I’m trying to decide what to do with this girl’s voice. The piano loop is a placeholder for now. I’m debating whether to scoop more out the mids and brighten it up like “1000 years” or to preserve its natural dark and mellow qualities…used “You’re Here” by Francesca Battistelli as a reference.
Chain is Blue Bottle -> Blue Robbie -> EQ -> C6 (single band controlling 100-400 hz) -> R De-Esser ->1073 (with 3.2khz boosted) -> UAD LA-2.
Parallel to Bricasti, Devil Loc, H-Delay, MicroShift.
Sounds sweet as is ,I vote for mellow, but that could change with the arrangement. Big arrangement might need it brighter.
“You’re Here” sounds more close miced, I like this better.
Really a nice voice. I would rather hear the piano slightly lower and maybe a little sustained change one in awhile. As far as the EQ, I only have cans here. In the cans it sound that it lack a little bottom??
sincerely
Paul
The piano was just a placeholder 
I need to hear this on my setup. I’m super torn. My personal preference is to leave it fairly “warm”, but only because I don’t generally care for those kinds of vocals done super airy. I think that gets so overdone. Especially in this genre. I like a more intimate/real sounding vocal when it comes to this style.
She has a nice voice! I like that she doesn’t sing in that upper nasely range that so many do in contemporary Christian music. Kudos for that!
It doesn’t sound like it needs brightness. I like the fullness in the voice, though my opinion could might change with a different piano part.
Tell me if you think this (above) is a good middle ground…Since I posted that last response, I was kind of eyeballing this earlier as a happy medium.
A lot of the Christian stuff (that comes out of white churches) is too breathy also…to the point where the bulkiness of tone starts to get compromised. A large amount of stuff coming out of black churches is the opposite, but seems to be really shouty and unrefined. The overall technique sort of parallels soul/RnB stuff, but mechanically, its not even close. Its just second rate production.
I’m gonna put in a different piano loop, and pull out 1073 3k boost on the neve clone.
Here we go. Now boosting 4.8k instead of 3.2k on the Neve, and inserted the UAD distressor infront of it. I swapped the XLN Addictive Piano out for Synthogy Ivory II. Lastly, I swapped the SoundToys Devil Loc and replaced with the Waves 1 knob distortion driver. There’s also a L1 on the 2 bus.
Now instead of the 1073 doing the major tone shaping with the 3.2k boost, the Waves Driver is doing the heavy lifting. Warming things up lol.
The second version does sound warmer and a bit more compressed. Both versions sound good to me but I think I prefer the latest version. Once that piano has been replaced with something better, you’ll have a really nice track. Good job, man!
I like the latest one. Sounds as smooth as soy sauce, good job brosky! For Christian music I’m sure the goal is to create a vibe like there’s a connection to the Lord. That intimacy would seem to lend itself well to a warm presentation. I wouldn’t know from experience, I prefer blasphemy.
The audio quality all sounds very good. The only advice I have for you is to be less rude to others.
Unlike the secular music industry, where everyone wants to have a new and different sound, I think Christian music like this tends to always want to copy everyone else as much as possible. So I think it comes down to what is the goal of this song? Is it to sound exactly the same or to be different. The song style already seems to copy all the others in they lyrics and the overall singing style. I think the expectation of most Christian listeners is for the exact copy sound. So to me you let the goal of the song, to sound the same or sound different, lead the direction of the sound. If it’s to sell records, then you copy. If it’s to just be a musician, then go with more of the first track sound.
Aaron, I’ll be a little more gentle with the wording when speaking to you in the future if you prefer. Point taken, no problem.
In all fairness, I nothing stated on that last critique intended as a personal insult toward you, your equipment, or your work ethic, or your ideas etc… Everything I said was completely my opinion and an honest attempt to communicate what I was hearing in regard to the two specific tracks you asked for feedback on. I’ll be a bit more tactful… you’re certainly not the first person who’s asked this of me, I’ll hear you and am happy to oblige.
