Archive for the 'Song' Category

Inseverable Love

Published
by
Stevo
on February 14, 2010
in Song
. 2 Comments

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“Inseverable” is defined in Stevo’s World Dictionary as “something that can’t be severed” (a game of Scrabble anyone?). “Inseverable Love” is a song I wrote with my buddy Ean in high school, it later became a favorite among the original song repertoire of my high school male vocal group (learn about that here - The Last Chapter Files).  Last year I met up with Ean and he hastily recorded to my computer via the “line in” the piano parts to a couple of the songs we wrote in high school, the first one I posted here - An Original Rendition (…alas), “Inseverable Love” is the second and in the track above you’ll hear Ean’s playing along with the vocal parts that I just finished recording. This version of the song is much more to the point than when we originally sang it in a group setting, so it clocks in at just under 3 minutes long.

Like the other songs on this blog that I recorded in my room, expect to hear all the marks of a recording put together by someone who doesn’t have a clue what he is doing - sound distortion, background noise, pops, uneven levels, and a few out of pitch notes (which I guess I really can’t blame on my technical recording naiveté … oh well). Yet my hope is that you’ll get the idea and hopefully be blessed by the message of the song. Here are the lyrics to the chorus:

“If God be for us, who can be against us?
Tell me what might can separate us —
Not height, not depth, nor life or death
can sever the love of Jesus from His people.”

Consolation for a New Year

Published
by
Stevo
on December 29, 2009
in Inspiration and Song
. 2 Comments

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A little over a year ago when I first downloaded this song I had it on repeat for a couple of days because of how comforting it was to me for whatever reason at that time in my life. I was pleased to find the original accompaniment track also available for purchase, so I snagged it immediately and began learning it myself. The track above is a live recording of my singing at a memorial service of a young man who died this year in his early 40s of an illness. I never knew this man personally, but I do stand at the threshold of a new year with some sorrow because the new year offers no further promise of the comradely I once enjoyed with my good friend Joshua Hodges, a young man in his 20s that also passed away this year.

Joshua Hodges - Rest In Peace

Other than the loss of Joshua, many other special friends of mine have suffered the loss this year of very important people in their lives. It is my hope that the message of this song can bring comfort in the new year to those who are entering it with some some sorrow or discouragement. Perhaps one of the most significant (and most observable) benefits of faith in God is the comfort He brings to us during our times of sadness and trouble. “Blessed be… the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in trouble, with the comfort with which we are ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abounds in us so our consolation also abounds through Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:3-5)

The original artist who sings this song, David Phelps, has a voice and vocal abilities that perhaps is one of the closest examples we’ll have to angelic singing on this side of eternity.

You can download the original song from iTunes here - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-voice/id290073485

I would also highly recommend you check out his rendition of “No More Night” by watching it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vX3HHtytDo

A Joyful Ode to Joy!

Published
by
Stevo
on December 9, 2009
in General and Song
. 0 Comments

Quality music that all can appreciate.

Singing in LA

Published
by
Stevo
on June 18, 2009
in Song
. 4 Comments

My Tribute:
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He Loved Me With The Cross:
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The month of May this year was quite an eventful one for me. I paid my first visit to Jamaica to celebrate the union of two college friends (one of the two I’ve known since grade school. I mentioned a bit about them here: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=54 ). After returning from my exciting caribbean excursion with old friends, I again repacked my bags a week later and made a trip north to my former place of abode in Washington State, where I again participated in the marriage ceremony of two other good friends of mine. Before the month was done I also manage to hit the quarter century milestone in years of life (I now have one year to figure out how I can prevent the aging processes from continuing and thus effectively freeze age at 25 for the rest of my life. I’ll certainly accept any ideas/help I can get to accomplish this).

The month of May also happened to be a busy time at work as well. Beyond having to meet a couple project deadlines, as I could while I was around I participated in a prophecy seminar effort that the non-profit ministry I work for was hosting in downtown Los Angeles during the entire the month of May. The series was well attended and well received throughout, and it turned out to be quite an exiting and successful endeavor overall. Beside featuring logically sequenced and riveting Bible prophecy presentations, each night of the meetings also featured musical selections from various musicians and vocalists, and I found it pretty awesome when I was asked for a few nights to be among those vocalists that provided a number to open up the lecture. I ended up providing five songs on four different nights in this way during the course of the campaign. On a few nights they managed digitally capture a recording of some of my performances. My boss (our executive creative director) was nice enough to rummage through the clips and fix up the audio files that contained my performances. I’ve posted above a couple of the tracks he gave me. They’re entitled “My Tribute” and He Loved Me With The Cross” respectively.

