Carolan Song: "Judith" (draft 1)

Trying out some more things with the Carolan Guitar, I thought I'd record a song. The digital eight-track is set up, the computer is equipped for mixing multi-tracks. So that's what I do. And since the Carolan is basically an acoustic guitar, I thought I'd try to make it sound as electric as possible. After all, the guitar is wired up with a pre-amp and has a jack plug!

I don't know what I did wrong, but apart from a loud buzz, I wasn't able to get anything ... Something in the settings? A flat battery? I didn't waste any more time trying to figure this out, and set up a microphone, ran it through the Boss ME-70 pedal, and started recording that way. Some flanger, delay, compression and overdrive thrown in there - just to make it entirely unrecognizable :)

(making the Carolan my own :) )

With a couple of guitar tracks recorded on the digital eight-track (together with a five-year-old talking in the background. Always difficult to avoid that in this house when recording with a microphone ...), I inevitably added two drum-tracks (SparkLE beats and Yamaha electric kit), some piano, and a squeaky synth (Roland). The result, so far, was 'Judith' --- a somewhat wobbly mixture of funk, new wave, folk, grundge and jazz. Or none of the above, of course :)

Now, keeping in mind the whole Carolan Guitar concept, I stopped right there. Normally I would clean this up a bit, add a vocal or two, strip some of the superfluous instruments of, and mix/balance it properly. What if I didn't do that, but what if I 'gave' this draft-version to the guitar? For somebody else, somewhere somehow, to discover it, to play around with it and to finish it?

How would that work? Well, here is the song:



 and here are the multi-tracks for you to download should you be interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/pbibpm8637s3g2g/326._Judith.zip

I'm posting them here on the blog now, but I can now also place them in a link embedded on the body of the Carolan Guitar. That's right! As I mentioned earlier, the patterns all over this guitar contain codes that can be read on smartphones or tablets, and that bring you to online places. What if one of these online places was a playground of unfinished songs?

Imagine someone picking up this guitar and using it as a medium to start a songwriting partnership with someone they never met. Only through this guitar - which gets handed from person to person?

So, if this one reaches you, have a try. If you like the song, add something; if you don't like it, well, make it better then! :)

It would be really great if you could let me know the results - I'd love to hear them. Bring them together. Make them album of the same song that grew into different shapes all over the world ...

 In the meantime, I'm going to have a look around inside this Carolan Guitar, to see whether I might be able to find someone else's unfinished song to play around with!