It was time for a change and there's no butts about it. It's the ends here that justify the means. "Some drink whiskey while others drink rum....I like tequila with just a shot of bum."...Butt Shot that is...Get the picture?
Originally, this recording was never meant to be presented as a actual song but just with me goofing around with my music gear and my guitar "The DOG" just after I picked him up from the music pound. It started soon after my new friend at the time who hooked me up with the gear that I now use, must have thought that I was telling dog tales when I told him that punks used to brag that they would know someone who could blow me away with their guitar skills and I have never seen the day to which that has happened. I don't possess any particular guitar skills but when I put the Dog on my lap, he doesn't act like a traditional lapdog and he doesn't take kindly to strangers. Especially to cats who try to invade and rule the house. Well, a few days later he brought a 16 year old cat going by the name of Brandon...or Brendon along with some other cats to watch the event as B Boy was supposed to blow me away with his PRODIGY SKILLS. It was amazing to watch the boy perform Beethoven stuff and the kind of stuff you see on Youtube.
After he played his act with my Dog, he then handed the Dog over to me..."Hey hey..chuckle chuckle" ...I don't walk the Dog...He walk's me...I just tickle his neck and belly and then he'll pull off his Dog tricks to which I have no control over. I explained to my friend later that there's more to playing the guitar than just sitting a dog on your lap to perform tricks. You've gotta have some music to back you up to see how your dog keeps up with the beat and so I made this song up to show him how that's done. I made this one up real fast and tried singing for the first time and arranging vocal parts and just talked about whatever came to mind and just let the Dog do whatever he wanted to do. This is about as raw as it get's. The whole song took me about a week to do.
This song and video will probably be most appreciated by fellow musicians. Especially those who do programming. This was one of my first experimental songs that I tried out on FL 5 out back in 2005. It was my 3rd composition. This dates back farther than anything that I've previously uploaded to Youtube. This baby was my prototype that laid down the ground work for the simpler projects that I perform now. I wasn't even singing at that time yet. At least not solo. I did however lay down 100 vocal tracks of "Ahs" and mixed them down to 1 track on this 400 track project.
My first goal was to compose an original European style song and learn how to do so on this new program. I decided to use my imagination and give it a live concert sound. For this, I uploaded a lot of various audience sound effects from Limewire. I added my own whistling which I'm sure that my neighbors appreciated. What I amazed myself with was how I was able to take the stock FL hand claps which are usually dry for rap music and transform them into a concert sounding audience clapping, most notably on the drum solo which was another adventure in itself. I cloned as many hand clap that I needed to emulate the sound and altered their pitch and offset their timing for a more human sounding crowd effect.
Knowing that I would want to be very versatile with my percussion work, I figured that a drum solo would be the best way for me to test my potential. I've personally have never heard anything like this on a program like FL or any other virtual program. Normally if I intend to upload an older project, I'll upgrade and replace the older sounds with the better sounds that I use now but I've decided to leave this one exactly the way I had left it...Cobwebs and all. Besides, I have no idea as to how I actually came up with this stuff. It looks like an endless maze of tracks. As far as the video goes....I took out my camera and snapped a few back yard shots. My back yard is beautiful at this time of year.
I've just decided to upload this one since I created it back in 2007. One way of knowing that one of my songs is older is if there's any guitar in it. Although I still have my guitar, my Fender Sidekick started to short out back in 2011 and still serves me well as a coffee coaster or an ashtray table. Even the original warranty never told me that this baby would last me for a lifetime as a vital tool for my everyday living needs as I still need a nearby coffee or smoke to work on my more recent ventures.
A smart musician will always keep a secret stash of songs tucked away for when he needs them and this little gem was one of my first attempts at composing Electronic Dance music back around 2006 which means that this 10 year old song will be my first upload for 2016. What I loved about this song was that I had no idea as to what I was doing being that I had never composed a song like it before. It almost made me want to dance but I opted instead for just sitting down and drinking a beer when it was done.
After much time pondering...."about 2 minutes"...I've decide "Yep...it's time to upload a new one. I've decided to go for simple this time and so this one came out fast like thin ketchup through a broken strainer..."Don't ask..I dunno"... I'll spend more time on the next one for sure but I like this one for it's simplicity and that it didn't take forever to do.
Look's like I got my 1000 Subs ....plus 1 and I've had this one standing by just for the occasion. I want to thank you all, especially to those who have taken the time to check out my channel description that read's "My name is STEVE"...cap-lock on that one... "and I am a musician from Windsor Ontario" and to all those who have noticed that all of my songs are written by Stephen Hereford....That's me...Steve...Stephen...My friends call me Steve. My dept collectors call me Stephen. Herfortz was a username that I quickly came up with when I first enrolled to this site and back then I was thinking "Username...username.... Herefred?... Herefarts?.... Stevefarts?.... Stevefortz?... Herefortz?... Therefortz?.... Herfortz...Why not?"
So by now you should all know who I am.....which could be useful to me in the event that I should ever forget my own name.
I've decided to drop Electronic instrumentals for the time being to work on a few vocal songs. Some people like to hear me sing for a reason that's beyond me so "ahem"....."Do Re Me Fa So La ♫ La ♫ La ♫"
I was inspired to write this song shortly after I had first watched a video by Danai Moraiti which was her performing a Greek song "i garsona (Panos Tountas)" on her electric piano. What really captured my heart was her most beautiful smile at the end of her performance. I have never seen such a smile in all of this world. From that moment on, I ordained her to be my QUEEN OF SMILES !!!! .... That was well over a year ago as I had encountered a problem after I had already sang the lyrics that I had written for this song. I didn't know then as I do not know now, how to pronounce her name in English .... A most embarrassing dilemma .... In English, the combination of "ai" creates a long vowel "A"sound but her name is in Greek. I spent over a month researching her name on Google and I asked people who were European but nobody knew for sure and so I abandoned this song. I didn't know Danai as well back then and I did not wish to mispronounce her name but we are such good friends now that I feel more comfortable in taking this risk. If I am wrong on the pronunciation of her name, I will then wear a tutu and dance the Nutcracker for DANAI as we go fishing.
You can see and hear more of Danai here https://www.youtube.com/user/danai2014
LYRICS
Queen of smiles. My Queen of Smiles. Danai is my Queen of smiles.
Queen of smiles. My Queen of smiles. Danai is my Queen of smiles.
Danai and me go fishing by the sea ... She and me ... "She and me."
We shall catch a fish or maybe 2 or 3 ... We'll see ... "We shall see."
I'll bring the poles and she'll bring the worms.
I'll bait the hooks and then we'll take turns
casting our lines out into the bay
where we shall fish onto the break of day.
Queen of smiles. My Queen of Smiles. Danai is my Queen of smiles.
Queen of smiles. My Queen of smiles. Danai is my Queen of smiles.
Well, this certainly break's my 1 song per month rule. I can't help it. Halloween's got me by the Candy Apples. Normally, I create the music first and then I make a video for it later but I didn't want to go through my video madness routine at the very end and so I did a little bit of this and a little bit of that and got it all wrapped up together at the same time. I didn't have the opportunity to take the song out for a test drive as I always take a cruise with my bro and we listen to it in his car and then later I make some adjustments at home. It sound's fine to me through my laptop and the video look's okay and so I'm just gonna upload it as is.
