Julie,
It's great to see and hear your efforts. I listened through all your tracks. I would have to say "My Own" is the one I like best, as far as music production is concerned. I owned my own label at one point and have been featured on a couple others as a guest artist. I did the entire productions, wrote all the music and recorded it, and worked with a number of artists recording and processing their vocals. I'm not a singer myself, but have paid for vocal training for a few artists, and have had to choose the right teachers for this kind of thing. I do have some suggestions for you, and they're to help you move forward to being more accomplished in what you have as a musical gift.
First, I would feel free to do pitch and timing adjustments on your vocals in the studio in post processing. Many artists have that done in the recording studio. Comparing Cher from a recording versus her performing live is quite noticeable. She said in the concert I went to that she feels she's not that good, and really, her vocals when done live are not always on time or on pitch, so one can get the idea her vocal recordings are tweaked a fair bit. Doing the small tweaks to the vocals is worth it in the long run. It's easy to see where the timing should be when viewing the wave on a waveform monitor, where the first vowel in each word is where the beat lands, and it's usually a fairly fat wave easily visible. Just moving the timing of one word a hundredth of a second can make a huge difference and make it sound really tight, if that is what you desire.
Second, I would suggest you watch your energy level when moving from one section to another. I could hear spots in your songs where your vocal presence varied too much the wrong way, like you'd done a section, then did another take for a different verse, bridge or chorus. That's what makes a singer stand out is to be able to have a consistent energy level throughout the song. If it's high energy, it stays high for the part it's appropriate for, while if it goes quiet, it stays that way. And of course songs vary alot - you might have a more peaceful spot, then punch it with a strong section like a chorus. Maintaining that flow throughout a song in a recording studio can be a challenge. Sometimes it takes listening through the vocals leading up to capture that right amount of energy for another take on a subsequent spot. it can sometimes be just too hard to record a whole song front to back and have it perfect the whole time - it's much easier to do it in pieces.
The music itself is pretty good, although not my favorite genre.
I do wish you all the best and hope to hear more from you in the future!
Hugs,
Ann
June 2, 2009 12:21 PM BST
Your reply is much appreciated. Thanks for listening. :-) "Worth" is my latest work... you may notice as the tracks go down the list the production gets crappier and crappier lol.. as they get older. It's basically me getting better and better at mixing stuff.. and discovering a mixer with a USB port! woo.. so I can import my tracks directly to the pc and not have to mess with burning CD's
As for the vocals.. what makes you assume it was me? I don't credit myself with them on the site. I have an alias for the vocals lol. But yeah its me... anyways... yeah the levels are all over the place because I don't have the benefit of condensor mics or compressors. I'm using crappy uni directional Radio Shack mics. So one little breath harder.. or even just certain vowels will be abruptly louder. You can't imagine the hundreds of edits I DID do to get it sounding THAT good lol.
I didn't do any drops ins as one might assume. I did them all in one straight shot ususally. The volume on those mics is just really that wildly all over the place.. if I lean forward like... literally an inch closer to the mic... the level can spike.
As for visually cuing them up.. I do the best I can with that however the wave looks something like this
~~~~~~~---------~~~~~~~~ really weak signal.. and when I boost it... you'll see... the ground noise is almost as loud as the signal lol... so its actually pretty hard to decipher where the sylable starts lol... and then I gotta spend like.. an hour... manually and visually on the wave forms... have the signal drop out... after a vocal phrase... and drop back in right before it starts again... to cut back on unnessesary background noise during any space where the vocals cease. The solution to all this complaining would be better mics I know..... but thats money I simply don't have. :-(
The places I'm off pitch are so minor... and yet so very numerous I know... that I decided not to spend another week mixing them lol As far as the timing being off? The older ones.. its very peculiar the way I sourced my tracks... I had no way to get stuff to the computer other then... sourcing from my mixer into a standalone CD burner on my stereo (burning each track one at a time playing it in real time)... and then ripping those tracks onto the computer... where my crappy CD ROM drive proceeded to cause numerous skips which completely threw off the timing. So it would take a whole crap load of edits just to get everything remotely sounding in sync lol I've yet to have a pc that didnt sound like total crap when I recorded directly to it. I'd need a preamp for that business.. again money I don't have. :-\
So essentially I can pretty much without hesitation do the exact opposite of Cher and blame my shortcomings ON my technology. lol Except for my lack of perfect pitch.
Really I see myself as a guitar player and song writer and I want to get a vocalist anyway. I'm happy to hear that seems to be your only complaint. :-) I'd rather not dillute the music genepool by lying and pretending I can sing better then I really can. If you have advice on how to actually sing better I'd love to hear it :-) But I kind of have a moral principle against using pitch correcting software. I'd sooner just .. awkowledge I suck and bow out. lol
To me.. little mistakes and bits are what made the older records charming... think back to alot of beatle records... where youd hear them flub a line or two or someone would sing the wrong backing vocal... sure didnt hurt their success lol.. but nowadays people with their technology.... feel the need to make everything perfect...
This site essentially serves as a Demo page for potential vocalists and other musicians to check out my songwriting and my instrumental abilities. I'm really hoping someone will come along and be like "hey I can sing that for ya if you want" hehe
And "UnderDig" is a hobby band with my friends who really don't give two craps about it lol.. so I am still looking for additional people.
Once again thank you for your input. I love discussing this stuff with people. :-) I hope I dont seem like too much of a snob. Trust me I have like...a very low opinion of myself. X-) I'm shocked to hell anybody likes my stuff.
