Solo Gig Review

tom chapman
Apr 13, 2016
3 min read

Solo Gig Review:

Time in a Bottle- Jim Croce

For my solo performance, I did a cover of Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce. The original recording has a fairly complicated, polyphonic texture which includes the instrumentation of at least three acoustic guitars (in certain places), an electric bass guitar, a harpsichord and a lead vocal line. The original recording features no drums or percussion of any kind which makes the song sound a lot more free than other songs which are strictly ruled by the pulse of a drum beat. Despite the absence of percussion, the song does stay consistently in time and follows a ¾ rhythm throughout the whole song until the outro which feels more like a 6/8 time. The original changes tonality and key between different parts of the song, the chorus is in D major, while all the other sections are in D minor. There aren’t many dynamic changes in the original recording, staying at roughly the same volume throughout the piece. The original was written and performed in a folk style with fingerpicked guitars.

The recording of this took place in a controlled studio acoustic environment using multi track recording techniques. At times the song covers most of the sound spectrum, with the inclusion of bass guitar and low mid frequencies from acoustic guitars as well as high frequencies from the harpsichord and higher guitar parts. In the original recording there is quite a complex sonic field. Panning is used to move one guitar hard left and another hard right, while the vocals, bass and harpsichord sit in the centre. The song ranges from having a very shallow sonic field to having a deep one throughout, with everything sitting at the front of the mix throughout the intro and first verse. The field gets deeper after the first chorus when the harpsichord and bass join in at the back of the mix.

In my performance of the song I changed it in numerous ways. To start with I changed the instrumentation of the piece, most notably I removed the harpsichord and bass, and swapped the several acoustic guitar parts for one electric guitar. On top of this, I performed the piece as an instrumental by leaving out the vocal part which is probably the biggest difference between my version and the original.

I also tried in several ways to change the style of the piece and make it into more of an ambient/psychedelic style instead of folk through the use of several guitar effects and techniques. I used a loop pedal along with reverb and delay to make ambient volume swells which I looped for the duration of my performance. I then played a traditional folk fingerpicking style on electric guitar with added reverb, delay and phaser effects to create more of an atmosphere and soundscape. This also had the added bonus of bringing a thicker texture to my performance, which could have sounded too thin and empty compared to the original with the additional guitar parts and vocals removed.

In terms of tempo, my version of the song varies greatly. Since I was playing on my own without any backing I was able to play at any speed or rhythm I wanted so I took advantage of this to make my piece feel more free. This is known as rubato. I varied from much slower to much quicker than the original piece at different points throughout the song.

My performance was also in a different natural acoustic environment, as I was playing in a large room opposed to a controlled studio. This added sonic components like natural reverb to my performance. I covered a small part of the sound spectrum in my performance, as my guitar only covered between the low mids from the chord parts and lower strings, up to the higher frequencies further up the neck. There was no use of panning in my piece as it was performed live and solo which meant nothing could be panned between the stereo speakers which gives my version a narrower sonic field. The loop gave my performance some depth of field, but not as deep as the original, and there was no variation in this as the song progressed.

Here is a copy of my performance and the original