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Hi All,
Been messing around with a Billy Fury karaoke backing track today, playing the word parts in a Hank Marviny style. Only tried it with just a little bit of reverb yet, and it seems to be working and sounds alright. Next step i'm gonna try is to add some echo and see how it sounds.
The song is 'I'll never find another you' and is very easy to play the way i'm playing it
If this comes out well when i've recorded it, i might try and do a few more and do a 'Ryan plays Fury' style type of thing, like Hank did the 'Hank Plays Holly' album
If it comes out alright, i'll post a link on here for you to listen to.
Has anybody else done a similar thing to singing backing tracks?
Cheers
Ryan

Hi Ryan
I tried the Billy Fury version of "Forget Him" It makes a nice instrumental!

Hi Neil,
I'd love to hear it if you've still got it, and if you can post it on here.
I tried to do something similar a while ago, but to the Beatles backing tracks. Although it was ok, it never sounded quite right, like i was in with the band.
I've found that if you want to do something similar to this, it works much better with song backing tracks which haven't got many guitar parts in them. So you are not competing with the other guitar parts and their sounds, that way you don't sound like the odd 1 out
I wondered about some of Dean Martin's and Roy Orbison's songs and how they might sound in Hank style.....
When you start thinking about it.......there's quite a few songs that would make good instrumentals, as long as they have a nice melody to them.
Cheers
Ryan

Hi Ryan

I've done quite a few of them over the years great tracks with a strong melody they sound great.

We have our own Billy Fury at the Hankies - Joe.
He's bringing some pork pies this week - they're exquisite.

Thanks for the responses.
My idea is i'm going to go through the Billy Fury backing tracks and see what i come up with. Between learning a couple more Shadows tunes and building up the songs i can play
Ecca, this Tues i've got a few tests at the hospital that are going to knacker me out, so all being well, i should be there next week (glad to hear you've got a Bill....Every club needs a Bill )
Cheers
Ryan

Hi Ryan

Youtube is the place to start, Oldguitarmonkey is a friend of mine and he has done lots of his own instrumental versions of popular songs. Burnsernst is another

Cheers for that Steve, i'll have a look see what i can find
Thanks
Ryan

Well I don't know about Billy Fury but I've been through the entire Beatles catalogue and found virtually none that would work as guitar instrumentals; it would seem that even John and Paul's melodies are not strong enough.

At my local Shadows Club (South Wales) I have occasionally used backing tracks that were meant for singers. I've performed SOS and Thank You For The Music (ABBA) and You're My World (Cilla). The recent Cilla dramadoc has persuaded me to try Anyone Who Had A Heart and Love Of The Loved also. It's For You anybody?

ABBA seem to be a source of nice strong melodies that might work Hank-style. Trouble with backing tracks for singers is that some of them are not in guitar-friendly keys, and some of the more obscure ones are not available at all. This does not worry me as I can always go into the studio and record my own, but realise others may not have that option!

Software is available which makes it possible to download just the audio portion of a video from YouTube; try typing the song title into the dialog box, followed by 'karaoke,' 'instrumental,' or 'off vocal.'

The backing tracks i'm using is the karaoke Billy Fury Legends series, it's more or less most of the songs from his 'Hit Parade' album. The 1 song i've tried seems to be working so far, i've yet to try any others.
Thanks for the info regarding the youtube thing, i'll have to look into it.
Cheers
Ryan