Herewith my latest original for your bashing consideration. It’s called Love Songs Left, and it is the first love song I’ve ever written. (As you’ll see from the lyrics, it’s also almost certainly the last.) It is a slow-dance rock ballad. The spark for this one arose out of a conversation with my wife, talking about how so much songwriting ground has been so heavily traversed already… which made the light bulb go off for me.
I am delighted to have our very own @Jonathan on keyboards on this track. I asked him to pitch in with a Hammond B3 track, and he very graciously and generously responded with not just the B3 but also piano. Jonathan has contributed keys to two previous originals of mine, and in both cases, his additions absolutely made the songs. The same is true here. His additions take this tune to the next level, for sure. Thank you Jonathan!! Next time you’re in Houston, it’s the lunar lab/moon rock tour dude!
The rest of the lineup in addition to the keys includes two acoustic guitar tracks, one on the Martin and the other with the highstrung/Nashville guitar; two tracks of electric rhythm guitar; a lead guitar (all electrics used the P90 Les Paul); P-bass; MIDI drums w/AD2; and vocals. My wife helped me do some harmony bgv for the choruses.
Thanks for listening!
Edit: V2 from first round of comments:
The Edit Strikes Back: V3. Major revision, retracked vox, re-treated rhythm guitars.
Return of the Edit: Here is V4 with a dialed-back treatment on the rhythm guitar and replacing Izotope reverb on vox.
I thought you did a great job on the production. It sounds pro to me. Interesting concept - this approach that seems almost indirect. I’m referring to how the singer addresses his love interest.
Edit: It still doesn’t work when I try to upload-- see the OP, I messed up the first time and uploaded a file that I’d forgotten to trim off the dead air from, and when I tried to upload the fixed version (which is even SMALLER) it still gives me the “limit is 30 megs” error. Help!
Lead vocal is a little one dimensional. It doesnt really pick up any into the chorus.
if you listen to V1-chorus-V2…there is no real dynamic change. Needs a little soul or vocal distortion or some sort of dynamic thrown in somewhere
Technically, from a vocal standpoint, id say you are singing mostly “on the cords”. (way back in the throat etc). To get some varied sound you probably need to try singing more “in the mask” (resonating up behind the nose and/or up on the hard and soft palate or somewhere up higher in the head besides the lower throat)
The BGV are pretty indistinct. Im guessing its partially because its in a similar tone to the lead vocal and also the lead vocal seems pretty hot.
Other than that, the instrument tracks etc sound good.
Cool-- thanks JJ! I’m the furthest thing from an accomplished singer, so this kind of advice is really useful!
Yes, the bgv are a little hard to pick out, there are a lot of things competing for a similar frequency range. I will pay attention to that in subsequent revisions…
When you have a message editor open, all you have to do is drag and drop the file into the box. Just that easy (so long as the filesize thing isn’t still messed up). You can also click the “upload” icon (the seventh one from the left, beside the “</>” [edit: the forum won’t display the less-than, slash, greater-than combo because it thinks it’s a command] icon) and browse to a music file, image, or what have you and embed that way. Cool!
No problem bud! I still have a setting to change directly on the server, but it will require a restart and I hated the idea of restarting when we have a lot of new folks and traffic. I’ll find a good time ASAP
In the meantime, what I did was… when you upload a file, one of the options says “from the web” and I pasted your link into there and it automatically included the embedded player. Works slick AND reduces how much storage we are using.
Oh, that is very slick indeed! And yeah, no way you want to restart the server on a Friday night with a whole bunch of folks browsing around. Thanks again for being so immediately responsive!! I’ll keep that tactic in mind for future reference.
I’m the first to admit that my vocals are the weakest link in this tune-- and in all my tunes! I am not a good singer and I know that all too well. We’ll see what other inputs I get, but if this ends up the consensus then I’ll re-track the vox and try to bring some more life to it. I can only do so much however, with my highly limited ability. (Fortunately my wife loves it, but of course she is heavily biased!)
Neither Mark Knopfler nor Bob Dylan have a good voice. Lyrics were good. Performance pleasant. And you’ve never commented in my posts. As for the mix, as someone said backing vocals were not really cutting through as they should have. Did not want to comment on the mix before since im on a laptop. 7/10
Thank you sir! I saw your post earlier today with your new rap number, but I have to say-- hip hop/rap is my absolute LEAST favorite genre… no, that’s being too polite. I hate it, I really do. No offense! But hip hop just sets my teeth on edge. I recognize that the poetry of the lyrics is art, no question about it, but I just can’t listen to it. So my apologies, but I won’t be evaluating anyone’s hip-hop stuff…
I promise I will give you good-faith reviews of almost any other style you might post though! (except metal or opera)
I don’t know that the vocal is “bland” in terms of performance. I mean, you may be able to get some more emotion into it if you do some more takes, but I’m hearing is that it is bland in terms of how “polished” it sounds in comparison to the instruments. I sits in a drier place than everything else. Maybe a touch more reverb would help or a bit of a slap delay. The reverb/delay would help it settle into the space that everything else is in.
I’m really liking this one overall!
Wow, Bryan, guess what? The very last adjustment I made before posting was to reduce the verb on my vocals, thinking it was too much! Looks like I overdid it!
singing is just like mixing…just takes a little practice. 'i am not a good singer" is only a temporary state. people get better by gradual improvement.
Essentially if you can goof off and sing BeeGees stuff, you can learn to take your current voice and work to connect it up to the BeeGees area. Then of course you take that BeeGees falsetto and strengthen it until it becomes a legit “head voice”
