You Know What Would Really Make This Lumineers Cover Pop? A Ribbon Synthesizer
Flattery, they say, will get you anywhere. "I like the way you play that song better than the original," someone told me, "so you should record it." But since I can't leave anything well enough alone, I had to change it up and make it worse. You can't see it in the video because I set the camera up wrong and we didn't have time for a second take, but the boop-beep in the second chorus is a KORG monotribe. Basically, it's a single-voice oscillator synthesizer that you play by sliding a stylus (or, in the case, the field-expedient substitute of a Clayton .80mm guitar pick) along a pressure-sensitive ribbon. For the price of a monotribe you can get a real keyboard "synth" with 72 keys and all sorts of patches and whatnot, but it will be a digital synth, which is not close to being the same thing.
Garrett and I had fun with this one, and even if the mix is a little off, those things happen. Besides the monotribe, I'm playing my Rainsong JM1000. Garrett is playing my 1974 Gibson J-40.
Yesterday I barely "celebrated" Thanksgiving with a trip to Burger King for dinner. I am not a holiday person. Today the whole world called or texted or emailed me. One caller just got done doing the hair and makeup at a wedding for a fellow with whom she was once in love. Another is stranded far from home doing family obligations and experiencing a tremendous amount of physical pain due to this odd lupus-like disorder that is making all her joints hurt all the time. I don't have the ability to fix either situation, really. My son is still enjoying his time in Florida, chasing geckos and teaching his great-grandfather how to make dinosaurs out of a model kit. The world is chugging along. At some point, I need to get over this pneumonia and go join it.