Everything but the Girl

This song was written, produced, performed and recorded by myself, Dujon Walker. It was recorded at my home studio, which I call ‘Studio DHB’, in Toronto. It was then mixed by Darius Szczepaniak, and mastered by Steve Benford at Rouge Valley Studio, also in Toronto.

The song was created in the summer of 2009, while I was working on what was going to be my first official album. As I was going through my collection of old beats and half-finished songs to see if there was anything album-worthy, I came across a beat I made a couple years before. I felt that it had some potential if only I changed a few things and worked on it a bit more. Using my MPC1000, a MIDI controller, a few soft-synth plug-ins and Cubase SX 3, I tinkered with the beat for hours. By the next day, it turned into a completely new beat, which really liked, and inspired me to write lyrics to it right away. After I spent a couple days penning the words, I rented a Neumann microphone and started recording.

The way I record when I’m by myself is to set Cubase to loop infinitely while I recite the lyrics, keeping only the last take. So I would press record, run in the booth, and record a vocal part over and over again until I’m satisfied with my performance. Cubase also saves all the previous takes so I would usually cut and paste parts from previous takes if I’m still not 100% satisfied with the last one. Once the song was recorded, I immediately called up a former college professor of mine, Darius Szczepaniak, to mix it. Darius is a platinum award winning producer and engineer, who’s worked with the likes of Sum 41, Aaron Carter, Kardinal Offishall, and many more. Needless to say, working with Darius was not cheap. Because of that, I told him that I would mix the majority of the album myself and I only needed him to mix the songs that would be released as singles, and this was one of them. And with that, I took the session to Rouge Valley Studio to be mixed on a big, beautiful SSL mixing board with tons of shiny outboard gear. It was mastered a few days later by Steve Benford, another former college professor of mine. Like Darius, Steve is also a world class engineer who’s worked with many artists from major labels. On June 22^nd, 2009, the song was released to radio through AM to FM Promotions to be played on all major radio stations across Canada. It was simultaneously released worldwide on iTunes and all other major online retailers through Tunecore.

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Listen to the song on YouTube

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