An Original Rendition (…alas)

Published
by
Stevo
on March 8, 2009
in Inspiration and Song
. 9 Comments

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Once again my blog has seen another drought, this time the reason being that since my last post till this one I have relocated from Spokane, Washington to Simi Valley, California (a 1,200 mile trek), and I am now settled in and starting to make my self at home in my new habitat. Thus once again to make up for my blogging neglect I have sought to share something new in this latest post.

If you’ve visited before you’ve probably noticed one of a continuing series of posts containing great songs that I have sung and have been obtained by way of a “5 finger discount” from another popular artist. I’ve entitled them the “Bootleg Renditions” which is now three parts in. You can learn more about them here - Part 1, Part 2, Part3. While my bootlegging ways have by no means come to an end, I think its about time I shared another one of the 15 songs I have both co-authored and performed during my high school and college years (I wrote about this briefly in my “About” page and in my post “The Last Chapter Files”). The song I’m sharing with you this time is entitled “Grateful For You” and actually has a bit of history behind it. Continue reading ‘An Original Rendition (…alas)’

Bootleg Renditions: Prt 3 - A Christmas Carol

Published
by
Stevo
on December 20, 2008
in Song
. 5 Comments

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Song Title: O Holy Night

Original Artist: Mariah Carey

For the third episode in my “Bootleg Renditions” saga I’ve recorded an adaptation of a very popular - and my favorite - Christmas carol.  This particular arrangement was made popular by Mariah Carey. Since I’ve sung this selection quite a few times I was able to record it through in just one take. Hope you enjoy it.  Merry Christmas!

You can purchase the original song from Mariah Carey’s Christmas album off of Amazon.com by clicking this link - http://tinyurl.com/7grk9h.

Bootleg Renditions: Part 2 - Sista Songs

Published
by
Stevo
on September 9, 2008
in Song
. 6 Comments

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Song Title: No Greater Love

Original Artist: Rachael Lampa

Well I’m back at stealing people’s music once again… well, not really. You can read what this experiment is really all about in my first installment of the bootleg series: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=28.

As you may notice I’m doing something a bit different with this selection in that I am here singing a song originally made popular by a female contemporary Christian artist. While I recognize that such a thing is not a ground breaking first in the popular music realm, when I originally sang  this selection at my church it was a first for me. Before I did I actually asked a friend from church what she thought of me performing a piece among an audience that would most likely recognize it as being synonymous with an artist that was of a different gender than my own. I can’t remember all she said but her reply did include scoffing me for even raising an issue that no one will even care about. So perhaps by just raising the topic in this post I’ve already blown the deal out of proportion. Well now that you are my audience, you can decide, but in the time being here are a few fast facts:
Continue reading ‘Bootleg Renditions: Part 2 - Sista Songs’

The Holy City

Published
by
Stevo
on August 27, 2008
in Song
. 4 Comments

This summer I was invited to sing to close out the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventist camp-meeting at Walla Walla University. It was my first time in the city of Walla Walla and the campus was pretty nice. The song I chose was the Holy City (Jerusalem), and its becoming another one of my favorites to sing because I like the fact that it challenges my range a bit but not too much, and because of its powerful message of hope and promise afforded us by the life of Christ.

Bootleg Renditions: Part 1

Published
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Stevo
on June 28, 2008
in Song
. 2 Comments

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Song Title: I Need You Now

Original Artist: Smokie Norful

I figured I should provide something a bit different for this blog post considering how I have recently neglected this blog by reason of my record setting busyness over the past few months. So here’s a little background concerning what you are hearing. Since finishing college and subsequently leaving Michigan to reside in Spokane, my opportunities for singing ministry have been slowly becoming a bit more consistent. When I was in college I enjoyed a extensive array musicians to choose from to accompany me, including my buddies from my high school singing group who all play an instrument very well. I never once had to sing with a background accompaniment track, and as a matter of fact my view of background tracks grew continually negative. I started thinking of them as being somewhat cheezy, but since moving to Spokane my choice of skilled musicians slimmed drastically. At first, of course, I had no options. Now I know a few capable people whose schedules rarely coincide with my sometimes spontaneous singing appointments. So I slowly had to lay aside my spite for background tracks and embrace them as a savior from a lonely, plantation style acapella performance.