Thanks for the thoughts James. I agree with you 100%…the church has been copying music off mainstream culture for a steady 2000 years now, I don’t think this is going to change. And no one thought this song (which is over 100 years old) was gonna bring anything new to the table. I was more or less just experimenting with the UAD 1073 and the Distressor. Basically trying out different saturation. I had that vocal sample sitting around and started toying with it. So no real intent to do anything with the track.
I appreciate your reply. I realize this forum isn’t called “Shower Me With Compliments”. I much prefer constructive criticism, as opposed to soul-crushing everything-sounds-worse-than-dog-poop comments; even if that is your honest opinion. Teach others HOW to sound better, which you might be doing with others. I’m pretty new to this particular forum, though I spent years on recording review dot com. Sometimes the comments were less than diplomatic on that forum, though I did learn things at times.
I am new to this forum as well. I have been messing with home recording for about 15 years. I have been on quite a few sites over that time period, from Indaba Music to song writers forums and singers forums. I have collaborated with people for a few years on Indaba Music around the world as that was kind of the nature of the site. For the most part people seem to stay somewhat clear of politics, religion and were usually respectful with constructive feedback. I think when you always keep in mind that not everyone feels and believes what you do and just stick to music it allows for others to feel more comfortable with participation on the site. I think what I have noticed about online sites of this nature is that the larger the number of people there are on the site interacting, the more people seem to have respect. When the number is smaller, such as this site, it seems like there becomes a tendency to be more of a click and a person can either feel welcome or not welcome based on where they are seeing and reading. I like it to walking into a large stadium filled with lots of people vs walking into a small party at a home where you don’t know anyone. You are much more self aware and nervous when the number of people is small. So I think it all comes down to the dynamics of what happens when you get a few people together and how they all feed off of each other. I do know that the more respect that is shown to others, the more conducive it is to positive and productive interaction and that usually leads to a site expanding in others joining. If a site is just the same few people interacting all the time, I find that there is usually a pack mentality going on and no one wants to bother getting on there. I like this site myself and I find it more helpful than any other for help with recording specifics. I look forward to learning more as I follow along the threads.
Religion is an important part of my life. I figure you aren’t too adverse to that subject with the content on this thread. I save that topic for private messages, if the conversation has much depth. I started with multi-track recording in 1984 with a 4 track cassette recorder. It’s come a long way since then obviously since things went digital. I played in several bands in the 80’s (played at Gazzarri’s in Hollywood; tons of world famous bands have played there), and then got fed up with people flaking out. It’s fun when people stick with it. For the most part I’ve been a one man band home studio project for over 30 years. Never heard of Indaba; I snooped around their website today.
Not at all sir. I’ve practically built my entire audio career off church broadcasting, Christian record labels, publishing companies, several colleges, and religious TV programming. Also do post audio work for a number of very well known authors, pastors, church orchestras.
I did my piano degree at Wheaton and went to bible college there as well. Tried being a pastor and I sucked at it. Wasn’t for me.
You can talk about that stuff openly here. Or p.m. anytime if you want. Many of the regulars on here are atheists, and we’ve had some interesting discussions about theology, religion in politics, philosophy and faith on here in the past. Its been interesting, but I’ve felt this group has been quite respectful and civil around that type of discussion.
Again, sorry that my last critique came off as brash and unnecessarily critical. I really didn’t mean for that to be offensive 
Jonathan,
So you are making a living in the music-related biz? I’m just doing music as a hobby. Even though I have had 20 songs get radio play between 3 different radio stations (Radio BBC; KROQ: was pretty much the only alternative rock station in Los Angeles for decades, now there are others; and a radio station at the Southern tip of Texas), I haven’t made a penny with my original music. In my best band (circa 1984), we played 95% covers, and I made a grand total of about $500. Factor in my driving expenses, I don’t even know if I broke even. In my second best (all covers) band (circa 1983), I probably made a grand total of $10. We pretty much always played for free at parties, and a few club gigs. I took piano lessons for 5 years, but I don’t think I have played my real piano in over a year. I sent you a test private message a few minutes ago to see if it even works right.