Just had to have a go at it, bad lungs and all. The reason I could not get the direct post to work the last time was my file was too large.

Gary

Great drums and Style. Nice rendition but is this different from the last one you posted ? Voice sounds like you still have some juice left, keep going.

love it

Well done Gary,good song and nice to hear you again.

sounds good Gary.

Nice rendition of what I now think of a classic song. What style did you use? It fit the song perfectly!

Thanks everyone, for the kudos. I used a 3rd party song for this, and recorded it a few years ago. Wish I still had that much lung capacity. I now gasp for each and every breath just to stay alive.

All the best,

Gary

T


Hi Gary,

Good luck. I hope you do better. Is it a COPD condition? Do you require oxygen?

Jamman,

I have COPD in my right, upper lobe only. The rest of my lungs are shot from pulmonary fibrosis, which was caused by heavy asbestos exposure while a kid in the US Navy. This essentially causes the lungs to no longer have any elasticity, therefore, they can no longer expand and contract as they should. I have been on supplemental oxygen for three years, 3 liters a minute, 24/7. I cannot survive without it and am now going through some very difficult times with pulmonary congestion, which makes it very difficult to both inhale and exhale. The docs put me back on prednisone yesterday, which allowed me to get about 5 hours sleep for the first time in three months. Unfortunately, prednisone has it's own deadly side effects.

Gettin' old ain't fer wimps and sissies,;)

Gary 8)

Hi Gary, I listen to the FM community radio station from Mesquite, Texas that plays oldies from the 70's and 80's. The song "Brandy" is on high rotation, and I always think of you when they play it, due to your love of sailing and your experience as a sailor. I bet you broke some hearts too back in your swashbuckler days : )

Love the song - gotta learn it and try to record it within the next week or two. With what little lung capacity I have remaining, I managed to put this one together about 3 weeks ago. It has been around for a while, but I just never heard it until two days before I sat down at the keyboard and recorded it.

https://app.box.com/s/mnsb31a4ow4gkoetpwyzb8ku9763887i It is called A Horse Called Music, and I got to hear Willie Nelson's version and just loved the lyrics.

Gary

I never heard a “ horse called music” but I enjoyed it very much. I am very happy to hear that your still recording and hope to hear your rendition of “ Brandy” or whatever songs you have up your sleeves.

Thanks Paul, I'll do my best.

Hope you are doing well and I often watch your videos of you and your lovely wife working on stage.

All the best,

Gary

Well, I was able to obtain several, third-party, Yamaha style files from my friend Roger at the PSR Tutorial site. Roger is probably the only person I know that has more of these than myself. However, after about an hour of trying to sing this song, I found myself really struggling for enough wind to belt it out. I'll keep working on it, though.

Here's the styles:

Gary

Hey Gary, thanks so much for learning "Brandy..." The theme of the songs fits you like a glove!

Unfortunately, I can't open it on my Iphone, but I'll give it a try when I get a moment on my desktop computer.

Keep 'em coming!

Gary, you don’t need to .zip the MP3, just upload it as is and it will play fine.

If there’s a problem with the file being too large, just use iTunes or something else to convert it to a lower bitrate.

Diki, it's not an MP3 - it's a folder containing 5 style files to be used with a Yamaha arranger keyboard. And, there is a size limit on the MP3 file, which may preclude posting it, which is, if I remember correctly, 9.7 megs.

Paul, these files will work in Yamaha arranger keyboards, only. I have not tried to record the song at this time, mainly because of my diminished lung capacity. Hopefully, with the aid of Prednisone and a few other meds, I will regain sufficient capacity to give it a shot with the next few days. Unfortunately, the medications also have some nasty side effects, which make it increasingly difficult to sing.

All the best,

Gary

After working on the style file, and making a few modifications, I plugged the oxygen tubes in my nose, sipped some Jim Bean Honey Bourbon, put on my headset and gave it another try. This is all this old man can do at this stage of life. Hope you enjoy my rendition, and how I dream about being back on the ocean and sailing down to the Dry Tortugas. Brandy

Hey Gary, from one swabbie to another, it sounded great
The "pipes" sounded good to me, nice and clear. I could hear just a little difference in your pitch and tone, but I knew right away, it was Gary Diamond .

And yea I know you miss your sailing days. For me, and probably you too, I still miss those Navy days onboard ship, and the bond and trust we had with shipmates. Like all good things in the past, those memories will last forever.

So I wish you the best, and keep going strong, you still have it "ya ol' salt" ⛵ ⚓

I’ll do what I can to get the size limit increased a bit, but generally, a full song at 160kbps is an easy fit, and you can often get away with 192kbps.

The real trick is to make sure you normalize your audio file before you transcode to MP3, this gives the encoding the best signal to work with, and can make transcoding artifacts close to inaudible.

There is some really good cheap and free software out there these days that make it easy to master your audio a little bit before you post, a tiny bit of multi-band soft compression, no more than 1 or 2 dB, and perhaps 2-3dB of limiting can do wonders to make a web file pop a bit from the speakers… do all this BEFORE you convert to an MP3 (most of these softwares have the option to export as an MP3 after you do a tad of mastering) and you give your file the best chance it can to take as little room as is available but still sound good…