Jingle Bell Rock Cover

A couple of days ago, I uploaded my cover of this classic christmas song.

In this post, I'm gonna write a little about the process, my experience and some thoughts about it.

It took me a long time to have it finished.

The idea was to upload it in christmas time, as I had done with my cover of In Dulci Jubilo, but I couldn't make it on time.

Those who make this kind of videos know the time and effort that it takes, especially if one has to do all the work on his own, as often happens in many cases of independent musicians.

This is something I usually talk about with my friends and music colleagues, sharing frustrations. 😆

Entering YouTube, I saw that Paola Hermosín (a very know youtuber, excelent guitarrist and singer) kept uploading christmas songs to YouTube.

In one of those videos she says that in Spain, among other places, there is a custom of keep singing christmas carols until the Three Kings Day, which pushed me to finish it and uploaded it.

Process

First, I started recording the cajón peruano.

It's always recommended to start recording the percussion. If it was a band, one would start with the drums.

To do it, I used two microphones. One condenser, for the front side of the cajón; and a dynamic one for the back side.

This is a very used technique for recording cajones, and it's ideal because this way we can take the highest frequencies with the condenser mic, and the lowest ones with the dynamic mic.

Then I continued with the piano. In this case, I used it to replace the bass, since I don't have one at this moment.

After that, I recorded the acoustic guitar, and to get the instrumental part done, I recorded the sleigh bells.

Once I had all the instrumental part ready, I started recording my voice.

To be honest, there are some things that I would modify.

Things I didn't hear in the begining. Some notes a slightly out of tune.

The thing is that I had everything ready, and in this case the idea was to uploaded, at least, before the Three Days Kings.

Lastly, I recorded the choir parts.

Production

This is my favorite part of the process, along with recording.

I love recording instruments and voices, editing tracks, panning, etc.

Mixing and Mastering

I've always found these parts of the process more difficult. Although that is because they are complex and difficult stages, but in my case I never managed to fully enjoy.

I find them frustrating, and I'm never sure I'm doing it right, haha.

Today's independent musian, as I said at the beginning of this post, has to take care of everything.

In my case, I'm 100% selftaught when it comes to music production.

On the other hand, I think it is normal that one likes certain stages more than others; and that there are even some that they don't quite like.

This said, I'm quite satisfied with the result achieved at this stage.

Video

Once I had the master done, I transferred it to a pendrive, and plugged it to an old music player I have, so I listened to the music while doing the mimic with every instrument and my voice.

Lastly, once I had all the takes I transferred them to the pc and started editing the video.

If you have any questions regarding all I mentioned in this post, please write it down in the comments section.

¡Greetings!