Payphone: Behind the Scenes of Cerulean Jade's latest Cover Song

Payphones in Santa Barbara

On June 19, a month ago, I promised the "Payphone" cover Steven and I was working on would be released that week, but it wasn't until this week we finally got it up. 

When I first found out about the song, I was browsing the Billboard Music website, checking out new songs for cover ideas.  The clean, rap version of Maroon 5's "Payphone" was doing very well, and I instantly fell in love with it and convinced Steven we needed to do this song.  Everything was going well with the Steven's arrangement and recording went smoothly, so on June 22 I went to bed while Steven was mastering the song.  

That morning he uploaded the song privately on Youtube, I gave it a listen, and knew there was no way we could make that version public.  The problem?  The vocals were so loud that the arrangement was dwarfed.  It was impossible to hear what made the music unique.  Unfortunately I didn't know anything about mastering to help, and Steven was stressed, having stayed up all night, and having obligations to his friends wedding (he was a groomsman) that's where his mind was, and needed to be.  But that night Steven was so warn out and stressed that he got really sick.  It was a very low point for both of us, and we needed to distance ourselves from the song and figure things out.  A break was needed.  

My Grandpa had suffered a heart-attack, he's doing better now, but my Mom was in California helping him, and since she didn't have a car to get back to Utah, Steven and I drove down to help her out.  We spent that week providing a service to both my Mom and Grandfather.  

When we got back we were ready to tackle the project again, but we still were having a hard time, and I was at a loss to how I could help.  Then earlier this week Steven was ready to throw in the towel and pay one of his friends to master the song.  In my gut I knew we couldn't do that, and Mom and I went down again to listen to the latest stage of the master.  Between the three of us we took the song bit by bit, and offered comments "Can you turn the voice down?"  "That instrument, yeah that one, it's too loud" "You're going to turn that instrument up?  Oh wait, that's a little muddy" "Make the voice flat" "Up the piano, it might balance the sound" etc.  By the end, and after trying the song on many players, we were finally happy with the finished product, and knew it was something we could all be proud of.

Originally the video was going to be just Steven and I singing, the studio shot with us behind the mike, and that was it.  Nothing more.  But if you've seen the video you know that's not what we ended up with.  A couple mornings ago I realized how cool it would be to show the music in action with screen shots, so Steven set out to figure out the best way to achieve that.  And then he decided it would be fun to do behind the scenes video as well.  This worried me, because of time, but we decided that taking a couple more days was worth it.  We dug up some video we taped while working on the song, and then shot new video with us outside and next to the piano.  Overall I loved the affect, and the added material makes for a video that's more fun to watch.    

This was such a learning curve!  But I'm glad for it.  The video is better then it would have been a month ago.  And I learned a lot too.  I may not know how to master, but I can learn, and it's a skill I can, and should, develop.  Technology scares me.  I'm afraid of messing up, not learning the software properly, etc, but this fear is only holding me back.  There's a lot more I could be doing.  

Steven and I learned the most important lesson.  Never give up!  Never quit.  If you keep at it, you can solve the problems that are plaguing you.  

And we learned more about ourselves as artist and what we're capable of.  That knowledge is invaluable.   

If you haven't seen the video you can watch it by clicking on these words. 

Have a great day,

Sarah