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 subscribe to my
RSS-Feed.
Since 2021 I'm part of a band again, Fahmi Friedrich Widmann, check our LinkTree page to see what we're up to.
Feel free to leave comments. And please share!
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
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)
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)
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.
Song 46 + 47: Roads / Roads Reprise (This Is Not America) (Portishead / Pat Metheny and David Bowie)
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
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 …
Volker Plaschke - 25 January 2021, 15:49:16
Hey-ho,
hier meldet sich ein Geist der Vergangenheit.
Bin beim Lockdown-Surfen über den YouTube-Livestream aus dem letzten Jahr gestolpert und wollte nur kurz schreiben, dass ich das eine super-lustige Idee fand!
Viele Grüße
Volker