My Recorded Cover Songs – A Man Needs A Maid
September 17th, 2010 . by Alexander Fisher
I bought a Neil Young music book about twenty years ago and learned several of his songs. I have only recorded this one. This recording features me on keyboards, more than usual. I was sick of recording guitars and decided to record this song with less of a guitar sound. Although the electrics get a little loud in the chorus’. I put a lot of effort into the performances, as opposed to my normal treatment of covers. This is still the only song I can play on piano reasonably well. I think I recorded this somewhere around the middle 1990’s.
A Man Needs A Maid
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I made a real breakthrough editing out of sync recordings during this re-mix. The best process is to find the tempo of the original or base recordings. Then using the slip stretch feature of Sonar, adjust any one track of the other set of recordings to match the beat. Find the stretch percentage and apply it to the rest of the tracks in that set. The tracks should be in sync to within a few percent. There’s really a lot more to it than that, but that’s a separate blog, coming soon.
The analog tracks were originally recorded on a Yamaha MT-100 II 4 track cassette recorder using high speed (3.75 IPS) and dbx noise reduction.
I played electric guitar on a Fender Stratocaster and probably on an Ibanez Les Paul. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. I played keyboards on a Casio CZ-101 FM synthesizer. The drums and cymbals, plus some analog editing, are from the original recording using my Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine sounds and a Yamaha MIDI drum pad.
This song was written by Neil Young. I sang, and played all of the instruments. I processed it with Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge 9.
