Samit Sarkar - “The Christmas Song”
Last year, we at Destructoid put our heads together and recorded The Destructoid Christmas Album. It went over pretty well, and my contribution — a cover of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” — turned out fine. (For more details, check out my original post.)
We thought, “Why not do it again?” Fewer staffers contributed this year, but I think The Second Annual Destructoid Christmas Album is just as full of holiday cheer as the inaugural edition. I decided to record a version of “The Christmas Song” — y’know, the one that goes, Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…
The recording process was a bit more ambitious this time around, because I decided that in addition to my singing and guitar playing, I wanted a bass part. Unfortunately, I don’t own a double bass, and my keyboard doesn’t have it as one of its built-in “instruments,” either. So I went with something called “finger bass.” I still didn’t have a better option for recording the guitar part than sticking my Rock Band microphone in front of my guitar’s sound hole, and this year, I decided to use the same mic for recording my singing (even though it doesn’t have a wind screen, which isn’t ideal). I recorded and mixed everything in Audacity.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t expect to hear a brilliantly engineered recording when you hit “play.” I’m sure someone could “tweak the levels” to get a better-sounding song, but I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to that stuff. Still, I’m not unhappy with the final product.
Enjoy, and happy holidays!

