At My Most Beautiful
Up | 1998
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

Making Do Without

Harmonica was not purchased. I included a low bassoon, but that didn’t even cover the entire harmonica chorus. No tubular bells or timpani either. Instead, I spent more time on the core piano and vocals.

To compensate for the missing parts in the intro, I added a scaled back versino of the backing vocals. It really needed something as a load, and that felt like a better decision than faking out synth tubular bells.

Final Tracks (32)

Vocals (17)

  • Main vocal composited
  • So Many Background Vocals (16)

Percussion (4)

  • Kick
  • Snare
  • Sleigh Bells / Cymbal Crash
  • Shaker

Midi Instruments (2)

  • B3 Organ
  • Bsssoon

Instruments (8)

  • Piano (3)
  • Electric Bass
  • Upright Bowed Electric Bass (4)
  • Acoustic Gutar

Faithful Cover?

Still as bunch of substitutions on this one. My orchestration is missing so many instruments. Most notably the tubular bells, timpani and harmonica. In the end, that’s ok. Especially since I can always revisit songs. I don’t plan on doing a lot of revisiting, but this is the first track that I probably should when I have better instruments.

It’s like cooking. If you want a great meal, start with the best ingredients.

Learnings

  • Start with the instrument that may not be in tune
  • It’s stil possible to recover if you didn’t
  • Brian Wilson just recorded a lot of takes and drenched it in reverb to get that sound

Next Up

What’s the Frequency Kenneth?