While the more famous versions of this song are the original from Leonard Cohen and the more pretentious Jeff Buckley cover, I most enjoy Bon Jovi's cover. This is my reinterpretation of that version.

Vocals

I went with a conservative Am key to be able to get a nasal mixed voice that doesn't crack into head voice. I also went for a more bluesy tone guided by the Jersey accent of Bon Jovi. I lost a bit of breath towards the end but at least the improvised outro sounds decent.

Guitar

A basic fingerstyle arpeggio is constant during the song. It was a good workout because I had to keep a convincing rhythm and apply relaxed pressure on the strings.

Recording and mixing

The foam cover of the microphone together with the breath control VST plugin helped eliminate the noticeable microphone noises that were in my first live recording (Mumford and Sons - Hurt (live) - v1.0). This time I had wireless in-ear monitors and I could move around without bumping into cables.

I still didn't learn neither the lyrics nor the chords for the song but instead projected them onto the wall. So, compared to Hurt, at least I was staring forward in a more convincing way. I did notice that keeping my mouth open does not account for a pleasant stage presence - to be worked on.

The timing of these live recordings is not guided by anything so multiple takes usually aren't time aligned. This gives me limited options to comp between multiple takes. This is basically the second take and, because I hit some dead strings, I had to comp a part of the outro arpeggio with a similar sequence from the same take.

Video recording

It was the first time I had a two camera feed trying to capture the performance from different angles, just to make it more engaging. Because the two cameras and their lenses are different, I had to do a bit of color correction to make the video streams look similar. I forgot to record in 4k which prevented me to play with close-up shots because I didn't have the resolution to do a lossless zoom in.