Clouds

I saw the Go-Betweens live at the Berkeley Square nightclub when I lived in Berkeley in the late 80s. I don’t recall if I knew anything about them before going. In those days, it was sometimes just the luck of the draw. So I got lucky that night and was impressed enough to buy the Aussie band’s albums. I remembered them even after I jettisoned my LPs (I got tired of moving them, I had a lot). I eventually downloaded a couple of their albums and realized some of their songs are ukulele ready. I decided to capo the 4th fret, allowing me to use the key of C chord forms while maintaining the original key. I had not used a capo in a while, and besides, I like the resulting sound. “Clouds” has some 2/4 – 4/4 time shifts. These complicate the GarageBand bass line composition and percussion. When the shifts occurred in the instrumentals, I did capo 4 F 5553 G 7775. I note the loss of volume on the G. I tried to get more legato or articulation of individual strings, and less “clanging” in the strumming, with some success.
The original includes the oboe. Jeremy of the Ukulele Rebellion made it more prominent and sounds excellent. Quote Jeremy “I used the Aerophone as a midi controller in Garageband and picked an Oboe sound.  I then cleaned up all the notes I missed (or added accidentally) using the GarageBand note editor.” We plan to continue our collaboration in future songs. Where’s Glen? On hiatus for a while, I hope to have him back soon. I took “Clouds” to the Monterey and South Bay Acoustic Music zoom jams.