Project 29

Project 28

Project 25

Project 23

Project 21

Project 20

Project 19

Project 18

Project 17: Bjork Army of Me This was another project where I learned something helpful about song creation. Make my own song. My version of Army of Me starts out straight, albeit slowed down significantly to create a mellower vibe. At about the minute and a half mark, I just turn it into a “Neil song,” and I like that so much better than trying to cover it straight. In hindsight, I would just chop off the first minute and a half. That part is just boring.

Project 16: Pink Floyd the Wall I sat out.

Project 15: Awesome Songs from Movies I covered Needle in the Hay, because I love the Royal Tenebaums. My favorite part of this cover was recording my Martin in the bathroom and then my baritone ukulele over the top of it.

Project 14: Anything Goes So we could pick anything, and I picked Close to Me by the Cure, a song that I’ve always loved. Years ago I’d had a really interesting idea to cover this using a trumpet and a digital delay. I discovered that after almost 30 years of not actively playing a brass instrument, I can no longer just pick up a trumpet and play it. I had to figure out something else to do with the song that was ok but not nearly as creative as what I’d originally had in mind.

Project 13: 1991 We picked songs released in 1991 for this one, and I choose a few songs from Ween, The Pod, which was a huge album for me. These covered were ok, but I didn’t push my limits in the degree I had for the last project or even the Revolver project.

Project 12: Return to the Playlist This was one of my most enjoyable projects. I love the Breeders, so I tried to honor the original and cover it with (hopefully) a version that respects the original without attempting to replicate it exactly. Shiloh was just plain fun. I just threw heavy auto-tune on a rough vocal and liked how funny I thought it sounded. I could’ve spent more time getting a more accurate vocal track to work with, but I liked how extra warbley it sounded.

Project 11: The Kinks We decided to pick an artist, and have everyone cover songs from that artist. The Kinks won. I didn’t spend as much time on this as I had the previous few projects, and it shows. It’s not my worst cover, but I have trouble listening to it and not thinking about all of the things I’d do differently.

Project 10: 1977 When we picked 1977 as the year from which we’d choose songs, I knew right away what I wanted to cover. Billy Joel was one of my older brother’s favorite musicians, and I great up absorbing his music. Vienna has always been a favorite Joel song of mine. At this point, I still struggled with mastering and this recording was exceptionally quiet. I also used the first take scratch vocal track I’d recorded in my noisy basement, so it’s got a lot of background static. It sounds more like a karaoke version, but I’m ok with that.

Project 9: Revolver This was our first full album project, and I ended up with the opening track, Taxman. I loved the weird and oddly challenging bass line for this song, which some believe was played by George. I tried to play with juxtaposing a very artificial midi generated sounds with more natural instruments and messed around with autotune a little more than before. Matt Rahaim really brought it all together with his amazing swelling synth track over it all.

Project 8: Women In Music I had a lot of fun trying to figure out my version of reggae for this cover.

Project 7: Do It Yourself This was more of a learning journey than a song writing exercise for me. I wanted to try out some iPad apps and figure out ways to work across an iPad and a laptop. Though the song itself was a bit of an afterthought / means to an end, I do like a few of it’s moments. I later listened to the song again, took all of of the drum tracks that I’d experimented with, and realized it was 100 times better without them.

Project 6: Leftovers My basement construction was complete. I now had a dedicated room to use for recording, and I knocked out three tunes for the first project in 2021.

Project 5: Winter Songs At this point, my train-wreck of a mold-infested, money-pit house, had rendered my basement unusable, as everything was torn up. I had limited time and space to record. I hurriedly knocked out these songs, recording them in the basement of the home of some friends who moved to California for the winter. Not my best work.

Project 4: Fall Covers I went a little crazy with this project. “Walking on a Thin Line” was simply me indulging my desire to sing loudly. The interlude in “Orion” contains one of my all-time favorite bass lines, so I had to at least record that portion of that song.

Project 3: Late Summer Playlist Challenge By this project, I’d developed a pattern. I’d pick a song that had the most enjoyable bass line, in my opinion, and I’d pick whatever song seemed like it could be covered relatively simply.

Project 2: 5 Song Playlist Challenge I started to figure out more effective process and started collaborating with Tom Stromsodt on some tunes. The Gonzo cover I consider to be among my most successful of my basement sketches covers.

Project 1: The Original Playlist Challenge
Theses were the first quickly created basement sketches covers. Clearly, I was just figuring things out in this initial project.