This week’s Free Track Friday is a lighter tune: Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammer. We first heard this song on the Songs for Japan compilation and thought it went along well with one of the overarching goals of this program: charity. Each Free Track Friday will be posted online for free for a week, after which it will be posted on iTunes. All of the proceeds from our iTunes sales will go directly to various charities. FTF #1 and #2 will be going to Tunes To Teens, a CASA initiative to bring a cappella CDs to high school choral students.
Somehow, someway, we pushed the limit of our HD3 rig again. Even though this song was much simpler than Till The World Ends, there were still many parts hidden and many parts added from a simple transcription. One part Dave particularly enjoyed was the rolled piano lick on beats throughout the song. That piano lick was just girls on the right hand with doubles on each note edited to sound like they were rolled. In EQ we were able to bring out the harmonics of the voice to better emulate a real piano. Simple…but still 8 parts just for the right hand, the parts with a left hand add another 8. Each Wurli was something like 16 voices. Each violin or cello was 8 or 12.
In terms of process for this song, we started with a barebones transcription of the major parts we could hear: perc, bass, piano, wurli, muted guitar, and violins. From there we added parts that came to us. Dave had to stop eating his Kashi Go Lean one morning because he couldn’t get the “gat dey ooo” part out of his head. Overall the feel may be more gospel or more joyous FIFA World Cup than the original, but that is what came to us.
Dave got to use the “telephone perc” effect that he so loves in the interludes of this tune. Simple effect: run a live percussion track through a “telephone” EQ filter (cut below 500ish and above 3kish) and compress to taste.
The big story this week is one of putting yourself out there. Dave hasn’t really done much formal singing since he left his college group, Eight Beat Measure, besides coaching his clients. This time…everyone got him in the booth and coaxed a performance out of him. Word of advice from Dave: Keep your breath in shape. It’s darn near impossible to sing anything when you don’t have the breath support to get you through a phrase.
Special Thanks:
David Longo (solo) @sleddogstudios @longodj
Mickey Hamilton (harmony) @sleddogstudios @MickeyBluEyes81
Josh Goodman (percussion) @JoshyPGMan
Rohit Crasta (bass)
Nicole Milano (backgrounds) @sleddogstudios @nicolemariemil
Katie Riegal (backgrounds) @kriegal
Dave Sperandio (mastering) @diovoce @davesperandio
