Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It

Music and Lyrics by Shulman, Shulman and Minnear
Rearranged by The Rockin' Revd, © Copyright 1999

The idea to re-record this piece from Gentle Giant's 1997 LP The Missing Piece came to me while listening to the GG tribute CD Giant Tracks. Hearing how some of the cover versions there had tried to do something quirky and different with the original, I vowed to have a crack myself at reworking GG's least-typical musical outing in the classic GG style.

To achieve this end, I then had to get my bedroom studio set-up out of mothballs. The Tascam four-track cassette machine had decided to die a death on me, and I ended up splashing out on a digital 8-track. I then had to learn how to get something resembling music out of this machine before I could get down to the serious creative process. All this took much longer than anticipated. There were backing tracks to record for the church pantomime, and I could only spare a few hours on my day off each week to crank up the hard drive. However, the piece slowly but surely developed from musings to music, from rough jottings to manuscript scribbles and, finally, real sounds, a few bars at a time.

I enjoyed doing it. I hope it gives GG cognoscenti a few laughs. It isn't very like GG - they are quite impossible to emulate, although I must say Mike Keneally comes very close on No God's a Man.

To download an MP3 file of Betcha Thought, click on this icon. .

It's 3.17 MB, so may take a while to download. ENJOY.

Equipment Used (Anorak Corner)

Fostex DMT8vl Digital 8-track recorder and impenetrable instruction booklet
Alesis Wedge Digital Effects
Korg AX1G Guitar Effects Box
Cheapo AKG Mic.
Yamaha Clavinova Piano
Yamaha DX11
Roland TR505 Drum Machine
Yamaha Flute
Trumpet
La Fleur Horn
Westone Thunder Bass Guitar
CSL Double Neck Gibson Copy Electric Guitar
Tambourine
No midi assitance at all

Copyright & copy; 1999 The Revd Dr Paul Moore.
This page was written on 23rd August 1999 and revised on April 1st 2001.