The trouble with covering a Stevie Wonder song is that one of the best performers that ever lived did it before you. I’m saying not to expect much. Also, sorry that the piano is sloppy — it was one take.

Link: “Lately”
Release Date: April 12, 2010
Original Name: “Lately”
Composer: Stevie Wonder
Equipment Used: Logic 9.11, Great River Me-1NV, Neumann TLM 49, Motif ES-8, Logic’s Steinway Grand Piano 
Notes: I love that part when you bang on the piano with the G/A chord!

Lyrics:
Wishing on a dream that seems far off
Hoping it will come today
Into the starlit night
Foolish dreamers turn their gaze
Waiting on a shooting star
But

What if that star is not to come
Will their dreams fade to nothing?
When the horizon darkens most
We all need to believe there is hope

Is an angel watching closely over me?
Can there be a guiding light I’ve yet to see?
I know my heart should guide me but
There’s a hole within my soul
What will fill this emptiness inside of me

Am I to be satisfied without knowing
I wish then for a chance to see
Now all I need,
Is my star to come…

I *tried* to cover one of Brian McKnight’s first hits, “One Last Cry.” I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job. My version has its high points, but it has its low points too, and that’s mostly because the song has…well, high (pitch) points. I think the second verse and the bridge sound the best. Sorry, Brian. If anything, it was a good way to learn how to play the song.

Link: “One Last Cry”
Release Date: December 4, 2009
Original Name: “One Last Cry”
Equipment Used: Logic 9 Pro, Motif ES8, Shure SM7B, ME-NV1, Bosendorfer 290

Notes: I’m sure I’ll redo this someday. Probably in a better key for me.

I do at least one Christmas arrangement every year, and this year I’ve started with the classic, Silent Night. I was inspired after watching a documentary that talked about how old the song really is. I did a really simple piano and strings arrangement.

Link: “Silent Night”
Release Date: December 2, 2009
Original Name: “Silent Night”
Composer: ???
Equipment Used: Logic 9 Pro, Kontakt, AT4047, ME-1NV
Notes:

I imagined the song being about a boy in love with his lab partner in science class, taking a cue from the game’s visuals. Aside from singing the melody (poorly), I’m also performing all six harmony parts.

Link: “Love Potion”
Release Date: April 27, 2009
Original Name: 恋の実験室
Game: Rhythm Heaven, Nintendo DS, 2009
Composer: Tsunku
Links: Love Potion music video!
Equipment Used: Samplitude 10, Motif ES8, AT 4047 mic

Lyrics:

I think I might possibly
be in love
love with the girl
from my science class (she’s so fine)

I know her and I
make a love potion so fine
that hearts float up above us
all the time (all the time)

I want her to do that funky dance we always do
I hope she likes my safety goggles
because the chemistry between us two
is made by throwing little bottles

Lab girl with green hair
throwing flasks up in the air
mixing love up just for me
while keeping perfect time
you’ll bag up these hearts of mine
with your rhythmic shaking motion
let’s mix up more of our love potion

Notes: I quickly threw this song together to test out the new features of Sonar 7. I used to be a long-time Sonar user, but have been using Samplitude for a few years now. This song was a way for me to test Sonar’s newest version out. The short of it is that Sonar 7 performed poorly, and I’m very disappointed in how this song came out in the end.

Notes: How many times can I cover this song?

Notes: Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. But the very next day, you gave it away.

Notes: “Home Again” is something I slapped together at the last minute for Joe Cam’s Bound Together. “Pollyanna” is a song I never wanted to tackle. Anyway, this was fun. I threw in a surprise and made sure it was loud as hell for surprise effect.

Link: “Perfectly Strange”
Release Date: November, 2004
Equipment Used: Sonar, Native Instruments Kompakt, Motif ES8

Notes: I think I made it worse!

Notes: I started writing something to test how cleanly I could record the ES8’s analog output. I used only tis synth as a sound source, and this song was the end result.

Notes: This arrangement is my takes on several of the great songs from Iwasaki Taku’s score from this highly stylized but decidedly mediocre anime.

Notes: After spending some quality time with Golden Sun, I took notice of the Venus Lighthouse theme and thought that the melody would make a nice lullaby. It took some major reworking of the rhythms to make this work. The strings in this song are all from Roland’s String sample library.

Notes: Noriyuki Iwadare has always been one of my favorite composers, and this is one of my favorite compositions from him.

Notes: Mustin and I put this together very quickly one afternoon in a sort of protest against the Overclocked Remix’s Judges Panel. We actually submitted it. It was obviously denied. Meow

Notes: JAXX and I wanted to cover a Wild Arms song, and this was a perfect candidate. Even now this arrangement still stands as one of my favorite collaborations.

Notes: I decided that my arrangement of “Pharmacy” should tell the story of a perverted pharmacy worker that peeps at girls. It was originally submitted to VGMix. Not too long after, animator/artist Dave “Shmorky” Kelly created an animation to go along with the song.

Notes: Silver Bells is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and I thought it would match up nicely with “Town.”