The Friendly 12bar Blues Guitar Forum

Hello again,

Folks who have been around 12bar for awhile will remember that Strummer07, Golfxzq and MojoJim have posted a few collaborations over the past three years.

The three of us met on 12bar and started working together and posting to the forum when we each began to learn blues guitar as a serious pursuit. We are spread out geographically with Strummer07 being near London, Golfxzq being near Nashville and MojoJim being near Austin. It's amazing what you can do over the Internet these days.

If you compare this effort with our first posting (Bubble Gum Blues on Nov. 16, 2010) we hope you will find that, with the support of the 12bar community, we have made some progress.

We are back with another collab. This is our interpretation of "Sitting On Top Of The World". The best known version is by the Mississippi Shieks but it has been covered by many artists in many styles.

Here's a link to our latest effort......

12544304

We have brought a variety of instruments to this collab with the main contributions being as follows:

Vocals (all) - Strummer07
Blues Harp - Golfxzq
Resonator - MojoJim
Rhythm Guitars - Strummer07 and Golfxzq
Bass and Drums (programmed) - MojoJim
Solo Guitars (acoustic and electric) - Golfxzq and MojoJim

Strummer07 was the Project Manager for this one and established the structure of the song and guided our progress. Golfxzq provided the instrumental breakthrough with the first bit of Blues Harp in one of our collabs. MojoJim did the mixing in SONAR X2.

As usual, we have divided our time between studying versions of the song, working up our interpretation, exchanging practical ideas to improve our playing, confused discussions of music theory and frustrating struggles with out computers. In between we exchange lots of jokes and generally keep up with each other's lives. We have a terrific time doing all this.

I expect that Strummer07 and Golfxzq will make their own postings with more details about this collab.

We will appreciate any critique or guidance that the 12bar community would like to offer. This is our "public" forum and the place where we gauge our progress.

Hope you enjoy our song.......

MojoJim, Golfxzq and Strummer07

What a nice surprise - Hi MojoJim!

You're right - you have made progress - and a lot of it too.

A real collab - everything done by yourselves, even drums. Makes the whole exercise much more difficult - and much more rewarding when it pays dividends like this.

You should all be very happy with what you've done here - all adds up to a very authentic sounding recording - a damn good acoustic blues interpretation.

I think the most impressive thing about it is the way you all combine so seamlessly. Skilled use of recording equipment and a good solid foundation put down early to work round I guess. The addition of blues harp and the sound of the resonator added to the guitars / drums / bass (nice work of programming there by the way) were good moves. I hear that Strummers work on acoustic playing and singing over more recent times is paying dividends in the vocals.

You should be Sitting on top of the World with this recording. Excellent - well done all of you - well worth waiting for.

MojoJim wrote:Hope you enjoy our song.......

Yes! Yes! YES!

A great piece of work, wonderful resonator and vocals!

Just love it to bits. Great effort that payed off very well.
You guys took quite some steps up !
Awesome collab !

Thanks for the nice comments Guys.. Very nice of you. MoJoJim would never say so himself but he is our "Mix Master". He has spent many hours learning how to use our software and it really helps.... he can even make my playing sound almost passable.

So Jim's the MojoMixer :)

Very good and impressing collaboration work you guys did, kudos!
Keep them coming!

Sweet!
Great job, guys! I really like what y'all have done here.
I was fortunate enough to get to meet MojoJim and his wife Mary on our vacation to Austin. Miriam and I really enjoyed meeting the two of you.

Thanks for the listens and the comments guys (HBL,12bar, VB Vc and Bb) a big help and always encouraging ... and feedback is good. One get so close to these things sometimes its hard to see some of the detail.

We had a lot of fun doing it, and some good learning too ... we are not the speediest production band around ..but the whole geography thing is quite a consideration.
The different time zones is also interesting ... I fire off a note early evening and then go to bed ..and awake the next morning to a whole string of notes and usually find the project has moved off somewhere else !! :-)
On this song kudos has to go to #1 the "Mojomixer" as there was a lot of work needed to pull all the bits and clips into a decent track and he was wrestling with a new DAW...........and Bass ......and drums....respect !!
#2 kudos also for Golfxzq suddenly popping off and getting proficient on the harp and also Mojo Jim for getting the resonator to work ..these two instruments just add so much blusey edge to the whole thing.

What next ??

Watch this space .......but don't hold your breath !!