My Live Stream: Hard Habit To Break (Chicago Cover)

Back in 2016,  I went through a phase of starting to record songs, but never finishing them. About a month ago, I pulled a couple of Logic Pro X projects out of the vault and decided to finish them up on my YouTube live stream. First, I started with a Journey cover song, then I moved over to finishing up a cover of a Chicago cover song: Hard Habit To Break. 

This song originally appeared on the album Chicago 17 back in 1984, and was produced by David Foster. It was written by Steve Kipner and John Parker. It was major hit for the band. It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was played in heavy rotation on both radio and MTV. It featured dual lead vocals between Peter Cetera and Bill Champlin. 

Skipping ahead to 2016, I decided to record a cover of this song because I'd been doing a vocal impression of Peter Cetera, mostly for fun, since I was about 16 years old. I wanted to see how well I could replicate the vocals in Logic Pro X. I recorded a quick demo of the first verse and chorus with MIDI drums, synth bass, and real guitar (no guitar samples for me!), and decided to record the vocals according to how David Foster allegedly recorded them in 1984: triple-tracking them. I sang Peter's lead part three times on separate tracks, panned one hard-left, one hard-right, and one dead-center. For Bill's part, I recorded it twice, and panned one slight-left; the other slight-right. I ended up bathing the whole thing in too much reverb, posted a clip of it on SoundCloud, and then promptly forgot about it for 10 years.

This path month, I decided to load the Logic Pro X session of the session on YouTube, and show everybody how I recorded it. Instinctively, I found myself fiddling with the levels, plugins, EQ, etc. 10 years away from the file helped me see and hear what needed to be improved, or fixed, altogether. Eventually, I felt obligated to finish the song, so I decided to flesh out the rest of the instrumental arrangement. This is where I am, now.

If you'd like to see and hear what I've done so far, here is a link to the live stream: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPoV9kZK4rnA&si=xdXbQFidLBjAFztg