After I’d done the banjo version of Ramble for my RPM 2020 project, I decided to try it on bouzouki. For some reason, I’d remembered that the bouzouki was tuned in a similar way to the banjo (aDGBD in this case) but, when I picked it up, it came back that it is more like a mandolin (GDAD, with a double course of strings for each note).

That meant working out a new set of chord shapes to navigate the same piece. Once laid down, I also wanted to add mandolin (GDAE). This time though, I played more melodically rather than putting down further chords.

This starts to add an extra dimension to the piece and I was excited to hear how it was developing into a more fully realised song. You can hear the result here:

I needed a few retakes to pin this pair down but Logic makes that wonderfully easy. You can re-record a whole track, just a portion of it or even loop round a marked-slot and then composite all the takes into a single ‘performance’. I made extensive use of this but I think the joins are fairly seamless.