This song, "My Virginia", was written by my church's choir director and was submitted for consideration for the Virginia state song (back in the 90's, they wanted to replace "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny" because of Civil War overtones), but got lost in the shuffle when the late Jimmy Dean entered the fray and tried to buy his way in for his state song submission.

Anyway, it was originally recorded on a very cheap cassette with simple piano accompaniment back in 1998 and he asked if I could do anything with it. The tempo was all over the place, so getting things to line up was pretty tricky. Luckily the stereo recording had the piano in one channel and the vocal in another, although there was bleed over, the piano gets lost in the background on the vocal channel. There are still some tempo glitches, but I'm pretty happy with the result.

A friend of his did the video presentation.

This was done with all Realtracks.

My Virginia by Graham Clark, arranged and sequenced by John Ford

Enjoy!

John,

Fine job of sequencing sir. Two thumbs up for getting that old recording to work with BIAb.
I couldn't hear the piano bleeding into the vocal at all.

I'd love to hear how you did that. Maybe on the off topic forum?

Tim

By the way, if anyone is interested, this is what I started with:

My Virginia (piano accompaniment)

Very well done on the engineer work. Nice song!



My Music

Hi John,

You've done an amazing job plugging BIAB into this. It must have taken quite a while to pull it all together.

Regards,
Noel

John,

Wow! When I listened and compared the 2 versions, it shows what an amazing job you have done with this. You did a good job with the arrangement, and an outstanding job of taking the original recording and incorporating it into this! Really good work!

Steve

Thanks for all the great compliments. This was a fun project. And Graham (my choir director) has a friend who may be able to get a state judge to present it to the governor of Virginia. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Great job with Biab. I didn't get the end with the tractor made ice-cream though...

Cheers,

Superbron

WOW what a difference between the two versions!

You did a super job on this.

I really liked the pictures also!

Hi, Superbron -

The end is Graham (my choir director, who is singing) driving his brother's tractor (which he does every year) in a parade somewhere in southern Virginia. Graham makes home-made ice cream (as a hobby) and somehow uses the tractor to do the churning, and then sells it off the back of the tractor at the event.

Great now I have to find a source for Local Tractor Made Ice Cream! Do you think Blue Bell has any available? Love the pics, must be a fun Church!