Today I had a small lightbulb moment concerning what to do concerning recording a video as a storyboard in the VeeDub Bus.
I believe that the songs that are already finished and have been recorded on the Apple Mac M2 in the little home studio, known as The Den, would be ideal played in acoustic fashion out in the open air. Then a comparison study would be a good theme. Especially to chat about how the songs can progress. An acoustic version of these songs below, stripped and laid bare, would give ideas to how my songs develop. Sometimes it may be said that the simplicity of an acoustic version may be far better. Who knows.
The storyboard format would have specific sections every time. And two of those sections are now sorted. #1. Acoustic song and #2. The Den song. Trouble is! An idea of what to put visually over The Den songs below is the hardest thought process at the moment. Playing an acoustic version of them is simply myself alone, or myself alongside another musician with an instrument or a singer. Alongside? Simply chatting about the ways of getting songs recorded.
These songs below are the core for the first videos though. Use what has already been done. And what is quite nice about the versions below, is that with my new fast fibre broadband, I can send out the highest quality option into the universe. Before, the songs have been uploaded here on WP on basic levels.
For the possible new visitors to this blog, here is the background info regarding the songs below. All songs written by myself, Gray Summers. All the instruments, apart from the drums which are from the GarageBand library, are played by myself. So guitars, keyboards, vocals and a bit of percussion. I don’t like AI one little bit. So will never use it. So the songs will have mistakes. But that’s okay. I’m only human after all.
If you have the opportunity to do so, using headphones is a far better listening experience. Thank you.
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Cheers and all the best to you all.
Intro song to the YouTube Vlogcasts. Rhythm of Lies. Wind of Sorrows. Eddie Loves to Dance. 18 years was 50 years ago.Old Man…I guess that’s me. Clean Start to Nothing Yet. This Instrumental is an intended introduction to the Cloud 9 Vlogcast on YouTube when there are other musicians involved in the ongoing video. The intention is to write an upbeat lyric of simple introductory content intent and find a melody to attach. A kind of ‘Hello, Hello. Here we Go’ type of involvement which is suitable for The VeeDub/Cloud 9’/Musical Vibe storyboard scenarios. And…..remember to not to get too cheesy! Faded Walls. Time to burn them down. If the Outside looks Right in at You, then, don’t turn around.November, the Stereo and You…..My Friend. Year One.Stop this Heartache. Stars above the Dunes. Currently an instrumental. Considering rewriting the intended melody/lyrics. Removed the vocal/lyric track as to sing over just this presentation above. He Said, She Said. Hey Yano……. A little vocal ditty attached too. Groovin’ with Mr. Summers on Cloud 9.
AND NOW THERE BECOMES A TIME OF ENQUIRY. I NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE MUSIC PLATFORM ‘BANDCAMP’. TO UPLOAD SOME OF THESE SONGS ABOVE. AS WITH ALL NEW VENTURES AND THE ENQUIRY NEED, I HAVE A FAIR AMOUNT OF TREPIDATION BEFORE JUMPING IN TO THE EXPERIENCE. NEED TO BITE THE BULLET AND JUST WEATHER THE POSSIBLE STORM.
AND…….SOME FINAL INSTRUMENTAL INCLUSIONS FOR REFLECTING WHEN WALKING THROUGH THE LOCAL SCENERY OR SIMPLY FILMING LOCAL SPOTS.
Be Humble …. i-know ……..that I know nothing. Socrates. TADA.
I’m a Staff Nurse. Capitals on the S and N. I’m proud to be a nurse. It was hard won. And is still really hard to win on a daily basis. I have loved my life so far. Every 10 years I would subconsciously change direction career wise. These changes would just creep up on the Summers’ lifestyle. Unknown until they arrived. No planning involved. Left school in the early 1970s and picked up a guitar (musician) and it felt ‘right’.
10 years go by touring, playing, dreaming and writing my own songs singing to an initial audience of myself alone to audiences of thousands. Toured with my band supporting the Specials, Selector, Madness, and Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Lived above a Whole-food Shop, which had a Potter supply his hand thrown stoneware coffee/tea pots and domestic ware. He gave me a lump of clay, and ‘hey’ I started making Raku and St. Thomas White stoneware Mythological and Mystical travellers and warriors. I became a ‘ceramicist’ in earnest. Couldn’t call myself a Potter because I couldn’t throw anything on a wheel. Completely useless.
