Thanks guys. I was nervous, but hopeful you guys would like it. Playing around with the National Anthem is tricky ground for sure. But I felt it was inspiring and respectful, so I hoped no one would resent the different style and chord structures underneath. But there will eventually be that die-hard puritan somewhere. Luckily it wasn't you guys. LOL
LOL @ Howlin' John - Thank you brother.
George,
Yes, they are too loud at places and maybe too much reverb. I didn't spend any time mixing this to speak of. I plan on tweaking it more, before debuting it on MySpace or somewhere else. But I wanted all of your impressions and critiques first.
Mike,
In the infamous words of Ed McMahon... "You are correct sir!" - My voice was SHOT when I recorded this. Not completely shot, but nowhere near up to my normal standards. I plan on re-doing the vocals. I would have done that anyway probably, because I almost basically built the song around singing it and just some piano chords underneath. I was having trouble setting it to a metronome, because I want to slow down in places, so I had to do the whole thing raw, and unmetered. Which was tricky and interesting as I developed it more. I would add new things, and have to change already recorded parts to fit the new thing I had added.
Mary,
Thank you. And yes, that's me singing, albeit at 4:30 in the morning or something. LOL - And wow! Yeah, if you found a place to fit that in, that would be awesome. Maybe when I re-work some of the mistakes and mix it better, I could send you the track, WITHOUT any flute in it, and then the original version, WITH the flute, in case you wanted to keep any parts that already work well. Let's talk more about that sometime.
RG,
Thank you so much for the kind words. And, why not... Maybe when I find some time I will take a stab at America the Beautiful. I think it is under copyright though? So I would have to check on that too, before spending too much time on something I couldn't upload on my MySpace too.
Once again, thank you all.
And to elaborate a little...
I feel like young people are missing out on the patriotic fervor that used to be commonplace years (decades) ago. Our anthem is march-like and very straight forward. I hoped that in doing it a little more emotionally, and slowing it down, so there is time to absorb it, and think while listening, I hoped I might touch some young people, and encourage a little more love for their country again.
If I get it tweaked better, I hope to do a video with it, to be more impactful, and get it up on YouTube and MySpace.
Thanks everyone! It means alot that you all seemed to like it.
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I like it a whole lot better then Rosanne's version)
