Throughout the process of creating this cover, I found that the biggest challenge were keeping the musicality while working in a strict time and other voices. The nature of creating a cover with layered tracks and a set metronomic time in garage band made so that I had to record every thing in short pieces and layer together for the final product. This working process made it very difficult to be musical as my focus was directed towards singing the correct notes in the correct time, on top of the fact that the rhythm for this song was also rather difficult in pure solfege instead of words which inherently have the rhythm set to them, On the topic of solfege, singing in solfege also made the singing process naturally more dry in my opinion as the words contributes a lot of meaning to both the natural musicality of the song, and also the emotional stimulation for the singer. Another challenge in the recording process was that the phrases were mostly broken up because long one-shots were immensely difficult to record perfectly and I had only successfully recorded a few in the entire video. On the top of rhythm, the tempo of the song was quite fast and because of the setting in garage band I did not find a way to change tempos within the song so although I had wanted to include a retardando at the end of the song, I was unable to. It was also difficult to try sing the exact correct note to not mess up the harmonies. However, in this project I found that harmonizing with myself was not as difficult as a few previous assignments such as the canons; I think this might be caused by the faster rhythm and more busy audio in general as it covered a lot of imperfect intonation problems, and/or maybe because my intonation got better? Another thing I realized with intonation is that it is extremely difficult to keep singing the same note repeatitively in a fast tempo. When I just started recording the supporting harmonies, I recorded one line of just one a single note repeated and listening to it I found that I was alternating between the actual note and a slightly higher note (not quite a semi-tone). Reflecting back this probably had something to do with the enunciation of solfege, as well as, air support, similar to that of a wind or brass player.
A part of this assignment that I found was very fun is adding the things outside of the solfege singing. At the end of each verse, I included the shakers (diy from rice in a bottle) for a few bars In between verses from the original and I personally am happy with the way they turned out. The more rhythmic section between each verse also introduced more texture to the song and was one of the more enjoy moments to record. I decided to use whistling in the place of the recorder and flute melodies in the original. Additionally, the whistling provided a slightly more free part because I decided to be a bit more loose with the rhythm in the whistling, and because it did not need solfege. I decided not to sing the whistled lines as it was immensely difficult to hear among the other voices as the register of those sections is just the same as pretty much everything else and blended in too much compared to the flute and recorrder from the original. Whistling on the other hand was able to stand out because of its timbre and fits with the atmosphere of the song. For the harmonies I decided not to double the melodies in parts where it was doubled in the original because, one, I couldn't reach the the higher or lower doubling voice, and second because it really wasn't necessary as I mostly just kept the accompaniment more simple and rhythmic to emphasize each beat as the piano does in the original.
Overall, I think this was a difficult and tedious but also rewarding task. Despite frustrations in the process, I actually quite enjoyed the opportunity. Although I am not quite satisfied with the product, it has been an interesting learning experience.