When Eva Cassidy’s version of Over The Rainbow was released it received huge acclaim. It was made even more poignant by the fact that Eva had died at the age of 32 and her music was only widely recognised after her death.
Although Eva performed covers of existing songs she brought them to life again with fresh guitar arrangements and a pitch-perfect voice.
My arrangement of Over The Rainbow follows Eva’s guitar style rather than her voice. It’s a bit of a mash-up between her version and Judy Garland’s. Eva’s singing is so soulful that it would be hard to replicate that on guitar. The combination of her guitar accompaniment and Judy’s simple melody seems to be the perfect solution.
Recording the “Over The Rainbow” Video
If you’re interested in the recording process, the microphone is a Rode NT4 stereo condenser which picks up sound from both the fretboard and the soundhole. The two mono tracks it produces can then be mixed together. It was recorded at home in my office which doesn’t have any special sound proofing. The microphone is uni-directional which means it only picks up the sound directly in front of it. This minimises any outside noise leeching into the recording.
The mic is plugged into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 audio interface, and mixed in Cakewalk Sonar X3 with a little reverb.
A piece of black cloth was used as the backdrop. A couple of Neewar CN-160 LED lamps were used to light up the guitar.
The video was recorded with an old Sony HDR-SR1 camcorder and edited using Magix Video Pro 7, with the contrast adjusted to create the completely black background.
Other Guitar Videos
“Walking In The Air” by Howard Blake (also called The Snowman)
“Feelings” by Albert Morris
“All of Me” by John Legend
“Jingle Bells” Traditional Christmas jollity