King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight (Guitar Cover)

The Song:

“Dancing In the Moonlight” is a song written by Sherman Kelly, originally recorded in 1970 by Kelly's band Boffalongo, and then a hit single by King Harvest in 1972,. Sherman Kelly's brother Wells Kelly introduced the song to the Paris-based band King Harvest in which he was drummer and former Boffalongo member Dave "Doc" Robinson was lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist. King Harvest recorded and released "Dancing in the Moonlight," featuring a prominent keyboard countermelody, as a single in 1972. The group disbanded after six months and the single languished for a year until it was bought and released worldwide by Perception Records.

“Dancing In the Moonlight” is written in the key of Eb with the Cm relative key, and is a keyboard driven song with guitars way back in the mix. Not a great deal of guitar in this one with outlining the chords in the verse and strumming the repetitive chord progression in the chorus. There are two small lead fills that were fun. I always loved this song and great hook, very upbeat and one that has stayed with me all these years. There were so many great melodies written in the 1970’s.

The Video:

The process of final product you are seeing is as follows: I import the original track from iTunes into PreSonus Studio One, tempo map it in PreSonus Studio One, and record all the guitar part as close as I can get them to the original track.

I then buss the guitars to an effects track where I use a send for reverb. On the master I have a limiter, compression and EQ and I usually master in the same workspace. All the guitars are recorded through a Fractal Audio AXE FX III, I generally use Fractal presets and tweak them a bit.
I record the video on my iPhone (with the lesser quality audio), import the video onto my PC desktop where I use DaVinci Resolve to edit the video and replace the iPhone audio with the studio quality audio from PreSonus Studio One.

The Equipment:

I recorded this track using a 2006 Gibson es-335, Cherry Red. This is a 60’s slim tapper neck and has been pleked. Changed out the Grover tuners for Kluson double ring tuners, changed to a historic truss rod cover and volume/tone knobs. All played directly into to a Fractal Audio FXIII and then into PreSonus Studio One.