Hide and Seek

One thing I am always working on is covering songs and making them my own. Each song is different in my approach.
My favourite song to sing when I am working at the piano is 'Hide and Seek' by Imogen Heap because it has a large range and it's easy to play but effective. I love this song so much because of its lyrics, its versatility and its passion. My version is quite different to the original Imogen Heap track. David Saposa said that ‘The track consists of nothing but a Vocoder and her voice singing stuff about crop circles and sewing machines. It's gorgeous, it's impressive, it's grandiose, and it's barely there at all-- just Heap's voice darting and divebombing, making itself scarce, disappearing into itself.’
I wanted to really change this by adding in a piano line. I kept the bare simplicity of the chorus and added volume to the verses in the same way the track does. I wanted to use one technique that Imogen displays in her song, where her higher notes are breathy and almost not 'sung'. This was something I worked on for a while. I took a practically a capella song and made it into a performance piece rather than a track. Saying that, I would love to use some of Imogen Heap’s ideas in terms of writing harmonies for group work. I love the overlapping lines and clashing harmonies.
David Raposa (2005). Imogen Heap Speak For Yourself. Pitchfork [online]. 31st October 2005. Available from: . [Accessed 01/10/2014].
 Another song I love to sing is Man In The Mirror. I usually use the James Morrison cover of the Michael Jackson song. The reason I use this version is because I have never heard Morrison's cover, and wanted to use his track in my own way. I sang this last year as part of my solo performance, and I hope that I have improved on it in this recent video. I think it is important to make a cover song your own. I needed to put some of my own personality and voice into this song, and not listening to Morrison's cover helped me to do this. I like to sing turns and twists, and also change between singing in my head and chest voice. I changed a lot of the melody lines, to make the song more relaxed to suit the acoustic backing. I'm not saying this version is perfect, or better than anyone else's, but it is mine.