I chose to do a different song, but remain with the same band. Coldplay. After I had put up "Violet hill", I got a large number of requests to try "Viva la vida". There were too many to to pass it off. So I deided to record that one next. It's another one from their latest album with the same title.

some consider that it's not very professional to cover songs with backing tracks, but I always find a way of learning something in most things I do. I really want to improve my production skills. It's ok to record all the right bits for your song, but if the mix isn't produced properly, then all that work means very little.

One of the aspects I've been concentrating on is vocal production, and I've been trying to match that of the original song. It's made a big difference to my ears, and it's teaching me how to produce my own voice in relation to the different types of music.

I've implemented vocal boosting on this song. Plus low to moderate plate reverb in the verses. I've used the Chorus effect and a heavier plate reverb in the choruses.

This is the result. Viva la vida.

Now for some up to date figures from my Youtube account.

Subs have come and gone, but yesterday I awoke to the pleasant sight of 6 new subscribers. That puts the figure at 727.

Channel viewings are currently 16,529.

The overall video viewings have made it! They've gone past the quarter million views. All of this within a year of putting up my first Youtube video. The current figure now stands at 254,512.

I'm hoping I can now do that old album track cover that I said I was going to do in the first place

Now for some cover versions. This one is quite a recent tune, and is called "Violet hill". It's taken from the latest Coldplay album entitled "Viva la vida".

I've got a number of Coldplay songs lined up to do, and this is the first out of that selection. I really struggled with the falsetto in this one, so I had to take the music down a key. Even then I still struggled, but I just about managed it.

It's been quite noisy in the skies above my village over the past weekend. I live quite near to a place called Goodwood. They hold a number of annual events and one of them is called "The festival of speed". So while it was on, I snapped a few of the aircraft from my back garden. I've put those in the video. All I will say is that one aircraft in particular got extremely close, and it wasn't the smallest flying object in the world!!!

Check out my cover of this brilliant song, and see my snaps:

The Youtube stats are still moving well.

I've now got 721 subscribers.

My channel viewings are now up to 16,254.

The overall video views are so close now. 249,532. Barring disasters, it will pass the quarter of a million tomorrow

It's quite likely that my next song will be another Coldplay tune. I've got my eyes on an album track from a few years ago

This is the 3rd of my old original songs choices. This is a song called "Winner". The lyrics can be interpreted in many different ways, but I wrote it for mistaken friends who need support.

This song was also co-written with Mick Paul. I finish off with details about what mick is up to now in his music career.

If you watched the last vid I posted, you will have learned that Mick played bass on a David Hasselhoff single. I don't think there's many individuals who don't know who the Hoff is. After being in such shows as "Knight rider", "Baywatch" and "America's got talent".

Here is "Winner":

Mick is quite busy doing the touring thing at the moment, with an outfit named "The David Cross band". David Cross used to be in a band called "King Crimson". They were very well known. If you come from Italy, There's a good chance that you've heard of David Cross. He's quite popular there, and hence the reason why Mick does most of his touring there.

Now here's the regular Youtube numbers update.

My subscribers have seen a really good jump in the last few days. Racing past the 700 barrier to 717.

Channel viewings cruised to 16,017. That's the 16k barrier broken.

Last but by no means least. The total video views. They are 246,003. I hoped that they might possibly get to the quarter of a million by the 17th July. Which is the 1st year anniversary of my the first vid I uploaded on Youtube. At this rate, it looks like it's going to get there on the 15th!!

I'm probably going to do a few coldplay covers in my next few videos, and I'm hoping to bring some more news about my forthcoming album release.

I've created a mailing list for album news. I will only be using the email addresses for that purpose. It's so I can inform interested parties about events regarding the album, before I post the info anywhere else.

If anyone is interested in signing up for it then you can do just that if you go to the homepage on my website. Here's the URL:

Jeffs music

Until the next post

It's the 2nd of 3 songs written by Mick Paul and I a while back, that I have selected to upload. Ths one shows off Mick's Bass skills a bit. I just wanted acoustic guitar and Bass in this, and I think it worked quite well. The vocals are a little off key in places. This song, and most of the others were only written hours before they were recorded, so I'm not that surprised at the mistakes in the mix.

The song is about a contreversial subject, though I'm not going let you know what it means here. You'll have to watch the vid to find out. I reveal the meaning near the end of the video. It gives a completely new angle on the words.

Returning to Mick. Here is some information on the history so far of this very talented guy:

Played on 2 singles in 1970.

He joined "The Hotshots" in 1973. They got to number 4 in the british chart with one of their releases.

Joined "Union express" in 1974 and toured around Europe for 2 years.

From 1978, he did some session work for the B.B.C. and for a various number of publishers.

He was also an in-house bass player at Abbeydale studios in West London.

Co-wrote the Labour Party campaign song in 1987.

Joined "More tea vicar in 1990.

He wrote and performed on a single called "Aquarius" for Yello records, produced by Tyrrell.

He played bass on the "David Hasselhoff" single "If we could only say goodbye" (Yes. It's The Hoff).

and there is more..

I'll give a web link to his recording studio in West Worthing, southern England:

Froosound Recording Studio

This is the guy doing all the music in this song. The previous song, and the next song.

The title of this song is "Losing my mind". I hope you like it, and the Bass playing

Now for the Youtube stuff.

A rise in my subs to 692.

The Channel views are 15,540.

The overall vid views are 237,970. Still on target to hit a quarter of a million by the 17th of July. climbing at about a thousand views a day.

Coming next is the third of the old original songs, featuring Mick Paul.

I'm still beavering away on my album. Yesterday I woke up singing a song. Weird I know, but it was pretty good. I'm going to put the track together to see what it sounds like in real life, and if it's good enough, it can go on the album.

I'm going to revisit 3 chosen songs I wrote when I first started to record music seriously.

A few years ago I wrote and recorded 9 songs in about a teo week period with a very talented guy called "Mick Paul".

Mick plays a mean Bass Guitar and has been busy in his career up to now. He also runs his own recording studio, and the nine songs I recorded with him, were done in that studio.

I've picked 3 of those songs to upload to youtube, and this is the first of them.

The title of the song is "Amber falls". The meaning is quite dark. I wonder if you can work out what the song is about, before the video tells you near the end.

Check out the video here:

I have put some snippets of info about Mick in this first video, and I will be adding more to the following 2 videos. There may be a name or two that some music lovers might recognise.

I put a warning in the video description of this song, because the song contains what is known as "Speaker busters". Extremely deep high volume bass notes, that can cause damage to a bass speaker when it's turned up full. I just thought I'd let you know that.

Now for some youtube food.

I only need another 10 subs to get to 700. So the current figure is 690.

My channel views are now 15,424.

The overall video views are up to 235,621. The way things are going, I might hit the quarter million by the first year anniversary of my first video upload.

In my next post, I'll be bigging up the second of the three selected old original songs .