Craft fairest, exhibitions, shop supplying were my selling places for ceramics. Even opened up and ran a shop with another craft worker. It was located behind Coventry Cathedral. It was short lived. After 10 years go by working with clay? My nephew, born profoundly Deaf, meant we all, as a family, went to college to learn British Sign Language. I took this up as a career and supported Deaf students in higher and further education. I move to Wales in this role and…..
10 years go by again. Sitting having a coffee with a lecturer in Aberystwyth, I bemoan my age of 50 and say I’d love to do something different. “Become a nurse,” he says. He takes me onto his Access to Nursing course, which allows me into the General Adult Nurse degree course in Swansea (well the Carmarthen site of the three University’s sites), and there you go. After three years trying I become a Staff Nurse.
10 years have gone by. Now? I’m 61 and it seems my 10 year change has stopped. I have my Volkswagen T2 Crossover 1972 Bay Bus, “Wow, an old camper van!” as people call it, nearing renovation completion. I used it as my daily transportation (that’s ‘My Daily Ride Dude’ when I would have been in my younger days) and it will once again become my ‘daily ride dude’ when I get it back home very shortly. I’m thinking I may use it as a central life changer. It’s name is Billie Bud and it will carry my interests including guitar, djembe drum, Pentax cameras (LX, 645, MX), lots of black and white film, my aromatherapy essential oils (120 plus) to create new synergy concoctions, decent pencils and art paper and my small collection of beautiful fountain pens (1930s to 1990s) to write thoughts and songs.
So the story goes, to where? No one knows.
WELL…….AN UPDATE IS REQUIRED NOW I SUPPOSE.
Now soon April (tomorrow) of 2026, it has been four years and eight months since retiring at 65 years old. So now a soon to be 70 year old in September this year. I have been a gardener, decorator/DIY enthusiast on renovating the house for about two and a half years when retired and nearly two years as a musician again. I have been songwriting and recording the results on a MAC M2 home studio. It’s been fun.
So I suppose, change still is ongoing. The VeeDub Bus has had some new carburettor updates and now returned. Hopefully music can be recorded on the go. Ambitions are to get a ‘van studio’ set up and record amongst nature whilst chilling in the VW Bus. Blogs of course have been ongoing and will still be a future aim.
Cheers to everyone that has stuck through this WP adventure. So very much appreciated. Thank you all.
Salted Caramel? Or Mint Choc Chip? COLLAGRAPH Print above by Gray Summers.
People ask me ‘Gray. How do you play bass, with those ever moving notes, and sing at the same time?’ My reply? ‘I just kind of ‘do’. I suppose what they mean is, separating the voice and hands. What seems, as a non-musician, to be complex actions being produced. Even one hand strumming and the other holding down a chord or three can seem complicated. Trust me. My limits with a six string guitar is strumming, humming or singing and keeping time by think-tapping out metronome time in my brain. A silent ever present brain metronome is a blessing really. Hands thinking of what you’re playing and voice channeling different rhythmic melody become rote after a while.
Singing and playing bass? As said ‘I kind of just ‘do’. There are music limitations that I cannot fathom out. Piano keys, their simple black and white keys that I cannot command spatially and using both hands individually in the complex patterns required. Both the visual placement of placing fingers on a line of white and finding separate digit movements? Nope. It’s all so far beyond my scope. Musicians? I really admire drummers and keyboard players especially.
An old song. She Said. Written back in 1978. I tried the bass tune/riff out on my acoustic guitar here. I will keep the original lyrics I wrote in this one. But will change the choppy guitar riff played on electric six string guitar on the original into a more melodic riff. I caught the type of vibe at the end of this try out and see if I could remember the bass line exercise. Basically, sing and play bass at the same time. It was a bit erratic. Muscle memory allowed me to be fairly successful remembering the lyrics and bass line though.
