posted on 12.24.11
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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!

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posted on 4.17.11
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the9th:

Introitus - Requiem aeternam [Requiem Mass] - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

True story: sang this (i.e., the entirety of Mozart’s Requiem) with a massive five-school choir when I was a senior in high school — it was a special concert at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University.

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posted on 12.24.10
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Merry Christmas, Internet.

Y’know, I’ve been wanting to do something like this — record a song for you all, as a Christmas present — for a while now (at least since before last Christmas). But being the lazy procrastinator that I am, I just never found the time to do it, or couldn’t figure out the best way to go about it, or couldn’t decide on which song I wanted to do, or was simply too terrified by the prospect of recording my own (singing) voice and putting it out there on the web for people to hear. I mean, I love singing, and I know I have a half-decent voice, but other people usually only hear it in a few specific contexts: (A) the rest of my family, when I’m in the shower; (B) my friends or family, when I’m playing Rock Band or some other video game that involves singing; (C) my friends, when we’re all at a karaoke bar.

This year, though, I had a reason to record a song.

As you may know, I write for a videogame website called Destructoid. The site’s editors come up with clever, funny ideas all the time, and a few weeks ago, one of them emailed the rest of the editors out of the blue with a random thought: Why don’t we all record ourselves singing Christmas carols and put it up on the site? He claims he was inebriated when he sent that email, and the tone of the message was basically, “Kidding! Unless you guys all think it could be cool…”

We did, and a bunch of Destructoid editors — whether or not they thought they could sing — recorded songs for The Destructoid Christmas Album.

My contribution was “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”; you can listen to it above. It’s just me and my guitar, although I suppose I should fess up and say that I recorded the accompaniment first and then sang over it. (One of my greatest failings in life is that I still can’t play the guitar and sing at the same time.) I should also note that I feel like this isn’t necessarily my best work; my voice wasn’t in tip-top shape when I recorded this on Monday evening, but I didn’t have the time to get it done before then (because of, y’know, that whole graduation thing and all).

Even so, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you have yourself a Merry Christmas! Thanks for listening, and for reading my Tumblr all year.

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posted on 6.14.10

thedailywhat:

Personal Interest Story of the Day: While studying vocal music education at CSU, Mandy Harvey discovered she was going deaf. “In a year’s time I had gone from being slightly hard of hearing, as I have been all my life, to gone,” Harvey told Denver’s KMGH-TV. Naturally, she became severely depressed, and eventually was forced to leave school, closing the door on her hopes of becoming a professional jazz singer.

From 7 News:

That is, until she recorded a song at home for her boyfriend.

“And my dad would listen to the recording, he’s like that’s it, that’s it, you have it still,” Harvey said. “And so it was like this eureka moment.”

That’s when Harvey reached out to Cynthia Vaughn, her vocal instructor during high school and college. […]

The pair sat down at the piano, and Vaughn played a five note descending scale, which Harvey sang, perfectly in tune.

“I really almost fell off the piano bench,” said Vaughn.

Unable to hear her own voice, Harvey now sings by the memory of notes, sight reading and sensation.

Harvey is now a featured vocalist at Jay’s Bistro in Fort Collins, and has already recorded a CD with no plans to stop doing what she loves any time soon.

[arbroath.]

Awesome!

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posted on 5.14.10

thedailywhat:

Internet Phenomenon of the Day: Wunderkind Greyson Michael Chance, whose “Paparazzi” cover has been viewed nearly 10 million times, was invited to perform on Ellen.

This kid was born to be the star he will undoubtedly become.

[lindsayrobertson.]

Yep, just as awesome and impressive the second time around.

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posted on 5.12.10

copycats:

Paparazzi by Greyson
originally by Lady Gaga 

From lindsayrobertson who says: 

I had to see this on approximately 98 blogs before finally giving in and clicking. And now I’m as obsessed with it as everyone else. So if you’re like me, holding out as a symptom of “I don’t like seeing the same thing 98 times” generalized internet boredom I urge you to make an exception for this one viral video. It’s that amazing.

This kid is really, really good.

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posted on 4.24.10
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copycats:

God Only Knows - Ben Kweller
originally by The Beach Boys
(posted by sometimesagreatnotion)

This will always be one of my favorite Beach Boys songs, because we sang it in my high school choir (in 9th grade, I think).

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