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.

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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, 23:51:06

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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Song 45: Swan Lake (The Church)

27 August 2013 - During the recent weeks I rediscovered my love for the Australian band "The Church" after seeing some studio performances of them on Youtube. I just finished a great book by Robert Dean Lurie about the singer Steve Kilbey (if you happen to like this band, it's definitely worth a read!). Now that I finally found some time to delve into recording again, a Church song had to be my next task. "Swan Lake" is one of my favourites from the great album "Priest = Aura" (one of their best, I think). After recording a guitar and vocals only version that didn't get quite right, I decided that it's time to put in some more work and record a full set of instruments. Unfortunately my favourite drummer Handrin is some 600 kilometers away, so I had to use artificial drums. Whenever he'll be visiting me again in Berlin I might get back to this song and record some real drums. For now Native Instrument's Battery will have to do. I'm actually quite pleased with the result, but it was hard work to make the drums sound less artificial. Enjoy and leave a comment if you like this one.

Kai Widmann: vocals, guitars, bass, hammond, piano, e-bow guitar, drum programming

recorded in August 2013, mixed on 27 August 2013

music by Daugherty/Kilbey/Koppes/Willson-Piper, lyrics by Steve Kilbey

originally released on The Church - Priest = Aura (10 March 1992)

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Song 44: Writing To Reach You (Travis)

26 March 2013 - I've been quite busy after Christams and I will be just as busy for the next few months. So new songs will be rare, if at all. But someone on SoundCloud told me that he missed me. That's more than enough motivation to at least post a song from the archive. Here's another one from "Frankfurt 2002", Philipp is playing the guitar and I'm just singing. This was the first song the two of us did together.

Kai Widmann: vocals / Philipp Weis: guitar

recorded on 19 January 2002, mixed some days later

written by Fran Healy

originally released on Travis - The Man Who (1999)
cover version originally released on Weis / Widmann - Phile y Kaili Frankfurt 2002 (2002)

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Song 43: O Little Town Of Bethlehem

12 December 2012 - That's the song I had planned for last week but couldn't record because my voice was rotten. And it wasn't easy to record today either. I think I did abot ten versions, but the perfect one didn't show up. So this is an edit of the final two versions. It turned out ok, I think.
I got to know this song through Bruce Cockburn's fantastic album "Christmas". It really a fine piece of work and the best album of Christmas songs I know (I'm really not a fan of Christmas songs!). If you like acoustic guitars and if you don't like Christmas kitsch, give it a try.

Kai Widmann: vocals, acoustic guitar

recorded and mixed on 11 December 2012

music by Lewis Redner, lyrics by Phillips Brooks

first performed in 1868
inspired by Bruce Cockburn's version from his album "Christmas" (1993)

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