Now because of my substantial collection of background tracks coupled with a recent desire to try out the different recording softwares on my computer along with my small mixer I have decided to create an original bootleg rendition of a few songs in my collection. WARNING: You will be disappointed if you hope to hear some vast  departure from the interpretation of the artists that originally recorded and performed these songs. My goal in this exercise as a developing singer is to seek to match the original artist’s quality of delivery while taking a few liberties for some personal expression where I feel its appropriate. Of course this homemade recording will not be capable of holding a candle to the original recording’s sound quality.

I have chosen for my first bootlegged rendition a song made popular by gospel singer Smokie Norful, or perhaps the song that made Smokie Norful popular, “I Need You Now”. Smokie first caught my attention with this song when I was a freshman in college. He has since joined my personal elite list of artist that inspire me vocally and influence my singing style.

Well hope you find this to be delightful and interesting till I have the necessary time to come up with something more creative and original.

You can purchase and download the original recording of this song here at Amazon.com’s mp3 download site: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDIEBK/ref=sr_f2_album_1?ie=UTF8&child=B000TDB354&qid=1214722572&sr=102-1

His Strength is Perfect

Published
by
Stevo
on February 28, 2008
in Song
. 3 Comments

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A few weeks ago I started experimenting with recording the sermons at my church with a small mixer that I bought for 100 bucks off of Amazon.com and the recording software that comes with my Mac laptop. The hope is that in the near future I could help my church put some of the services online so those who were unable to attend a particular Sabbath morning could listen from home.

In the second week of experimenting I had to sing a selection for the service, and this is a sample of what we came up with. The song I sung is entitled “His strength is Perfect”, it was originally written and recorded by Steven Curtis Chapman.

Vintage Last Chapter

Published
by
Stevo
on February 17, 2008
in Song
. 0 Comments

Two months ago I recounted in my post, “The Last Chapter Files”, a brief history of my high school and college singing group and provided footage of one our final appearances in college. Well today I got my digital hands on vintage video of our group captured 7 years ago when we were in high school!

In this clip you get a chance to see footage of our pianist, Evert, in the days when he neglected to trim his hair. In the previous video Evert could be heard playing the accompaniment but was not pictured. Our first tenor, Joe, also makes an appearance along with Andrea and me. Our drummer, bass and the other tenor are still missing in this one.  You may also notice a change in lyrics between the two videos. This is because we often times forgot the original lyrics and would have to rewrite a new set to replace them. This sometimes would shamefully even occur on stage during a performance.

Well, I hope you enjoy this rare blast from my past.

Were it Not For Grace

Published
by
Stevo
on December 25, 2007
in Song
. 5 Comments

Over this past year (2007) I’ve ministered this song 6 times at 6 different venues here in Spokane (three times by my choice and three times by request). This recording of my 8th overall try at this piece was shot in November. The recording revealed to me that there was still room for improvement with my pitch and with the smoothness of delivery.

This song has quickly become one of my favorite, although now I rarely listen to the original rendition of it by Larnelle Harris because I’ve thoroughly played it out. Never-the-less just about every time I rehearse the song on my own its hard for me to keep the tears and the shouts of praises back because of how real the lyrics are to my life experience.

If managed to like what you heard, then I would recommend the original 1998 rendition by Larnelle Harris for your collection. Click here to get it on iTunes.

The Last Chapter Files

Published
by
Stevo
on December 17, 2007
in Song
. 3 Comments

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This incomplete cellphone quality video footage captures one of the final apparitions of our high school male singing group, “The Last Chapter” (to be spoken with an echoing deep voice). Andrea, Ean (piano, unseen in the video), and I were all in our final year of college with this was shot. The song is one that we wrote in high school and was originally intended for four voices.

