how bout a song?

Click on the song title below to listen. 
Kazzy's voice has been silenced by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act(see the details here). Sorry you can't listen to her sing directly. But send her a message and she'll try to work something out.

Your Song  (originally by Elton John, with this version inspired by Ellie Goulding)


Some of you have asked about my process when I record.  Here is how I do it. 

I keep a running list of possible songs on my iPhone as I listen to the radio, watch, TV, go online, whatever.  Most of the time something strikes me and I know I just really want to sing it.

I go to amazon.com to find karaoke mp3s that I can use as my accompaniment.  Sometimes I get surprised by how many options I have for the one song I am looking for, and sometimes I am disappointed by how few options I have.  There have been many times where I have looked and looked for a track I really want and I just can't find it.

I use Audacity, which is a free sound mixing program, to upload my karaoke track.

After I do that, I sequester myself in the den and use my snowball mic to record a track on top of the music track.  When I do this I have to use headphones so that the audio track is not getting recorded twice by coming out through the speakers on the computer and back in again through my mic.

Often I combine a couple of singing tracks.  For example, if I like the track I lay down, except I mess up on the last line, I record just that last line until I get it right, and then I cut and splice it in.  I would say half of my recordings have a cut and paste somewhere within.

Once the tracks are satisfactory, I mess with fine tuning, using Audacity.  I normalize the sound so it is more even, I add in a fade in or fade out, I clean up background noise, etc.

Finally, I save all of my recordings to box.net, which is an online storage facility.  I currently have 75 recordings saved.  Some I am not ecstatic about, but others turned out pretty good.

At box.net I click on a share option and then I post the link here on my blog, or sometimes on facebook.


7 comments

LisAway | May 14, 2011 at 3:30 PM

Ooooo, love this song! And you're just awesome. I'm quite jealous of your kids, because I'm guessing you sang a lot to them when they were growing up. So awesome. Thank you for sharing with us, too!

And I loved all the behind the scenes! Such a great idea to share that. I feel like I got backstage tickets. :)

Unknown | May 14, 2011 at 7:31 PM

I loved it! Listened from Facebook.

Welcome to the Garden of Egan | May 14, 2011 at 8:17 PM

I love your voice.
It is smooth.
You are a talented woman!

Connie | May 14, 2011 at 10:32 PM

When I got the email that you had a song on box.net, I listened to it...3 times. LOVE it!

Mrs4444 | May 15, 2011 at 2:14 PM

This is interesting. Thanks for sharing your process. I'm impressed by your techy skills.

Heidi | May 16, 2011 at 5:17 PM

It sounds like a ton of work but the results are certainly worth it (imho).

Kimberly Vanderhorst | May 18, 2011 at 2:03 PM

I know it's probably musical heresy or something, but I've never cared for Elton John. Seriously. My mum would listen to him when I was a kid and I'd change the record when she wasn't looking.

But I LOVED this song through your voice. Loved.