Everything I Own (Bread cover by des0free)

[des0free]

I gotta say again how much I love your cover of this great song.... your voice almost makes me cry... it's so great...just the way you sing it...
special stuff... I bet I've heard this 10 times now... and not just the vocals either...the guitar and the rest sounds wonderful!  I am giving you a standing ovation.

Hey, thanks so much for your encouragement, it really means a lot.  I started playing guitar in 2008 and joined this site in 2009 when I was almost 40 years old and only very slowly improved. Mainly I just strum chords, and it took me a long time to get ok at it.  I realized fairly early on that the rock & pop songs I liked became boring if you just strummed chords.  So although I never sung anything before at all I just started trying to sing and record myself.  I would say that the first ~10 years I basically sucked, but I kept at it and slowly improved.  And people on this site always gave me amazing encouragement even when I knew I wasn't very good. I think my ability to hear whether something sounded good was also bad at first and that only slowly improved as well.  Lately my method has been to pick one song and dig in deep and really try to work on it, playing it first to myself for many days or weeks with just acoustic guitar before even trying to record.  And typically it is some song that for one reason or another has "gotten under my skin", so I could become obsessed and not easily tired of it.  Then finally start to record it and redo parts, especially the vocal many, many times.   And also I have to decide whether this is a song "suited to my voice" or not, and if not maybe just give up. 

After recording I listen carefully and usually redoing again.  And lately I actually record each PHRASE of the song over and over until I'm happy, then listen to the whole again, then go back and redo some phrases again. Right now since I bought a bunch of "instrument" plugins I'm having fun using those -- I'm mainly a guitar player and not very good at bass, keys, etc. so it made sense for now to look for a midi file that has all the other parts so I can focus mainly on improving rhythm guitar and vocals.

[Jean Pierre]

Doug

really nice work, I love the voice

Thank you for sharing your work technique with us...very interesting
I like to know the details of the technical part, I think it's one of the best reason of this site
..I will add a technical note for "the blackest crow" that we recorded with C and G

[StephenM]

I believe you Doug.  I am glad that you are continuing on.  I am guessing that pretty much all folks who get really good at this are enormously talented and work very hard at it.  The cool thing is, it's fun!  Can't wait to hear what you cook up next.

[BerryPatch]

Brilliant cover. I like the hits of Bread, David Gates seemed to have real knack for that emotional soft 70s rock songwriting this one being no exception. Your vocals fit so well and the arrangements and production are stellar. I appreciate the info you put into your posts as well!

I happen to do a lot of redoing when I record my vocals as well and even more lately, sometimes just down individual lines if I can't get it sound good enough. I wish I could pull off some "one take wonders" but I've learned singing consistently is harder than it sounds!

[Bluesberry]

Really great cover.....your vocals are so sweet....really brings the emotion of the song to life....well done...there is something very appealing about your vocals.....open, honest.......a little bit of wonder.....it reminds me of Daniel Johnston quite a lot.....and I really love That guy....

[kenny mac]

Bread were a great band.
Nice cover,love the music production on this.
Took me right back in time.
Im going to listen to some more bread stuff now.
Youve put me in the mood

[Pete C]

I missed out on Bread, slightly too young at the time, but I have heard this song and covers of it often. This is  a really good version, well arranged and sung !

Pete