One of the many enormous advantages of digital recording is that individual sound files can be created anywhere in the world and sent anywhere else pretty much instantaneously. Professionals are no longer required to be present in a specific studio in L.A. or New York in order to cut tracks and contribute to projects. They can achieve this from home studios and local studios with relative ease, and less cost than traditional recording sessions. Virtually anyone can work and contribute remotely to sessions no matter where they are in the world. Simultaneously, with the low cost and the relative high quality of today’s even entry level recording tools (things like computers and recording interfaces and mic-preamps) the home studio hobbyist has had the doors to the world opened up to him as well.
With distance not being a barrier to collaboration, a guitar player in their bedroom in Colorado can share files back and forth with a drummer in South Africa or Australia; often times with more ease than trying to arrange a jam session in a local garage with some buddies. This new paradigm spawned the birth of Virtual Bands – bands essentially built around small recording projects and places like YouTube have been a great place to showcase these collaborations. One of my favorite (and relatively early) collaborations was a joint USA/Netherlands venture by Jimmy Gelhaar & Bastiaan Zijlstra covering Stairway to Heaven.
We are going to try to hook up with both of them for an interview at some point but it’s safe to say that their recording of Stairway (and their even more famous recording of Hotel California) set the bar for all future YouTube collaborations world over.
The cover itself is very faithful to the original Zeppelin recording but there’s just enough personality in the arrangement and the performances to make it their own.
I can’t help but imagine what YouTube collaborations would look like today had they not started out with such obvious goodwill, been executed with such quality, and seemed to be a celebration of the songs they covered vs themselves. I hope you enjoyed this – I sure did – and also check out that link above to Hotel California
EDIT TO ADD (Jan 23, 2018): YouTube often tragets versions of Stairway for copyright claims and mutes audio or deletes performances accordingly. Here’s an alternate link to the same performance. I’ll periodically review these to make sure they are still active.
Feature Image Credit: Stairway to heaven by Pieter Musterd by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0