For Muriel (feat. Offfocus)

Here’s a fun track from fanne, Shi, Offfocus, and me:

Hope you like it as much as I do. And as always, thanks for listening.

If you’re a musician yourself: please join us and have fun at Wikiloops!

P.S.: a bit of background to this song:

For fanne, Muriel was his crush in high school, with unbelievably clear green eyes as he wrote in his template track. For others, it was the most beautiful girl in their grade school class (read all of this on fanne’s template track). Then Shi came and took it to the next level with her awesome story-telling lyrics. For me? Yes, there were Muriels in each school grade, in my class in primary school I had even two of them in the same class, one blonde, one with dark hair. I never took notice of them until my parents and teachers found out that I’m short-sighted. So I got a prescription and my first glasses – and fell in love with both girls.

Maybe it’s these stories which make the track so lovely… and of course Shi, and fanne’s wonderful composition, with Pat (Offfocus) on top 🙂

Thanks for reading.

Installing and testing Joe’s Wikiloops plugin

Today I was reading the Wikiloops Howto and Forum sections again to see how one can contribute back, and promote Wikiloops a bit.

And sometimes it’s interesting to do just that and to see what others have done already. I found for instance Joe’s (jmrukkers) WordPress plugin that way – so I downloaded and installed it right away.

Joe describes two ways it should work, like with a single line, or the id in brackets.

So let’s test that with his latest two tracks here. For “Fun Time Funk”, I’ll try his method 1:

Hey, that looks cool – I now see the Wikiloops player embedded in the new “Gutenberg” editor. Wow.

Ok, his second method, with the track number in a bracketed ID now:

Hmmm ok – that doesn’t update itself in the editor, but then it wasn’t tested in WP 5.x and its “Gutenberg” editor – the plugin page says:

Tested up to: 4.9.10

(and I’m on WordPress 5.1.1)

So I’ll see after saving the thing as draft, or after refreshing the page… and yes, that worked as well, tho the first method is maybe both easier to remember and more direct in its result – showing you the track right away.

Anyway, great work from my friend and fellow musician Joe; thanks a lot for that, man!

In case you want to see us playing together, we did that already, in one of last year’s video collaborations – see here:

Reggae Town – wikiloops.com video collaboration series 2018

So that’s Joe and me together with a few more friends, some of which – including Joe – I have met shortly after this at last year’s members’ meeting.

Again, thanks Joe, and thanks to you for reading, viewing, and listening.

A song, older than me. And a new one.

I recently discovered “Cry me a river”, a song composed and first published in 1953 by Arthur Hamilton (see the song’s Wikipedia and JazzStandards pages).

And since Mr. Hamilton originally wrote this for Ella (yes, *the* Ella Fitzgerald!), here is her version of it:

In 1955, it was recorded by Julie London – and even if you’re younger, you might know her version from a movie (“V for Vendetta”):

Some friends of mine from Wikiloops, French guitarist OliVBee and also French singer marmotte also recorded a very beautiful version of it and uploaded it to Youtube:

Chord progressions cannot be copyrighted (for a bit of background in formation (in German) on copyright, cover versions, and so on, see an article in Sound & Recording for instance), so a bit later OliVBee uploaded a slightly changed version of it as “Tears Made Of Silver” onto the loops for people to get creative with these chords.

And then came Shi (from England), and she developed a story not about herself being sad like in the original, but about a missing girl called “Emily”. And then Wade (from New Zealand) played a beautiful sax onto it, finally making it irresistible for me (to not jump in).

I’ve shown it before on these pages, but here it’s again for comparison: “Looking for Emily”:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And the list of musicians on this is:

As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and listening.

Take a rest (video)

Made a short video of my latest collaboration on Wikiloops:

Wikiloops collaboration #159026 – Take a rest

It shows that I haven’t used many effects, just a bit of eq and compression. It also shows the Wikiloops page of the track, and our cat who took a rest (which is what cats do best) 🙂

Enjoy…

Take a rest

What a nice track from Offfocus (Pat) – and today I could finally play along a bit, and re-upload it:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And that’s just him and me in this version, until now:

As always. thanks for listening.

Update, from the same evening: got a first remix already, some keys from “ecsponger”. And he also renamed the track to “Tranquility Base”:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

That makes it the following list of musicians so far:

And thanks again for listening 🙂

Second snow

No, it’s not snowing here – in fact it almost looks like spring right now. But this is a track which I just uploaded back to the ‘loops:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

List of musicians, so far:

Thanks for listening. Musicians, come and join us at Wikiloops; it’s fun!

Must dash (with daddy’s cash)

Found an awesome track with percussion, drums, and vocals – and even a nice story, and who could resist that? So I added some simple low notes to it:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

Left the door wide open for additional musicians, and played it simple in G major. Oh, and I added a BassFX track with that nice TAP EQ and Flanger/Chorus (all of which come included for free with Linux music stuff). List of musicians, so far:

Thanks for listening.

white by jjdf

I’m happy and proud to be included into another album, this time from João. He called it “white”:

white by jjdf

I’m on the first track of it, with this one:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

Obrigado João, both for your nice album, and also for including me. 🙂

A baby’s voice / Find my way

Oliv’s new “baby” was a Guitalele, and he played it so nicely. And with Shi singing on it, who could resist the temptation to also add something? So I did just that:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And the list of musicians, so far, is:

As always, thanks for listening. And to my friends: thanks for another wonderful jam! 🙂

Edit, one day later:

Oliv just remixed my bass into the track – and it sounds like this:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

Merci beaucoup Olivier! C’est magnifique! 🙂

Cuttin Thru Da Haze

Cool Reggae/Ska feel on this; couldn’t resist to play around with it a bit:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

List of musicians (so far):

As always, thanks for listening. And as always to other musicians: come and jam with us – it’s fun 🙂