Yes (Steve Howe) Cover - "Clap"

famous beagle

famous beagle

Well-known member
Hey y'all,

This is my recording of Steve Howe's "Clap." It's for a Hal Leonard book called Yes Guitar Signature Licks, by Dave Rubin. The reason it's segmented into a few parts is because they're discussed separately in the book.

I welcome comments on the recording or performance. Thanks for listening.
 

Attachments

  • Clap - Gtr 1.mp3
    4.5 MB · Views: 23
Sounds great to me. I've had a few guitar magazine and tablature packs with CD's over the years and this sounds as good as any and better than many.

Nice pickin'! :thumbs up:
 
That was certainly very recognizable as a Steve Howe tune. Very nice performance, I love that style of guitar picking. I would love to here you cover some Jerry Reed stuff.
 
Thanks for the kind words y'all. My plucking-hand ring finger is sore after working on this one yesterday! I guess my fingerstyle calluses aren't what they used to be. Although, I imagine that working on a piece for 10 hours on one day would've always made me sore.

Illsidgus: Jerry's awesome, although I've never actually sat down and learned a whole tune of his. The most I've ever done was the intro to "The Claw." I've learned some Chet, but I should probably work up a Jerry piece.
 
dobro said:
Sweet. How'd you mic it?
Click to expand...

Thanks! That was just one Sterling Audio ST31 (small diaphragm condenser) aimed toward the neck/body joint, about 6-8 inches away. It's my Seagull S6, which is about 22 years old now, come to think of it.

I ran through my Seventh Circle Audio N72 module (Neve clone) and through a (modified) DOD R825 compressor en route to a Steinberg UR22 interface.
 
What was the room like?

Were you using the compressor for sound or to tame peaks?
 
It was done in my control room/office: 11 x 14 x 8 with wood (laminate, actually) floors and some Owens 703 or mineral wool acoustic treatment (bass traps, cloud, panels at side and front/back). And I also used two gobos (mineral wool) around me while I was recording. The reverb came from a free plug called Epicverb.

The compressor was mostly used to tame peaks. It was probably around 8dB of reduction on the really hard strumming, but for most of it---the fingerstyle stuff---it was between 0 - 3db. The modified R-825 sounds pretty decent though. I don't like it quite as much as my DBX 163X, but it's really not bad. I also just got an ART Pro VLA II that I haven't tried out yet, so I'm looking forward to that.
 
I'm impressed how good the sound is. It's a taste call, but have you experimented with the amount of verb you've got on it? You could ease back on it a taste. Wouldn't sound better, just different. Epicverb sounds pretty good, btw.
 
That does have a Jerry sound to it. Jerry was a very under appreciated guitarist.

Good sound, I got an abrupt stop at 1:18 for about 2 seconds, I assume it is just the download on my end as it didn't sound planned.
 
That's way smoother than the version of Clap I saw on youtube:



Damn, Chet was good, yeah?
 
DM60 said:
That does have a Jerry sound to it. Jerry was a very under appreciated guitarist.

Good sound, I got an abrupt stop at 1:18 for about 2 seconds, I assume it is just the download on my end as it didn't sound planned.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The stop actually was intentional. The book, to which this recording belongs, discusses the song in sections, so the recording is segmented as such. There will be count-off clicks before each section starts on the audio that comes with the book.
 
dobro said:
I'm impressed how good the sound is. It's a taste call, but have you experimented with the amount of verb you've got on it? You could ease back on it a taste. Wouldn't sound better, just different. Epicverb sounds pretty good, btw.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the reverb is there because it's based on the Yes recording, which was a live version of the song. So that version is caked with it. I didn't want to add that much (besides that I didn't have anything that sounded quite like it), but I figured that people familiar with the song were used to hearing it that way, and therefore it would probably sound odd if it were on the drier side. :)
 
The only thing better than the sound was the playing. It's somewhat upsetting knowing that a guy who's probably a Cowboys fan has that kind of talent.

Jerry Reed... The Snowman, the one who ran interference for The Bandit? He's a guitar virtuoso? Hot damn! Is there anything he can't do! :)
 
NotThatBright said:
The only thing better than the sound was the playing. It's somewhat upsetting knowing that a guy who's probably a Cowboys fan has that kind of talent.

Jerry Reed... The Snowman, the one who ran interference for The Bandit? He's a guitar virtuoso? Hot damn! Is there anything he can't do! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks! You can rest easy though, because I'm no fan of "the Boys." I actually grew up in Houston and was therefore an Oilers fan (pathetic creatures that we were) back in the day, which made me rivals with Cowboys fans. I never outgrew it, and when I moved out here to go to UNT in the early 90s, they had their whole "dynasty" years, which made me want to vomit. :)

Yeah Jerry's sick!
 
famous beagle said:
Thanks! You can rest easy though, because I'm no fan of "the Boys." I actually grew up in Houston and was therefore an Oilers fan
Click to expand...

That makes me feel better. A friend of mine actually mentioned the ol' Oilers yesterday. A bunch of us are Notre Dame fans and they were getting smoked in the first half... he brought up that playoff game where the Bills came back from 35-3 or something in the second half to beat Houston, so "anything can happen". Didn't happen yesterday!
 
Excellent playing, I only find the reverb too much in the first and last segments. Can't you just cu the segments together to get rid of the gaps?
I know the original, and have heard Howe play this live (where he didn't use any compression to tame the peaks) - you must have real strong fingers to be practicing/tracking this for 10 hours!
 
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