Because we’re on our way to visit family in Austria for several weeks tomorrow this year’s xmas medley is out a bit early. It starts out with a somewhat jazzy version of “The Christmas Song” (aka “Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire”) and ends with my hefty version of “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree”.
This year all guitars were recorded with my recently purchased headless 7-string Kiesel LM7X (see pic below) that I got from a San Diego county-local custom guitar shop. It’s equipped with a really great Hipshot trem that stays in tune even when you really abuse it. I recorded all tracks (drums, bass, guitars, and some piano and synths) in about seven evenings after my kids went to bed. Such is the life of a parent 😛
Also of note is that I started making these xmas medleys 20 years ago (in 1999). I skipped a couple of years in the beginning so there’s only a total of 19 medleys available. Still a nice milestone. Looking forward to medley number 20 next year 🙂
The newest addition to our family, 5-month old Kieran, starts out this year’s xmas medley before it kicks into “The Holly and The Ivy”. After a good minute and a half the pace picks up and the medley ends with my rendition of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time”.
As always I recorded everything in this medley myself at home, starting with the drums to lay down a foundation, which took about a day. Then I recorded all the rhythm guitar tracks one evening, the bass tracks the next evening, and finally the solo guitars in two evenings maybe a week later. I spent about two evenings mixing and mastering and it was done! Pretty quick this year.
Another year, another Christmas Medley 🙂 This year it’s a medley of “Away in a Manger” and “Deck The Halls” (mostly influenced by Debby Ryan’s excellent version).
The newest addition to our family, Kai Sebastian Ecker, also had a role in this medley. He’s the one doing the intro announcement 😛
It’s that time of the year again where I go into my cave for a few days to arrange and record my yearly Christmas medley. This year it’s a medley of “Do You Hear What I Hear” – first slow, then fast – and the great 80s song “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses. Hope you enjoy it!
It took me about five days worth of work to arrange, record, mix and master this year’s medley. I pretty much arranged and recorded all the drum tracks in the first two days, then recorded the rhythm guitars on day three, the bass and solo guitars on day four, and did the mixing and mastering on the final day, which was spread over several evenings. Quite atypically I recorded the bass after the rhythm guitars. Usually I do it the other way around, but this year it just worked out that way 😛
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year! This year’s medley contains two different versions of the German traditional Christmas carol “Alle Jahre Wieder”, which roughly translates to “Every Year Again”, and “Sleigh Ride”. Enjoy!
Just like last year, all the guitars in this medley were recorded clean and straight into the computer without microphones. Various guitar amp software plugins took care of making the guitars sound as they do. It’s pretty impressive technology, and a lot less hassle when it comes to recording guitar tracks, because there’s no need for microphones (and with that the hard-to-get silence required everywhere else in the house while recording).
Also, a first this year is that I pretty much worked out and recorded all the drum tracks live, going straight from my electronic Roland TD-9 drum kit into the computer. The drum sounds come from the Superior Drummer 2.0 drum plugin, which conveniently has a MIDI mapping set up for the TD-9 out of the box. In previous years, my drum skills weren’t good enough to do all the fills on the drums, and so I would still set them on the computer. This year, however, I didn’t manually set any fills on the computer, but rather just played them in via MIDI straight from the drum kit, along with the rest of the drum track 🙂
This is the first Christmas medley that my girlfriend actively participated in. She plays the clarinet in the slow part in the beginning 🙂 This year’s medley is a mashup of “Silver Bells” and “Jingle Bell Rock”. Hope you enjoy it!
For the techies among you it might be interesting to know that all guitars were recorded clean and going straight into the computer (i.e. no amp or microphone). All the guitar sounds come from plugins. That’s a first for me, as I’ve always recorded amps with microphones in the past. But I have to say that guitar plugins have evolved quite a lot and they sound really good, so I’ll probably keep doing this for future recordings because it’s a lot less of a hassle.
It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do this year for my Christmas medley. There were quite a few contenders to be included in the medley but I finally settled on “First Noel” and “Carol of the Bells”. It also took me longer to record this year. Normally I record everything in about 2-3 days, but this time it took me over a week to get everything done. I think it turned out pretty well though and I hope you like it! Happy holidays!
Who would have thought that I’d actually pump out another song just shortly after last year’s Christmas Medley…well, okay it took two months, so sue me 😉
The rhythm track of this song was a single take jam session I did a few weeks ago that I was lucky enough to record (often times I’ll just jam something cool, not record it, and immediately forget it, which leads to me screaming profanities at my neighbors, housemates, and other random people that happen to walk past the house ;)). I re-recorded the song with a click track, added some solos and – taa daa – this is the end result. I admit, it’s kind of random, but it was still pretty cool to just come up with a 4 minute piece of music while jamming.
Since the music is so random I thought the title “April Weather” was appropriate because in Austria the weather in April is pretty random and the song reminded me of it 🙂
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I’ve recorded something. Shame on me 😉 In any case, the Christmas season has caught up to me and as every year I spent a few hours on two weekends to record this medley. This year it’s a medley of the traditional Austrian Christmas carol “Still, Still, Still” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”. Hope you enjoy it and have a Merry Christmas.
This is the traditional Christmas Medley I record every year as a present to my friends. This year it’s a medley of the traditional Austrian Christmas carol “Es wird scho glei dumpa”, which translated means something like “It’s going to get dark soon”, and Mariah Carey’s hit “All I Want for Christmas”. Also I managed to sneak in the “Little Drummer Boy” at the end. Merry Christmas!
