1:st part of tune with William Blake lyrics

[jappe]

Hi all,

I would be happy to receive any feedback on this first part of William Blake inspired music.
It's basically vocals+piano in this first slow part (more parts to follow)

http://phead.mu/s/dqK1YOay


I'm not a trained singer at all and I expect that to be quite obvious, even though I used Melodyne to fix some pitch errors. (Any recommendation for some good online singing training most welcome!)

Another disclaimer: I find myself trying to mix with headphones again, so please let me now if you hear any terrible headphone related or other flaws.

My workflow when working with this tune is:

1. Have a glass of wine nearby.
2. Read William Blakes "Broken Love" poem repeatedly.
3. Compose the chord sequence
4. Compose the vocal melody four bars at the time. Loop the bars and experiment with the melody until I find the best one.
5. Practice singing the vocals until I nail it several times in a row.
6. Start loop-recording the vocals for a four-bar sequence, and immediately fail in some funny way, even though I nailed it 5 times in a row before.
7. But no worries, take a sip of wine, and proceed recording.
8. Open the vocals in Comp Edit Mode and slice it up in smaller segments (like 1-2 words), and select the best take for each segment (I love Reasons Comp Edit Mode!)

The lyrics(parts of it) are from Broken Love by William Blake - in another sequence than the original.


MY Spectre around me night and dayLike a wild beast guards my way;My Emanation far withinWeeps incessantly for my sin.


‘He scents thy footsteps in the snowWheresoever thou dost go,       10Thro’ the wintry hail and rain.When wilt thou return again?

Dost thou not in pride and scornFill with tempests all my morn,And with jealousies and fears       15Fill my pleasant nights with tears?

‘Seven of my sweet loves thy knifeHas bereavèd of their life.Their marble tombs I built with tears,And with cold and shuddering fears.

[JNeffLind]

Hey man. I like your voice quite a bit. You're better than you think, or you've hidden it well with effects. I'm curious what your vocal effects chain was on this if you'd be willing to share. Sounds like there was some formant shifting and I'm wondering if that was in Melodyne. (I understand if you want to keep your secret recipe ) 

I also like the music quite a bit. The piano is nice but to me takes a backseat to your singing and the melody you applied to these haunting lyrics, which are both great. 

What's up with the end? That was sounding cool.

[jappe]

Thank's 

Melodyne actually introduce artifacts sometimes, and I've noticed one of the less unpleasant ones sounds a bit like subtle phasing.
This may be due to me not performing the analysis properly and/or the pitch correction not working so well if there's too big steps of correction/too much pitch slide.

Other than that the effects are:
A) until 01:36: vocal track with a very subtle amount of the default mixer Room+Delay 3/16.
B) 1:36-2:03:  vocal track with less subtle amount of the default mixer Plate+Echo+Delay 3/16 (lazy me using the defaults:-)
C) 2:03-2:30: Mixed track using A + track using B and then mixed in a third track with the original vocals (without pitch correction) blended in (using default mixer Plate+Room+Echo+Delay 3/16)

Hmm... I noticed I can hear the metronome when soloing the original vocals, my closed headphones must have leaked...I'd better run that track through Adobe Audition for some cleanup.

Regarding the piano, I will experiment with some variations of the intro and see if I can come up with something more interesting. (I feel it's a bit too simple)

About the end: well, it's actually only the end of part 1, meant to be glued together with part2. Hmm...your words about this inspired me to use this ending as ending of part 2; sounds better now, thank's:-)

[Last Alternative]

The autotune doesn't sound right because it's an obvious battle to sound natural but doesn't. The delay part is a bit much. I can't make out the lyrics. I know you wrote them down but they should still be easily heard. It wouldn't hurt to EQ the delay and spread it out. The music is nice. I think the piano is louder than the vocals though. No bueno.

[jappe]

The autotune doesn't sound right because it's an obvious battle to sound natural but doesn't. The delay part is a bit much. I can't make out the lyrics. I know you wrote them down but they should still be easily heard. It wouldn't hurt to EQ the delay and spread it out. The music is nice. I think the piano is louder than the vocals though. No bueno.

Thank's for the feedback!
I will refine the sloppy effects a bit and check the levels.

[JNeffLind]

Thanks for responding with the specifics. I don't know if I'm crazy, but I kind of like the effect that Melodyne left, the artifacts or whatever. I guess it'd only work as a creative choice on certain tracks, but I kind of like the way it sounds auto-tuney here. I look forward to hearing the second part.

[jappe]

Hello!

Just so we're talking about the same artifacts here? I marked those I hear with bold:

"My spectre around me night and day"

"weeps incessantly for my sin"

[JNeffLind]

Hello!

Just so we're talking about the same artifacts here? I marked those I hear with bold:

"My spectre around me night and day"

"weeps incessantly for my sin"

Yeah, it came through particularly on "my sin." Sounds kind of phasey or warbley. Like I said, it works for me, but others may think differently. Not sure what version of melodyne you're running, but on the best version you can adjust pitch, vibrato, and amplitude over time and any note that sounds off usually means that you just selected all and corrected to a certain level and it was too much for those particular phrase for whatever reason. So you can basically blanket apply the pitch correct and then go back to hunt and peck where it sounds off. I think the real pro way is to go from blob to blob individually adjusting each parameter as needed. 

By the way, I particularly like the part at about 2:10 where the synths come in, works as a nice counterpoint to the piano, and of course when you start rocking at 2:30 or so I get ready to jam and then...

[jappe]

@JNeffLind:
I've been working on part 2, but unfortunately with headphones from a hotel room on late evenings after work. So I really need to check it on monitors when I come home in the weekend.

I'm using Melodyne Studio 3.2.2
You're right about my pitch correction process! But I normally only select the notes in a segment of some bars and then double click to correct them all. It could actually be that some note was moved to far.
But after that I use to correct vibrato /glide note by note.
I know it's a bit tricky sometimes to make it properly analyze notes with gliding pitch/intonation. I'm sure there's tricks to do if I just RTFM!


I have actually only rather recently started to use Melodyne again after owning the license for years.

I have to tell about the Melodyne user support: This is the best support team I've ever experienced: When I tried to install it, the license checker said that I already had it on two (crashed, forgiven and forgotten) machines and I needed to release the license from those machines before I could use it.

I mailed the support team, late saturday at 11:54PM a Saturday.
21 seconds later I got the usual auto-response that they were going to take care of my request.
And 5 minutes 58 seconds later I got a mail from Jörg Hüttner @support that they had released my old license activations.
WTF!? Amazing:-D