Music Mashup: Chris Ismael’s “We Are”

A few hours ago, I listened to this recording of Chris performing “live” at the recent songcraft session.

Chris’ performance was near flawless that evening. The “live” recording was excellent, considering that Jeremy just plonked his MP3 recorder on the ground.

But my guitar lead still sucked, weak as it was in the background.

Then on a whim, I decided to download the MP3 file, imported it into GarageBand and recorded a guitar track. There was hope for my playing yet! After five hours, I was happy with the recording and sound engineering:

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“We Are”

Listen/Download at ARCHIVE.ORG
Composer: Chris Ismael.
Performed “live” by Chris Ismael. “Live” recording by Jeremy Yew.
Additional guitar lead/ bass by Ivan Chew.
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For comparison, here’s the original “live” version, without my additional guitar and bass:

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While mixing this version, I reminded myself the guitar lead should serve to highlight the song, and not be the centerpiece. I tried my best to bring Chris’ vocals up, and was careful to keep the accompanying guitar in the background.

I’ve played the lead for this song (all impromptu) four times at various Songcraft sessions. Each time I walked away feeling that I’ve not done justice to his song.

Since the songcraft mini-concert, I’ve been pestering Chris for ages to do a proper recording of “We Are”, so that I can attempt to play a decent lead. He said OK but didn’t have time to do a proper recording.

Well Chris, I hope you like this lead. Not fantastic but better than my impromptu leads that you’ve been putting up with so far!

Thanks Dude, for the song.