Draw Me Close to You is another one of those classic songs I've wanted to record for a while, but I'd been holding off doing it for some time because I wanted to find the right person to collaborate with. Well, I recently met Elisha thanks to the suggestion of a mutual friend and after some brief discussion, we settled on this one as the first song we'd cover together (more collabs coming in the future Lord-willing). Arrangement Partially Inspired by Michael W. Smith
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Ever since I played To The Moon by Freebird Games (the game that this song was written for), I've wanted to make a cover of Everything's Alright by Laura Shigihara. I have a thing for story games and this one is particularly touching and heartbreaking. The developer, Kan Gao, is a genius, and Laura's original song for it just knocks it completely out of the park. If you haven't already played To The Moon yourself, I highly recommend it. The hammer-on technique used here in the intro and the transitions took a bit of time and effort to get right, but I think I finally nailed it. Originally, I only planned to make this arrangement for voice and guitar only, but after getting the idea to try adding a clarinet (which I eventually decided against), I simply couldn't help myself and ended up going all out with the orchestration. Writing / arranging for orchestral instruments is a skill I've previously had almost no experience with, so this project ended up being my first example of a rather successful attempt at it. Personally I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I know I literally just covered The Optimist with Jessie a few weeks ago, but recently I figured out how to play Wandering (another song by Lauryn Marie) and there was no way I was gonna put off recording it. Wandering is (and has been since I first heard it) my all time favorite song she's written as it combines a new melody and new lyrics with the classic hymn called Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Once you finish watching my cover, I highly recommend you go check out the original which I've linked in the end screen. Last Tuesday, the 17th of November, marks the 1 year anniversary of the day that my friend and I (a different friend - not Jessie) first found Lauryn Marie's channel and subscribed to it! Lauryn is still my favorite artist a year later and I thought it would be fitting to commemorate the occasion by covering another one of her songs! (I can't believe it's been a whole year! 😯) This song - The Optimist - is the sequel / sister song to The Fear, which I covered back in May of this year. The Optimist means quite a bit to me right now because lately I've found myself in the same position that it was written from. The world has been so full of evil men, immorality, and corruption lately that I've found it difficult to know how to encourage friends - and frankly I've been feeling like the situation is little hopeless myself. But praise God that we know Who wins in the end and it ain't the enemy! More info about the backstory below. :)
This Isn't the End by Owl City has been one of my favorite songs ever since I first heard it. It's a reminder that even when everything going on around us seems completely hopeless and out of our control, there's still hope. I've wanted to record this song for a very long time, but I wanted to wait to do that until I felt could do it justice. Loads of time and effort later and here we are! In my opinion, this is one of the best, most hard hitting songs Adam Young has ever written. I hope you enjoy listening to my rendition of this beautifully heartbreaking song. I (Joshua) don't usually post on Sunday, but hey, better get something out late than not at all, right? I arranged this song some time ago and I'm excited to finally be able to share it with you! This video is the result of about a month of work, haha. As soon as I heard Lauryn play her song "The Fear" for the first time on a livestream, I was totally hooked and I decided I just *had* to learn it. This is actually the first song I've learned on guitar that uses an alternate tuning (Open G) so that part definitely took a bit. A week or two later, she posted a produced version of it (linked below) on her YouTube channel, and I used that to figure out the each of the parts for the various instruments. It took me a few tries to get something that I really like, but I'm a huge fan of the end result. :) Adam Melchor has some fantastic songs and he's an absolute beast on guitar! But because he's so skilled, most of said songs are rather difficult to play. After trying to learn Jewel (and getting a little stuck with the picking pattern, not gonna lie), I thought I'd give Joyride a shot since it was a little easier to understand. Unfortunately, no 100%-accurate-to-the-original chord charts existed online that I could find, so I decided to go ahead and transcribe it myself. I wrote down (as closely as possible) what I could make out of his playing in his video at 368 with nothing but his voice and acoustic guitar and this was the result. Well guys, I finally did it! I've finally come out with a new cover! Last week at Shabbat service, I got to help play / lead this song with a couple other guys at our congregation and that inspired me to make a recording of my own interpretation of it. For the next month or so, I'll be taking Andrew Huang's online music production course that should take my recording, mixing, and mastering skills to an entirely new level. This video will act as a baseline of sorts to mark where I was before the class as compared to how much better my skills will be at the end. I honestly can't wait to jump into that because up to this point, I've had to figure out how to do most of this stuff on my own. It'll be really nice to get some deep instruction on it from an actual teacher. For my 20th birthday, I decided to try something special. I pulled together all of my different skills into a single video and here is the result. :) I hope you enjoy this cover of one of my favorite songs from The Sound of Music that I made with some "friends." |
MusicAlong with being a YouTuber, Filmmaker, Photographer, and Geocacher, Joshua is also a musician. Every so often he tries to post a new song cover on his JRM Vlogs YouTube channel. This page collects them all into a neat little group. :) Archives
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