We started out as Freshmen in high school. We wanted to do the guys group thing but we wanted to do our own way, so we committed to writing all the music we performed. After a year in highschool, a couple insignificant performances, and some slight changes in personel (due to a couple members who moved away), we nailed down during our sophmore year a core group of 4 singers, a pianist, and drummer. We also adopted the name “Last Chapter” given to us by our pianist’s mother who suggested the name for a group of singers who would be seeking to give God’s message during the last chapter of earth’s history.

A fifth singer/musician joined us a year later, and our last 2 years in high school saw dozens of performances and a couple of concerts. In what appeared to be our final performance we sang an original composition accompanied by our high school stringed orchestra during our high school graduation ceremony.

As we all went our separate ways for college, this group was very rarely thought of in my mind. My freshman year was a blast. I joined my college traveling choir, a gospel mass choir, met up with a few other guys who sang and did few performances, made a ton of new friends, and started kicking it hard with this brother named Jesus (He’s really cool, you should get to know Him too).

But the “fat lady” hadn’t finished singing yet. My second year of college saw four members of our group together again at the same university (2 tenors, our baritone, and our pianist). Yet because we were all so busy in our respective fields of study the resurrected Last Chapter didn’t accomplished nearly as much as did its high school incarnation. We did manage, however, to write a few new songs and do a decent number of performances, including a talent show (in which we won 2nd place) and live world-wide broadcast performance on the campus church for a Christian television network.

We continued only to get busier and busier as we neared the end of our college years and a couple of times our “group” dwindled down to a duet and our pianist as was the case in the above clip.

Currently the Last Chapter is awaiting its third resurrection (which may just happen concurrently with the resurrection the dead, 1Thessalonians 4:16).

Click the vintage photo below to see the full size pic.

LC Preview

Back: Dave (bass), Ezra (tenor), Andrea (baritone)

Front: Evert (piano), me (tenor), Joe (1st tenor), Sean (percussion) 

Holy Spirit (46 degrees) Music Video

Published
by
Stevo
on November 23, 2007
in Design and Song
. 2 Comments

This video was the final project for my introductory video editing class that I took during my second to last semester in college. I shot most of the footage last minute in the cold Michigan December. Ironically the song speaks of the weather being 46 degrees outside, but on the day we shot the video it was precisely 20 degrees colder than that (26 degrees)! Though the project was edited and burned onto a DVD just minutes before I had to present it in class, the teacher said for an intro class that he had no negative critique of the project save the fact that I forgot to clean off some dirt on the lens of the camera on a few shots. The project also earned a 3rd place award in my departments end of the year gallery which was supposedly judged by local professional videographers. Yet there is no doubt that the final out come of this project was a bit crude and unpolished and could have been much better if we had more time and if we weren’t all as busy as we were.

Ezra and Geoffrey (Flow Track Star), the artist featured in this video, are both good friends of mine that go way back. Geoffrey and I go back to our scrappy high school years, and Ezra and I go back to before our conception (Our mothers’ were roommates in college).

I could say a lot of other good things about these characters but you can find out more for yourselves by visiting their music pages on Myspace:

Ezra: http://www.myspace.com/ezraseven

Geoffrey: http://www.myspace.com/flowtrackstar

Radio Debut

Published
by
Stevo
on October 15, 2007
in Song
. 0 Comments

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Perhaps in a later post I’ll write more about this experience, but here’s the skinny. A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to sing for a small rally in downtown Spokane promoting an end to domestic violence. Afterwards I was approached by a radio show host who invited me to sing on his local poetry program that airs on KYRS a low-powered community radio station here in Spokane. In general, the program was quite informal, I was interviewed by two gracious assistant hostesses, high school juniors, who made me feel most comfortable and welcome. I had to sing all songs without accompaniment or backup - just bare plantation Acappella. I was supremely nervous, mostly because of the fact that I didn’t spend the proper time thinking through what I was going to sing and say. The end result: a dry mouth, compulsive melismas, and stuttering speech that would make Porky Pig appear to be a proffesional orator in comparison. Never-the-less I thank God for the opportunity which I think turned out better than it should have. And now I believe I must reappear next week to sing another set of songs along with one of the hostesses. I’m not sure if I’m up to another show as yet, but we’ll see.Ah thinga thee, I thinka thiga think, thats all folks! Oh and here are some pictures.
Continue reading ‘Radio Debut’