Here is cover #1. This is actually one of the more recent recordings that I have made. I was sitting at home and I was thinking about my friends who are going through it right now. Divorces, deaths, major life changes, losing jobs, finding jobs, all the things that are breaking us down.

I sat down at my piano and this version came out. I ran right into my studio and made this recording.

Now, obviously, if you know me, you know what this song means to me. For those who don’t, this was “my” song in Mulch, Sweat, and Shears, the band I was in at Disney’s Hollywood Studios from 2004 – 2011. I have performed this song more than Jimmy Eat World will ever perform it in 10 career life times. There wasn’t a day during that span of time that I didn’t perform this song at least once.

My friend Beth from Georgia first brought this song to my attention. Beth leaned into this song hard when we were friends, and why not? It’s amazing. As the years went by, I would have friends quote it to me, or text me when it was on the radio because suddenly it was “my” song. So, I feel like I have a little ownership of it now in people’s lives.

The lyrical content here is perfect for my friends who are going through it now. We are just in the middle of this ride that will get better. I needed them to hear that, hell, I needed to hear it. So, for all of you who need to hear this right now, especially today, November 4th….

A quick note about the following portion. My goal here is to also share my production techniques and elements used on these recordings. Part of this blog is to show myself off, I know, I just made this great sentimental post, and here I am talking about me. Well, that’s part of what I’m doing here, trying to show off my producer/creative side.

Technical Notes:

DAW – Cubase 12

Interface – Universal Audio Apollo Twin

Piano – Keyscape: The Little Wing piano with the Lonely Basement preset. I’ve used this piano before on other recordings and honestly get a little miffed that some of the higher notes you can hear the click of the wood of the key, for this performance, it didn’t bother me one bit. No further processing on the piano, just the preset, it’s perfect.

Vocal Mic – Universal Audio Sphere DLX. I was seated off-center from the mic. I’ve been trying a bunch of new mic techniques as this mic is sick and picks up everything. Trying out this off-axis recording allowed for quite a bit of the high-end to be rolled off. I’ll briefly cover the signal chain of the mic: In the UAD Console (so being printed directly in the recording) LD-47K mic model in the Sphere plug-in. This replicates the U-47 mic. This is into the Precision De-Esser. Then into the Neve 88RS (light compression and EQ), and finally into the UAD Precision Limiter, this wasn’t being hit hard in this recording, but it’s part of my chain. I grabbed this signal flow from an interview with Butch Walker on the UAD website. I don’t have the same plug-ins, but once I started playing with this, I was impressed.

Once recorded, the vocal went through two more pieces of processing in Cubase. The first is the Manley VoxBox. I use the Basic Male preset (because I’m your basic male! Ayo!) This adds that last little bit of smoothing out in the compression.
I tried out a new plug-in on this one, the Hitsville EQ, and used the “Better Vocals” preset. I rolled off a little off the high-end that the preset had, and things just sat in that warm area that I wanted.

Mastering – This song was a simple mix, so not much to discuss in the mix, in fact, looking back at my mix, I didn’t touch a thing. Everyone is still set to 0.0, this is usually how I work, I play the instrument or will process the vocal to where I feel it should be before touching a fader.

I went with the Hitsville Mastering Suite for this one. I didn’t feel the need to flex Ozone or anything, plus I wanted to hear how this plug-in handled the mix. There is a preset called “There it is!” and yeah, there it is. Pretty simple processing.

Many thanks to Jimmy Eat World for writing an amazing song. I hope I’ve made you proud when I have performed this song live.

_{I am not claiming to own any rights to this music. This is just a cover to show my production skills and to show ya’ll how I’m feeling. If anyone feels the need to ask me to take this down, please email me, and I will be happy to do so. I am not monetizing this in any way, and will never plan to monetize the work.}