I’m writing this because of a phone conversation with my guitar playing brother last night. He is going on a jam session next week with our friend John, the drummer I played alongside in Team 23, and my brother’s old work colleague friend who he played alongside in a band. His friend is a bass player and vocalist. I asked my brother if he would finally sing himself. At least some harmonies. He has never done this in all the time he has played guitar. Certainly never in our first band Soft Ground. That was in early teenage years. So decades upon decades of him never using voice and guitar together. He is a lead guitarist and damn good too. So there is a complexity in his playing. He said ‘I tried once when we played Gloria by Van Morrison. When I sang the single ‘Gloria’ harmony…..I stopped playing the guitar!’
He’s going to give singing a go again he says. Just a bit of practice separating your mind’s focus a little and, Bam, off you go. Like learning how to ride a bike or swim.
It isn’t like rubbing your stomach and top of your head in clockwise circles with a hand on each and then changing one of your hand directions to anticlockwise. That blows your mind. Impossible. And. It’s not like choosing whether to buy a mint chocolate chip or salted caramel ice cream cone. You don’t buy the two and finish one and start on the other afterwards. You don’t take a bit of one, scream ‘Lovely jubbly!’ And then a bit of the other and scream ‘Even more lovely jubbly’. That doesn’t work musically with voice, guitar, voice, guitar stop and starts. Basically. You shove both in a bowl, mix them up and produce a unique synergy of taste. Don’t eat it too fast either. Just enjoy the process. Too fast at eating? You get a huge dose of ‘brain freeze’ and become ‘the ice cream screamer’. I suppose you can sing and play guitar like that. In my mind it’s called thrash metal. For myself, it’s nicer to chill your beans at times and just enjoy warbling along and enjoying the taste of the ice cre…., sorry, music. I mean music. The taste of what the music gives.
The softer sound of my songwriting. So the Story Goes. To Where? No one Knows.
Brain freeze should be avoided at all cost. Or, as my nurse days’ learning knew it, Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia. Where basically, a bunch of nerve ganglions at the back of the nose get overexcited when the roof of your mouth gets hit with sudden excessive cold temperature blasts. Vasoconstriction and then Vasodilation causing brain response havoc. Ironically. There is something poetic in the paradoxical juxtaposition of either singing gentle harmonies when playing guitar to produce calm. Or, in other words, enjoying the slow eating of ice cream. Or banging out thrash metal riffs and screaming until your voice cracks. Or, in other words, shovelling ice cream down your neck at a rate of knots.
Avoid brain freeze. Just sing nice little gentle toons.
Currently? I just enjoy picking up the guitar and singing and playing my self written melodies that rise deep from within the whole gamut of a complex cluster of many nerve pathways. Therapy? Good for putting off possible future dementia. Well, hopefully, yes. Music and especially playing it yourself, provides hits to many physiological parts of the brain. The auditory cortex (understanding melody, harmony, note pitch, subtle tone, etc.), the motor system (finding individual rhythms in voice, hands, feet, etc.), the limbic system (emotional responses), frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex (anticipation and evaluation of various sequence structures), the interactions between auditory and motor actions (do you dance to the music when you play air guitar and sing?)….and of course using both your left side and right side of the brain working in harmony and body movement. My gosh! Aren’t we all a bunch of fine complex creatures.
Playing keyboards badly. It was a case of getting the guitar and vocal recorded on a microphone. Then choosing a nice GarageBand keyboard piano/organ instrument choice and let my fingers just ‘walk’ subconsciously over piano keys. Gosh knows how it kind of happens here. Naively, but I kind of like it.
Some decision making, like playing piano, drums, the left or right side of a forked pathway, at times are simply impossible. Maybe some people can achieve that. I never could do that in a month of Sundays. A lifetime of Sundays even. A gentle life of bobbling along is a fine groove to belong in.
When I wanted the perfect chill out and groove vibe…..I wrote this one. I brought the xylophone sound more up in the mix on this version. I just played a shuffle acoustic guitar rhythm and then layered various keyboard melodies over it. Basically made the melodies up and interwoven as each one was captured. An example of letting your brain find little tuneful adventures.
Gray Summers 