tuesday songs

performed by Kai Widmann

It's been my new year's resolution for 2011 to spend more time making/recording/mixing music. To force myself into doing so, I decided to put up this page and post one song I recorded every tuesday.
After eight months I couldn't go on with this. Having a stressful job and a family leaves not enough room to post on a weekly basis. But I will continue posting songs every once in a while. If you don't want to miss a song, you can follow me on SoundCloud or twitter or subscribe to my RSS-Feed.
You can find older recordings on the page of my old band HEY NONNY NONNY.

Feel free to leave comments or use the facebook Like button. And please share!

Song 52: Come Out And Play (Billie Eilish)

4 January 2021 - Exactly 10 years ago I posted my first Tuesday Song. To celebrate this occasion I had to record something new. This one is dedicated to my goddaughter Lydia, who is a huge Billie Eilish fan. I learned to play that song just a few weeks ago in preparation for a Zoom concert. What a lovely tune!
With this project I switched my recording software from Cubase to Logic. It's all quite new, but I like it so far, I especially love the virtual Drummers. But they could never replace Handrin!
Track 49 (Fall At Your Feet) was also updated today, see below.

Kai Widmann: vocals / Guitars / Piano / Hammond / Drum & Bass Programming

recorded and mixed in December 2020 and January 2021

written by Billie Eilish O'Connell & Finneas O'Connell

originally released as a single on 20 November 2018

Comments

Holger - 05 January 2021, 18:07:02

Hi Kai!
Kenne das Original nicht, gefällt mir aber sehr gut.
Finde auch "Ocean Eyes" wunderschön. Gruß Holger

Knörkelpott - 16 January 2021, 02:20:19

Mag das Arragement! Vermisse mit dir zu spielen und denke sehr gerne an die wunderbare Session mit Handrin …

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Song 50 + 51: This Is My Day / Mental Vibration (Hey Nonny Nonny)

24 March 2020 - You'd think that there's plenty of time making music during the Corona lockdown, but actually there ain't. I'm working full time from home, I'm kind of a home teacher and parent representative for my son's class, my son and I organized a digital classroom together (his idea, I'm so proud!). So it never gets boring. But through a facebook challange (post a picture from younger days) I began to rummage through a hard disk full of old images and audio files and so I rediscovered not only images, but also lots of music, good and bad. And here are two tracks I think are more on the "good" side, two songs by HEY NONNY NONNY that were minor local hits. These aren't the versions from our album "Grow", but different mixes from a sampler called "Subway Bubbles", sounding a little rougher.

This Is My Day - Kai Widmann: vocals, acoustic guitar / Holger Geißler: electric guitar, backing vocals / Volker Plaschke: bass, backing vocals / Handrin Fahmi: drums, backing vocals
Mental Vibration - Kai Widmann: vocals, accordion / Holger Geißler - electric guitar / Volker Plaschke: bass, backing vocals / Handrin Fahmi: drums

recorded and mixed in 1993

This Is My Day - music and lyrics by Holer Geißler
Mental Vibration - music by Hey Nonny Nonny, lyrics by Kai Widmann

originally released on Subway Bubbles Volume 3 (1993)

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Song 49: Fall At Your Feet (Crowded House)

11 June 2019 - Finally a new track on tuesday songs. And this time it's even a new recording, the first in six years.
I've always been a huge fan of Crowded House and especially of Neil Finn's songwriting. I think he's one of the best songwriters there is. For ages I wanted to do a Crowded House cover on tuesday songs. "Fall At Your Feet" is not their first song I learned to play, but the first somewhat decent recording I got "on tape". I've got an old recording of "Private Universe" somewhere in the archive, but I was never quite happy with it.
If you're into Crowded House and want to know more about the band history, I recommend the book "Something So Strong" by Chris Bourke, I enjoyed it a lot and especially the troubled history of the album "Woodface" is quite interesting.
Recently I finally found some time to learn new songs and to record some of them. It's really good to have making music back in my life! So I hope there will be more tuesday songs following some time soon.

UPDATE 4 January 2021: It's the tenth anniversary of my first tuesday song today, so I'll upload a new recording later. But first I have a new version of this song. I was never really happy with how it turned out in 2019 and I always wanted to revisit the recording. So now I did. I rebuilt the project in Logic from scratch using the old tracks from 2019, added a second guitar, re-recorded the vocals and did a new mix. The old mix is still there (below) for you to compare.

Kai Widmann: vocals, guitar, melodica, accordion, hammond, e-piano

2021 Version - recorded in May and June 2019 and in January 2021, mixed in January 2021
2019 Version - recorded in May and June 2019, mixed in June 2019

music and lyrics by Neil Finn

originally released on Crowded House - Woodface (1 July 1991)

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Song 48: After All... (The Cardigans)

21 March 2017 - Another song from our Album "Perfectly Wrong". Jazzy!
I was playing this one yesterday/today during a meditative late night session and I realised how fond I am of that song. It's quite tough for me to play, because Philipp was playing the guitar back then during the recording sessions and until yesterday I had never played it myself. But now I intend to learn it. Looking forward to playing it live later this year.
Thank you Mac for rediscovering this song. And thank you Georg for waiting patiently for my chord changes ;)

Kai Widmann: vocals / Philipp Weis: guitar / Amin Jan Sayed: bass

recorded and mixed between October 2002 and March 2003

written by Peter Svensson and Magnus Sveningsson

originally released on The Cardigans - Emmerdale (18 February 1994)

Comments

Isa Rothe - 21 March 2017, 22:51:06

Wundervoll! Mit Stimme und Herz, wie ich Dich, Kai, schon früher kannte.

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Song 46 + 47: Roads / Roads Reprise (This Is Not America) (Portishead / Pat Metheny and David Bowie)

10 January 2017 - It's been a while, sorry for that. I'll try to get making music back into my life. And I'll try to post at least a few songs a year on Tuesday Songs, even if they aren't new recordings.
Today's two tracks are from the archive, like many other songs here recorded with my friend Philipp for our album "Perfectly Wrong". I never was really happy with how Roads turned out, because I don't like my vocals (but that's a problem on many of the tracks on "Perfectly Wrong") and we somehow compressed it too much, so the drums in the instrumental part lost a little of their punch. But I think it's still a decent recording, there are some things I really like about it. All those drum layers! Handrin and Miguel working with us! And I absolutely love the Reprise. When we were recording Roads I started singing "This Is Not America" to the chords of the verse and Philipp and I got the idea to make a mashup reprise for Roads which we finished soon after.
We used quite a lot of drum samples in these tracks (some of them heavily edited to match our beat):
U2 - The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Pearl Jam - W.M.A.‚ Talk Talk - Happiness Is Easy‚ The Golden Palominos - These Days

Roads - Kai Widmann: vocals, guitar, hammond, synth bass, samples, drum programming / Philipp Weis: guitar, samples / Handrin Fahmi: snare drum / Miguel Barrios: tablas
Roads Reprise (This Is Not America) - Kai Widmann: vocals, guitar, hammond, synth bass, samples, drum programming, editing / Philipp Weis: guitar, samples, hammond, editing / Handrin Fahmi: snare drum / Miguel Barrios: tablas

recorded and mixed between October 2002 and March 2003

Roads - written by Portishead
This Is Not America - written by David Bowie, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays

Roads - originally released on Portishead - Dummy (22 August 1994)
This Is Not America - originally released as a single in February 1985

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