The Other Guy In The Jongleurs 1 - Pleased To Meet You

[Armistice]

So because my life at the moment is stuffing things in boxes and all my entertainments are already packed away, I've resorted to filing and organising things on my PC / phone in the evenings - anyway I found a few songs where I'd recorded Richard (the other half of The Jongleurs) and me in my lounge room before the band actually existed. Just some low res MP3s hiding away on my phone. It was these tunes that got us talking about doing the double act.

We actually worked for the same company - and he was introduced to me by a mutual friend at the work Christmas party - which was fancy dress - he was dressed as some sort of 70s glam punk dude with makeup on his eyes, from memory. Anyway, he wanted some help recording some tunes, and I had a DAW and mics and so we had a crack back at my previous residence. Instead of just recording him though, I started playing along and making up guitar bits and doing some harmonies as well, and eventually The Jongleurs were born.

Somewhere in there, not long after I'd moved to the apartment I've just sold, we must have set up some mics and done some live recordings, just two acoustics and two voices - I really don't remember anything about it all. So 2007/2008 ish, I guess.

There are 4 songs of his and one cover of a John Mayer tune that I found randomly in the archives. I've got these definitely marked down as him and not us - so pre-band.

I appear to probably have applied some reverb to whatever tracks I recorded and probably done not much else. They are what they are, and they are a single take live performance - as you can tell by the bum note at the end of this one...

So my guitar is the more prominent of the two, he's singing, and I'm doing the occasional high harmony on "meee-eee-eeet" in the choruses.

Posting for historical interest only - no idea where the original tracks are - all I have are these MP3s - so mix feedback would be a waste of your time. Enjoy...

[vomitHatSteve]

Trying to reverse-engineer the mix seems like an interesting exercise.

Jongleurs b-sides and rarities compilation when?

[Armistice]

Trying to reverse-engineer the mix seems like an interesting exercise.

Jongleurs b-sides and rarities compilation when?

I've undoubtedly got the back up .wavs somewhere - either on the recording PC or a CD, even though this was recorded on the Yamaha AW4416 before I jumped into PC recording. Question is where. When I reassemble the studio in a few weeks time, I'll have to keep an eye out for it. It must be on a CD somewhere I'd think.

I really have no recollection of how it was recorded either, so who knows what tracks there are to work with. Maybe only two, which would account for the lesser prominence of his guitar and the lesser prominence of my voice in this track. Mic each, his aimed more towards his mouth, mine aimed more towards my guitar. Perhaps. Who knows! I really don't have that many mic stands, so it can't have been too complicated.

[rayc]

Not bad for point n click. It has the Jong vibe.

[WhiskeyJack]

GASP!

my rely from yesterday is not here!!!

I gave it a listen yesterday man and it was pretty good. I always admire people that can do stuff all in one take. This is not my reality at all. So for that I am impressed by that alone.

Definitely has the vibe of that project for sure. Thanks for sharing.

[musicturtle]

Nice, good groove and blend between the two of you.

Pretty obvious why you guys wanted to explore some collaborative efforts.

[JD01]

I do like your Jongleurs stuff, mate. Always nice acoustic sounds and interesting chords/changes.
I often find myself listening to stuff that I've not heard before and imagining what the next chord is going to be. Its always good when it doesn't go where I expect.

[Armistice]

I do like your Jongleurs stuff, mate. Always nice acoustic sounds and interesting chords/changes.
I often find myself listening to stuff that I've not heard before and imagining what the next chord is going to be. Its always good when it doesn't go where I expect.

Thanks. That's purely Richard on that tune, I'm just playing along...

One of the interesting things I discovered early on was that - and I'm quite the user of strange chords myself - he would go searching for chord shapes that worked with the other things he was doing but he didn't necessarily know what they actually were, so when I was trying to work out complementary parts I'd say "Slow down, what are you playing...." and have a look at this odd looking chord shape he'd made up because it sounded good, and work out it was some inversion of something with something added or subtracted, and I'd play a more root-note based version of it down lower, perhaps without the addition or subtraction and that would "ground" the tune a bit more. But he didn't know really what the chord was that he was playing... and some of the non-chordy stuff was really hard to play at first because it just wasn't what I was expecting to be playing. It didn't make immediate sense to my logical played-every-acoustic-guitar-song-ever-written brain.

And when we'd learn my tunes I really had to coach him to play certain pretty standard chords and inversions that he also didn't really know - so he's definitely off in his own little musical universe, which is actually why some of the songs don't really sound like anyone else. I thought we worked well together - same general aims, different musical approaches.