Bossa Gemini by calm down party

Recorded and produced by Stephen

This song uses the first guitar I ever owned. It was a gift from my mom to my dad a couple decades ago (he never learned to play). After years of disuse, I've started playing it when learning actual bossa nova songs. Unfortunately, there's a giant crack in the headstock, so this may be its only performance.

The lead guitar line is played on the same instrument, though now with a pick. Since I always worry about covering up Alex while she sings, I took the opportunity to cut parts out.

The shaker for most of the song is big cylinder one with a bigger dent in it. I add an egg as the first layer in the samba section. The last shaker sound added is actually a cabasa, which was the hardest instrument to get a good sound out of for me.

The claves are actually a drumstick and the stick for the bells. The pattern is the only straightforward bossa in the song. The annoying thing about this one was how I always thought I was nailing it while recording, only for me to hear constant flaws in the playback.

The samba section really gets going with the addition of the surdo, which is really just a generic frame drum, and the cavaquinho, which is actually just a ukulele. My last imitation is a few bars later, where the agogo bells are actually gankogui bells. While the substitutions have noticeable pitch and timbre differences in isolation, they seem to have a reasonably similar function in the ensemble.

Finally, there's the trumpet lick, which is supposed recall the opening line of the chorus. I even considered trying to record it as a group vocals version of the line, but that was just a little too ambitious

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just 4 bubs