Here is my
almost-finished cover of Stevie Wonder’s
The drum sounds come from a single Wavedrum track; I played the Wavedrum with hands only (no sticks). What sounds a bit like hi hats is really the snare of the snare drum sound, played with the fingertips. The patch consists of a velocity-sensitive snare drum and bass drum sounds. (There are still some spots in the drum track that don’t sound tight.)
The bass is a custom patch on the Nord Lead synthesizer (a little too much portamento, I think).
Where in the original several clavinet tracks are used I recorded a single Alto Stick. The main theme is played with the left hand on the bass side while the chordal accents are played on the melody side with the right.
Sadly, I don’t own any brass instruments, so I played the unison section on the Alto Stick (two-handed), added a guitar and spread them wide apart in the stereo spectrum.
I also added a few splashes of Ukulele whenever it’s a little quieter in the song. Because I have one (yay).
I’m not really satisfied with the whole thing, but it’s impossible for me to distinguish between annoyances due to perfectionism and those that are actually justified. I’m still working on a video showing the arrangement on the Stick; before publishing it I might revisit the mix of my recording and tweak the sound a bit.
The whole track was recorded and mixed with Free Software, most notably Ardour and the Calf audio plugin suite. To the developers and maintainers: thank you so much!