Covers

My, if this one didn't take a long time to finish. I started this a year ago, around the 20th of December 2012. Why did it take so long? I had it 90% finished that next January, but I didn't get to the last passage of the choral section in time to have it finished before school started back up. So, the vocals had to wait. It wasn't until just recently that I was able to sit down with this song and really complete it.

But it's here, now, and I love that. This one's been a long time coming and features some of my best mixing to date. I had this mix near perfect months before I ever considered buying monitors, which is amazing to me. With the acquisition of more useful plugins, I put a little more critical listening work into the mix and the result is something I can call pleasing!

I'm more than excited to finally be able to release this. Many people requested it when I decided to cover something last year, and it's great to feel like it's worth something.

Production notes may come eventually, but for now I'll just run down the notables.

I used PreSonus's wonderful Studio One v.2 Pro to mix, utilizing its included compressors, EQs, and reverberators for the most part. Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 4 played a huge role in this like it does most of my music, being the tone shaper for the guitar/bass tracks and my key echo effect. I used Waves' Kramer Master Tape to fatten the sound in a good many places, and the Puigtec passive EQs as sweetening filters. Ozone 5 served as the master dynamics processor and topped everything off.

Coldplay - Fix You

I've been rather uninspired lately for various emotional and mental reasons, so I decided I would try to break the block, covering a song I've wanted to cover pretty much since I heard it the first time.

I don't like classifying You Blew It! as emo. I call it minimal post-rock. They cover a lot of ground sonically, but overall it's like a stripped down, raw rock. I dig that. Dispite me being so into ambient post-rock.

Some of my friends will better understand why I like this song in particular.

I apologize for the shoddy lead singing. This is one of the most difficult and taxing things I've ever sung, considering I'm not great at pushing those high notes.

For this one I used my Fender Telecaster Custom. I'm still unsure what the pickups in it actually are, but they're killer. This was running into the Hiwatt Custom 100 model in Guitar Rig 5, with matching 4x12 cab in Control Room Pro, using a Royer R-121. Left side uses the bridge pickup throughout, and the right side uses middle position throughout. I used some worn Ernie Ball Cobalt Regular Slinky strings.

Bass is my Squier MB-5 again. Neck pickup direct into Guitar Rig 5.

Nothing too fancy to explain on this one. I hope it's at least enjoyable. I just had to make it.

You Blew It! - Kevin You're Such a Disease

Happy birthday, Kenny G.

Sara Sanner and I are They. You could say They are we.

This is our rendition of Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield's arrangement of Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars."

Elliott Smith - Between the Bars

This is my quick, one-night, spontaneous cover of Griffin McElroy's song "Discovery and Recovery" as heard in The Adventure Zone podcast. You first hear those chimes near the end of the "Petals to the Metal" story arc, where Hurley single-handedly saves Goldcliff and, ultimately, the realm from imminent destruction at the hands of her beloved Sloan, by sacrificing herself. It's an extremely touching moment, and the music is just superb for it.

Griffin, you inspired me to go back to writing music, proving your music can be good and unique if you just sit down and WRITE. Thank you, you sweet, sweet boys, for the podcasts and especially for your creativity.

TAZ: Discovery and Recovery (Cover)

Following our bewilderment at the resounding success of our Clocks cover, we decided we should calm down. Then we did this.

Never mind the fact that it took us nearly a year.

All parts tracked on a Dell XPS L502x, equipped with a PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL and FL Studio 10.

Guitars were tracked with an Epiphone Les Paul Standard. Completely stock, filed down the frets and the headstock had completely snapped off at one point; now held on by epoxy. :D Ernie Ball Regular Slinkies.
Guitar processing is Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 4 Pro. JMP and Plexi models were used, and run through Poulin LeCab 2, which loaded RedWirez' Marshall 1960A cab impulses. The Neumann KT84 mic was used a lot. The rhythm and lead parts ran through Waves' Kramer Master Tape for an analog and colorful sound.

Bass was tracked using a several-years-old Squier MB-5. All stock, pretty sure only the neck pickup worked at the time. Ernie Ball Regular Slinkies.
Bass processing was fun. I used Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 4 Pro again, but only the Pro Co Rat stomp model before running the track through a Fender Rumble 100. The preamp out then went back into Guitar Rig, where I used a special combination of cab settings designed to make a deep but distinctly colored sound. To aid that, I used Kramer Master Tape to fatten up the low end.

Drums are all Superior Drummer 2.0 and the stock Avatar kit. Some processing was done inside SD2.0, and bleeds are all enabled. Outside of that is FL Studio's stock compressor set for transient content, and iZotope's triode-modeled tube exciter module. On the ambient mics, I used a high pass and slammed Kramer Master Tape for a bigger room sound. Then it's onto some compression and limiting on the drums buss, and another Kramer Master Tape. That compresses the whole kit the way tape does, and gives it a meaty edge in the character of tubes and tape combined. Big cymbals, big toms. Love it.

Synth is Native Instruments' Mikro Prism, set to the preset "Lonely Molecules." No tweaks. Beautiful pad right out of the box. And it was free. Thinking about getting Prism though.

Piano was played by yours truly, no sequencing this time. Minor edits to certain notes, but otherwise it's just me playing my M-Audio Keystation 49e right into Pianoteq.

Vocals were once again recorded in Reid's garage/bedroom. Or is it bedroom/garage? Reid, as usual, sings lead, and I sing background. Same setup on both tracks, minus the echo on my tracks.
We used a Shure Beta 57A, iZotope Ozone 5, FL Studio's Reeverb 2, and Guitar Rig 4's Roland RE-120 tape echo module. Manual correction was done in Celemony Melodyne, but I assure you, we didn't auto-tune anything. Not with Auto-Tune, and not with Melodyne's "Correct Pitch" macro. All that we did was by hand alone.

Although we pretty much didn't touch the cover for a good four months, I worked painstakingly on the mix once in a while, working hard for a bit then putting it down again, until it reached this point.

This is in fact the final mix! No more updates, I'm pretty happy with how it sounds.

Go find the "SD2.0 ... Test" sounds on my profile to see what the drums used to sound like.

Safetysuit - Annie

A cover of Fleetwood Mac

Lead vocal: Eric Daume
Backing vocals: Kelly Reaves
Piano: Jon Heim
Electric guitars: Kelly Reaves

Landslide

Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)

A complete remix of Reid Craft's 2012 cover of "Annie," a Safetysuit song.

Annie

Annie (Safetysuit) 2020 Mix

Hi. I'm Kelly. I'm a mixing engineer.
I produce, sing, and play guitar, bass, piano, and synthesizer.
I am Okayfine, using my most useful means of expression to get the hurt out.
Member ASCAP.
Currently based Chicago, IL.

Covers

enifyako