Touch Of Paradise

There's many good reasons why I've spent a lot of my music career playing covers. Money is one of course. But it's not actually the main reason. I get so much out of working out a song I love and playing it, just me and a guitar. Really connecting with the lyric and what the song means for me. It's something I truly enjoy about playing music.

My issue with this is that I feel all my time spent covering hasn't helped me develop myself as an artist. I'm a perfectionist you see. So my mission has always been to do everything as much like the original artist as possible. An admirable quality I guess. It's kept me busy as a cover performer. But not so admirable if you want to be a recognised artist in your own right.

I'm not going to stop doing something I enjoy so much though, just so I can feel like I'm avoiding sounding like other artists. All good artists are clearly influenced by someone after all. So a new creative mission of mine is working on finding myself, something truly identifiable as me, inside of other artists songs.

I recorded the following song today with the above mission in mind but don't know that I particularly succeeded to make it my own. I'm still stuck in my ways and unsure what is really identifiable about me. I'll come back to it though and try and find new ways to make it my own. Have a listen and please do comment on what you think is very "me" about this recording. Smart-asses please refrain from saying "the bad guitar playing".

And please note that as I'm without an XLR lead today so this was recorded using my computer microphone, in all its automatic compression and 96kb glory. I'll say again - this blog is about breaking my perfectionist ways, not encouraging them. I hope the sound is bearable though. No EQ, no effects. Just me and a guitar (and a shit microphone).