Here’s my latest production, a cover of a tune by the great Lucinda Williams called Blue. In this piece I have my beloved niece Amy on lead vocals, which she contributed during a recent visit. So, so much fun to record this together! We have been playing and singing together since she was a little girl, so this is a special treat. There is one more after this that we collaborated on, so stay tuned for that.
Martin dreadnought & highstrung acoustic guitars, semihollow electric with a tremolo thang workin, bass, some synth strings in the choruses, and vocals. Thanks for listening!
V2 finally on tap after some delay, addressing the helpful input on V1:
Sounds great! I love the way the guitars interact with the bass. Your niece’s voice reminds me of Stevie Nicks’. Awesome. I think the vocals are a bit overpowering during the chorus, with the harmony added. And maybe just a touch overpowering throughout the whole song, but it isn’t much. The main vocal is a bit harsh at times. The instrumental is so pretty. Great job!
Very nice Guitar sounds perfect. love her voice with that slight rasp. Very relaxed. I don’t know the song, so this a treat. Check your harmony pitch from 1:19 on. The step down is off a little and then you nail it each time. Not much really. I like the vocals present, but they might be only slightly hot. On the intro you play the same thing twice, don’t know if that is necessary unless maybe you introduced something else. To me, the mix was great. You need to get her on to some original stuff now.
Hey Dave,
Its a little uncanny how often you seem to like the same music as I do. Lucinda is certainly is great, and Blue is maybe one of my favourites. But I must say your cover’s not bad at all! Your nieces voice doesn’t quite sound like she drinks a bottle of whiskey each day (I don’t know if Lucinda does but it sounds like it ), Your niece has a warm voice with a nice rough edge to it. You sound good together in the chorus but like Paul says: check for those false notes (your niece I think) in both choruses. It’s not much and maybe you can fix it in the mix with some pitch correction. And I agree with Christine that her vocal could be just a bit less harsh in places. Maybe a dynamic eq? Not sure what frequency - maybe around 1- 2 K?. I suspect the vocal will sit better in the mix then as well.
I love the tremolo in the electric guitar: pretty close to the original.
So well done Dave. It’s worth doing just a bit more tweaking to make it even better.
Hi Dave - sounding really sweet. The instrumental part sounds great, and the vocal performances are good too. I agree with Paul’s comments on the harmonies - just a few little stray notes to sweeten up there…
The biggest thing I hear is that your niece has some prominent resonances in here voice that are really jumping out and causing some harshness. I experimented with the track using an MB compressor, and I think 630hz, 1200hz and around 5200hz are roughly the centres of the resonances.
The problem is, because they are pitched resonances, their values vary depending on the note being sung. Something like Surfer EQ might help in this situation. I would definitely recommend trying to solve it at the track level, though.
Thanks for your clarification . This is what I meant but couldn’t get any further than calling it “harshness”. Interesting though: I understand these resonant notes have an effect on more frequencies. Even or uneven harmonics? So you’re saying a normal dynamic EQ won’t fix it because the frequency shifts? I got a free version of surfer EQ (one of many nice presents from Focusrite for their hardware owners), but haven’t really sat down to try it. Do you use it often or is it just for special cases like this?
I wouldn’t disagree Andrew, but some of the problems are due to the vocals being too high in the mix IMO.
They are uncomfortably loud, if they were dropped, some of the resonance would be automatically be at a more acceptable level.
Sorry Dave, but I think the most of the dodgy harmonies are coming from you. You could slap on an auto tuner turned up to 11 to give you an idea of where your notes are out, and maybe even record again while singing along to the autotuned version with the lead vocal muted.
That was beautiful! Listening on headphones at the moment, I’ll come back later and have another listen, the only thing I could suggest is that I’d love to hear the strings come up at the end of the song.
Great work, lovely guitars and wonderful vocals.
Hey folks, at long last I got some studio time to revise this tune based on the very helpful comments.
Following the advice of Cristina, Evert, Andrew, Adrian, and Paul, I reduced levels and applied some dynamic EQ on Amy’s vox, and disabled the saturation module I had engaged within Nectar, which is what I typically use for vocal processing these days. (The dyn EQ is next in the chain after Nectar btw.) I also tuned my vox, which was in fact flat in several spots (yay for Melodyne!) and reduced its level. Taken together I’m much happier with how the vocals sound now. Also tweaked the levels on the acoustic guitars a bit after those adjustments.
I also automated the strings so that they drift up by a db after the vocals end and help make the outro a bit more full, per Damian’s suggestion, and added a touch of width to the tremolo guitar per Chick’s idea. I think both those suggestions made subtle but definite improvements too.
Looking forward to any comments on V2. Thanks again everyone!
), Your niece has a warm voice with a nice rough edge to it. You sound good together in the chorus but like Paul says: check for those false notes (your niece I think) in both choruses. It’s not much and maybe you can fix it in the mix with some pitch correction. And I agree with Christine that her vocal could be just a bit less harsh in places. Maybe a dynamic eq? Not sure what frequency - maybe around 1- 2 K?. I suspect the vocal will sit better in the mix then as well.
. This is what I meant but couldn’t get any further than calling it “harshness”. Interesting though: I understand these resonant notes have an effect on more frequencies. Even or uneven harmonics? So you’re saying a normal dynamic EQ won’t fix it because the frequency shifts? I got a free version of surfer EQ (one of many nice presents from Focusrite for their hardware owners), but haven’t really sat down to try it. Do you use it often or is it just for special cases like this?