My sound engineer buddy Casey heard my original cover of I’m On Fire and offered to “get this song sounding real good.” So I handed him my original stems and waited to hear what he could do.

My song did need a remaster from a pro. I had been focused mostly on performing the song and just wanted to get it out the door, so I kind of rushed the final master.

While I was happy to have sang my first song and enjoyed the result, I had made a few beginner’s mistakes in the recording and the final mix.

• I had wanted a Johnny Cash “live at Folsom” type of sound, but ended up with an exaggerated echo.

• I had recorded the vocals with a cheap guitar adapter and ended up with a lot of noise and low volume.

• I had mixed everything with headphones and forgot to check the final mix on speakers, where most people would be listing to it most of the time.

Casey was looking for a challenge and jumped on it. He cleaned everything up, especially the vocals, which he somehow salvaged. He insisted that I sound just like Johnny Cash. I’m not so sure, but I’ll take the compliment.

He let the instruments breath more and gave the drums some nice crunch.

So here’s the Casey remaster. You can also find it on SoundCloud and Spotify.

And my original “echo deluxe” master.

What do you think?

Casey is happy to cleanup any audio, including music or podcasts, so feel free to reach out to him. I believe he’ll even do the first job for a tip.