Took a bit longer this time, but we got two more songs out, and they’re both duets. One song we turned into a duet, the other was originally one. Let’s listen together.
The songs can be found here:
https://www.nicehat.org/ukulele/This_Song_Will_Guide_You_Home/
The first one is a cover of “Such Great Heights” which is originally a song by The Postal Service (Side project of the main singer from Death Cab for Cutie), but it was also covered by the group Iron & Wine. This was a fun song to sing because it’s originally done with the lyrics overlapping so the main singer does an overdub multitrack. Instead, Julie and I just alternated the parts and turned it into a duet. I even found an arrangement for the ukulele which shows how to do the guitar solo on ukulele. Picking melody out on a uke is pretty foreign to me, so I hope it sounded ok. Also the synth opening and ending were cut altogether and we started right into the song and ended with a fade. The original arrangement is very synthy and sparse, and our version is naturally full of ukulele goodness.
The second song is a cover of “Two of Us” originally a Lennon & McCartney tune for The Beatles. I tweaked the chord arrangement a little to throw in the intro/transition picking. Like in “Such Great Heights” I had to play with this quite a bit to get it sounding good. This song is extra special, too, because we sang it a year ago Sunday at the wedding of our great friends Cordelia and Jørgen. It looked something like this:
Ok, maybe it looked a little different, but it was really wonderful, and we were very proud to be a part of it.
I named this EP “This Song Will Guide You Home” from a lyric in “Such Great Heights”
The equipment is the same so far: I did all the recording in Apple’s GarageBand using the microphone from Rock Band (it’s USB, after all) and a Tascam US-122 fancy mixer dealie which has two 1/4″ instrument cable inputs and two XLR microphone inputs and goes out through USB. I still can’t find my XLR microphone. The ukulele is the “Surf Flea” from Flea Market Music that has a passive pickup built in so I can play amplified or record directly. The chord arrangements I used for “Such Great Heights” and “Two of Us” were from Ukulele Hunt and Alligator Boogaloo respectively.
If you liked these, check out our prior releases:
“I’m Not Scared Anymore”
“This Is What You Get“
You guys are such dear kind lovely people! With beautiful voices! Thank you so much for this recording, how do we download it!? WE ARE ON OUR WAY HOME!!!!!!! See you soon old firends! Love, Cordelia
fyi, to download any of our songs, go to nicehat.org/ukulele and click into the song group you like then right-click the mp3 and save.