elusive flow, and it is a much much harder tune than may you never!

Thanks for sharing this. It is inspiring to hear people really tackling a hard tune and the hard work clearly paying off.

I have also found that my Larrivee OM and my forum III handle going down to B superbly. I would expect a larrivee jumbo to be an excellent tool for thus type of music.

[kwakatak]

Based on some other folks' input and some more practice on the tapping part I decided to record it yet again. This time I tried video and mating the audio from the K&K with another track from my Zoom H2. I chose the high camera angle to get the player's perspective in order to make improvements to my left and right hand technique. The biggest boo boo is that I recorded this around midnight the other night and a nearby toy went off toward the end of the song. It was so loud that I was afraid it along with my playing would wake everybody up so I decided to call it a night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCvj3ig_Yq8

[BenF]

Brilliant!

The improvement in a few days is remarkable too.