DISCLAIMER: Before clicking the following links, make sure you're fully 
prepared! Your ears might not forgive you. You have been warned.



Cough please. Open wide. Now say "AAAH"...

http://download.orphi.me.uk/Music/G3/IKnowWhy-Raw.mp3

This is the original, unprocessed recording. (Except for some stereo 
panning.) With a little bit of post-production (i.e., a compressor tuned 
to the most aggressive setting I could find) and some backing supplied 
by Battery [drums] and Kontakt [double bass and clarinet - I couldn't 
find a saxophone], it sounds like this:

http://download.orphi.me.uk/Music/G3/IKnowWhy-Final.mp3

(I don't know if it's Cubase or Kontakt, but the first note on each 
instrument seems to randomly get dropped or clipped... Very annoying!)

In case you have no idea WTF this is supposed to be, see for comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA3LFd8g9bY

This is the version I'm attempting to cover.

Problems:

* Technically, it is illegal for this recording to exist in the first 
place. Hopefully nobody will sue me... o_O

* Microphone hiss. Absurd levels of microphone hiss. The extreme 
compressor settings only make things worse.

* Breath control. I had real trouble not running out of air on... well, 
basically ALL of those chords. But even the bits that aren't chords, I 
was constantly breathless. Maybe it's because I'm so unfit, but I 
suspect I'm probably just doing it wrong.

* The lead vocals were done in a single take. I really didn't put very 
much effort into them at all. It was meant to be a guide track rather 
than a final take, so it's not especially accurate. (You may have 
noticed that I didn't sing the final verse - mostly because the original 
lyrics are unparsable.)

* The finale was EXTREMELY hard to sing. I wasn't expecting it to be, 
but I found it nearly impossible to get right. I did endless takes, and 
they all sounded terrible. In addition to being out of tune, it's out of 
time too!

* The bridge with the key change is my favourite part. But for whatever 
reason, when I sing it, every "doo" is 90% D and only 10% OO, so it 
sounds rather achromatic. Again, I'm probably just doing it wrong.

* My throat really hurt during this. I can't decide whether I'm just not 
used to using my voice, or whether I'm actually doing it wrong. (I spend 
most of my life sitting alone, not uttering a word. Whenever I talk to 
people, I notice my throat hurts after half an hour of talking. Trying 
to sing loudly is presumably much more work than merely talking...)

* The headphones I was using make it difficult to hear both myself and 
the backing track. I had to sing this with one ear in and one ear out.

* If I ever get to do this again, remind me to put more pitch references 
in the backing track! A lone double-bass doesn't give me much to go on...

* I had serious difficulty mixing the final version. I wanted to *hear* 
the vocals, but the signal keeps clipping. I turned the vocals down and 
down and down until now they're barely audible, and still the signal is 
only just out of the red. Compare my recording to The Senti-Mentals, and 
their track is nowhere near the end of the meter, yet sounds 
*drastically louder*. WTF?

* I have quite a low voice. Initially I was singing the chords as F4, 
A4, C5. But that was too low and rumbling, so I changed it to A4, C5, F5 
instead. That sounds much better. Yet somehow, when The Senti-Mentals do 
it, their voices sound much brighter and clearer than mine. Not sure if 
they're actually singing higher notes, or whether I'm just singing badly.

For extra fun, if you increase the playback speed of the track, my voice 
sounds higher, and then you can "make out" the chords properly:

http://download.orphi.me.uk/Music/G3/IKnowWhy-Chipmunk.mp3

It's actually not bad, eh?

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