I'm making more of an effort to improve my bass playing. After reading a few articles about Jaco Pastorius, it's dawned on me how much I want to learn. I don't intend to get anywhere near his level. But I do want to improve and not necessarily in that style either.

I've found a few decent bass lessons on line. All of them should be free. I've yet to find any lessons that I'd pay for online. I'd much rather use the money to buy a recommended DVD or pay a tutor and learn in person.

My opinion of at least one celebrity cast member of the West End has changed. Jessie Wallace filled her role admirably. I was apprehensive when I'd found out that they'd cast a "celebrity" in Rent. Especially as it's a show that really does rely on the vocal quality of the performers.

Is this a cover?
Is this a cover or not? I suppose it depends on what we count as a cover. I guess there are some specific rules (or we could decide on our own, e.g. who's getting which royalties, etc). In the end, I don't really care when we're talking about this particular song. It's different enough from the original to count, but also similar enough to count.

Aerosmith
It's odd to look back at a band that's become famous for writing ploddy softrock ballads over the last couple of decades. But before that, they were a much rockier band.

Could It Be Magic?

Has anybody popular covered a Jessica Simpson song? I can't think of any originals memorable enough to...well...remember. So I'm going to take the easy route and find another song she's covered. Otherwise this trail will be a dead-end.

She's done loads of covers, but no matter where I looked, I just couldn't find anyone popular who's covered one of her original songs. There are a lot of bedroom karaokes on youtube, but they don't count; that'd just be going even further down a dead end.

Los Del Rio
The original's tacky, sad to be seen dancing to.....oh that dance....

But it was all in good fun. And that mood was conveyed by Los Del Rio. You can see how it sold so much and took the holiday charts by storm. Bouncy dance beat to a latin rhythm. Some seemingly nonsense lyrics (do they make sense?).

Sometimes I come across a cover version that I've just got to list. I'll use this book to list those covers. Ideally I'd like to show my top 20 cover versions, but I'm not convinced I can find the originals and the covers to show. If I list a cover, it's because it has something to add. It doesn't mean it's better than the original. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they make the original passable.

I've been trying to use Cinelerra on and off for a couple of days. And I've had some success. I've also had a few failures as well.

The aim
I want to get as far as I can with a short movie using free applications. I'm also including commonly-bundled software in the free section.

The scenario
I have a short movie, about 5 to 7 minutes long for which I've finished the main shooting, composed, recorded and exported the score, know what I want to do with titles, but I'm stuck at one point.

I want to change the green screen background for moving images.

The Beginning

Angels

Robbie Williams
When this was released, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. It was on radio, in the shops, on tv shows, on adverts, just plain everywhere. Possibly only beaten in omnipresence by that Robin Hood song (you know the one).

Limp Bizkit covered Faith, but Robbie covered Rollin'. Even performed it live.

Limp Bizkit