# Early Sunsets Over Monroeville

2023-01-16

One evening, Mom entered my room when I practiced ukulele. She was like
"you should record smth" so I did.

I went for Early Sunsets Over Monroeville ("Monroeville" hereafter) by My
Chemical Romance (MCR), for following reasons:

- I happened to be playing that song
- It's one of the few MCR songs acoustic enough for the ukulele, the only
  pitched instrument I can play
- [Billy Cobb made a cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVYs4kvBii8)
  and I enjoyed it immensely
- There is one more reason but it's complicated so I put it at the end

The work began on 2023-01-12 and ended on 2023-01-15.

## Step 1: Learn song

Monroeville is structured as follows:

- intro
- verse 1
- prechorus 1
- verse 2
- prechorus 2
- verses 3, 4, 5 that have more or less the same lyrics but get
  increasingly emotional

I found [the ukulele
tab](https://ukutabs.com/m/my-chemical-romance/early-sunsets-over-monroeville/)
and learned to play the chords. Then I spent a few showers to practice the
vocals.

## Step 2: DAW

I know this can't be a one-take because I only have one mic, and the uke
would completely demolish my untrained voice. Also, this song is like
5 minutes long.

I did try recording and putting together clips in Audacity before, but
without bars and beats it was a pain to synchronize.

This time however, I installed [Ardour](https://ardour.org/) and gave it
a whirl. A few hours and ready to go.

## Step 3: Rig

My rig:

- second hand soprano ukulele
- USB lavalier mic for online lectures
- overear headphones, never used for six years
- a laptop

## Step 3: Record strumming

This is like rhythm guitar in the original composition. Chords were not
too hard, but it took a while to play on tempo. This is me strumming the
intro:

<audio controls src="../img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/intro_strum.ogg"></audio>

## Step 4: Improvise

I improvised a riff to imitate the prechorus melody. This was done by
plucking the G string. I just clipped my nails, so to make it sound
brighter I used a guitar pick.

<audio controls src="../img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/prechorus_plucks.ogg"></audio>

## Step 5: Record drums

I recorded some clips of me slapping my thighs but ended up discarding
them because (a) they sounded off-theme and inconsistent, and (b) it was
stupid. Also this is an acoustic cover so drumless would be just fine.

![Screenshot of the editor window](img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/editor.png)

▲ It was this moment that I decided thigh drums didn't go well with
Monroeville.

## Step 6: Record lead

I found [lead guitar tabs on
Songsterr](https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/my-chemical-romance-early-sunsets-over-monroeville-tab-s22636)
and transposed some of it for the ukulele. This is the prechorus lead:

<audio controls src="../img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/prechorus_lead.ogg"></audio>

My fingers were not good at fretting and picking strings on tempo, but in
a choir of tracks these imperfections were easily concealed. Near the end
I accidentally rang strings I wasn't supposed to touch, but luckily they
were somewhat in key.

## Step 7: Record vocals

It took a few tries to place the mic somewhere stable enough, but there's
still this kind of low-frequency oscillations in the waveform:

![](img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/mic_oscillations.png)

Good news is it's barely noticeable.

I could not go as hard and emotional as Gerard or Billy in the second half
because (a) I never trained myself to scream, and (b) I've never had any
experience with a zombiefied romantic partner. As a result, the second
half sounds emotionless, which is a tradeoff between that and being
completely out-of-tune.

## Step 8: Mix

It's just playing with faders, panning the tracks, and dragging some
automation curves to conceal the noise in the vocal track when I kicked
over a trash can.

![Screenshot of the mixer window](img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/mixer.png)

▲ This was the Hackerman moment of the project.

I also added a reverb filter for the vocals.

## Step 9: Export!

Enjoy: Early Sunsets Over Monroeville (ukulele acoustic cover)

<audio controls src="/static/early_sunsets_over_monroeville.flac"></audio>

Ardour gave me this window but I don't know if it's bad or good?

![Peak: -2.7 dBFS, true peak: -2.7 dBTP, integrated loudness: -20.3 LUFS,
loudness range: 6.4 LU. Below are waveform, spectrogram and
LUFS-over-time.](img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/export_analysis.png)

## What's the one last reason I did this?

twenty one pilots did a livestream recently where Tyler shared a few demos
of theirs tracing back to the Regional at Best era, circa 2010-2012. Here
we have a clip (MP4, 17.4 MiB):

<video controls>
    <source src="/static/vessel_stream_trees_demo.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

Tyler put the gang vocal track on solo where he was like "__HELLO__ e-yeah
a-yeah a-yeah hello hello hELLO". It was cringe af but the song was
incomplete without it.

And I, a musically illiterate engineering student, have one more reason to
justify my own piece of carefully mixed cringe.