Put in another fairly mammoth writing session, although a lot more fine-tuning work this time around, mostly on vocal ear candy and rhythm elements, as well as trying to clean up some of the transitions.
Biggest change this time through was a bpm bump from 148 to 151. Just felt like it was dragging a bit too much. 151 felt like the sweet spot.
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Good support of the vocals I think and the accompaniment is attractive. I like the filter sweep at the opening, could be more even. At :58 she’s doing a triplet thing you could do more with I think, maybe a vocal effect? Fills are cool. Less candy after 2:10, maybe didn’t want to overdue it? No vocal harmonies either, might be cool in the chorus, could be something cheesy even.
Only my own opinion of course!
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Sweet, I’ll take a look at that and see what I can figure out, it definitely needs to echo the ‘spinning’ line. A Leslie maybe?
Actually believe it or not there actually IS vocal harmonies through all of the choruses, but obviously they’re very low.
I felt part 2 of the chorus vocal needed some accompaniment, and had a specific melody in my head so I went and sung some myself them autotuned the hell out of them, including a pair of chipmunk doubles. Not ideal, and would have been nice to have a female voice doing the backing, but it is what it is.
Now that’s ‘cheesy’ haha.
You think they need to come up?
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Ok I hear that, it does add some color. Maybe you could clone her track and detune it, time shift it, verb or whatever, just something to kind of create an alternate reality at certain points?
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Wasn’t digging the whimsical nature of the portamento synths in both the intro and the bridge, they didn’t fit the vibe of the vocals so they’re gone.
Replaced the old intro with a bit of vocal trickery, but in a similar vein to the original intro, and completely rewrote the bridge. It’s a lot darker now with a more synthwave bordering on cyberpunk feel, and i like it a 100X better.
Starting to slowly come together.
Didn’t get a chance to play around with your vocal melody ideas @ingolee but I’ll definitely try some things out when i jump back into the session for sure 
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I’m not calling this one ‘finished’, in fact there’s every possibility I’m going to do some minor revisions to the lyrics and redo vocals but from a writing perspective, any changes or additions made at this point would be fairly subtle, so this will be the last time I post another version until final mix and master.
Also wrote in a new 8 bar outro to try and give some ‘finality’ to the track and it’s actually starting to feel at lot more like a single cohesive entity now.
Really happy with the progression.
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All I can say is wow. You have some chops that most of us so called song writers do not. My ultimate wish for making songs would be…someone writes lyrics and tells me the genre…I lay down the tracks with guitars and vocals…I pass it on to someone like you…they add layers and import help…ultimately maybe hire a mastering engineer
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Very cool! You’ve added some vocal extras that work well to my ear and give the hook some special sauce. Harmonies are great. Bridge is haunting, outro with unaccompanied vocal puts a nice cap on it. A lot going on but your mix is good, you’ve got a winner IMHO. So now label shopping?
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Thanks for the encouraging words Paul. Yeah I think if i decided to go all the way with this one, I’d definitely outsource the mastering.
I’d actually hire a mix engineer too, but I’m not really feeling if it’s worth pouring anymore time and money into going any further to be honest. I’m just not sure if the track is strong enough, but I might just be fatigued after having listened to it 1000 times.
Thanks man.
You think it IS a winner, as I said above, I’m kinda having my doubts to be honest, but like I say, could just be fatigue.
I’ve been going back and forth with another songwriter from the States (she’s a touring member of Smashing Pumpkins) and we’ve been looking at ways to tighten things up, and one of her suggestions was to rework a few of the lyrics, which would obviously mean having to re hire the vocalist, as well as pay for a mix and master engineer.
I’m just not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze at this point. Will have to sit on it for a bit and see how i feel about it in a week or so.
Thanks for the input mate.
So after saying i was done uploading revisions, i listened to the track again this morning and was stunned by how goddam slooow it felt. Like really dragging, so I’ve made the executive decision to drastically increase the bpm from 151 to 157.
I’ll just give things a rest for now and come back with fresh ears and decide whether or not I’ll go any further.
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Ha ha, I like that. Lots of questions. I feel safe putting out musical opinions but business stuff not so much. If you have connections and some path to follow it’s one thing but if you are an ‘outsider’ like most of us it’s different. My thought would be if you’re going to proceed you might want to have some kind of ‘business plan’ before you put more money into this since what you have now is at least a good quality demo which might be sufficient for some business purposes. Just a thought.
I don’t follow pop music but from what I hear of it the quality is generally pretty low so I think you are safely over that threshold FWIW. Bottom line: You have a good hook! Should be interesting!
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Connections being the key word there for sure. In my opinion the mainstream music industry and all the complete top 40 trash being released that they boldly pass off as ‘music’ these days is so heavily gate-kept, that it’s really only a select few artist who keep getting regurgitated time and time again.
I’'m 99% certain I’m probably just going to finish this one out, and at least compete what I began.
It’s kind of a catch-22 shopping around demos because while you might very well have a potential banger on your hands, it’s still not a shiny product all wrapped up ready to be consumed, whereas if you take that stab in the dark and the final leap towards producing a radio-ready product at least you’ve got something ready to instantly go.
I know for a fact I could get this tune on some fairly big Spotify playlists, but definitely not in its current form.
No, I don’t listen to mainstream pop music, either, life’s waaay too short for that. And not that I’m any sort of industry guru who’s up to date on every new release. But just go listen to the current top 10, it’s just complete shit, AND a large portion of the artists are all established and well-known, so what does that tell you?
Rick Beato did a good one a little while back, analyzing how bad mainstream lyric writing has become in addition to the soulless music , and he’s 100% correct.
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Sounds like a good connection to me! 
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Nice aural effects, key swells, big wide electric snare. Sounds retro. I didn’t hear any vocals…Maybe I chose the wrong file? I’ll try the other ones.
OK, I got it the vocals now. I like it. I think everything works well together. Nice job!
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Hey there @Wicked the very last upload in the thread is the latest version i need to update the OP.
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Whoa! That sounds a LOT better!. The vocals really sound modern and I bet lots of people will dig this in the current musical landscape! Nice!
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Hey thanks man, I wish i could say it was getting close to finished but there are noise issues on the vocal tracks meaning it’s pretty impossible to take the mix to the level it needs to be.
So going to have to re-track vocals at some point, which is all good, because it will be a good chance to tighten up a few things lyrically.
No one said it was going to be easy hehe.
Cheers mate.
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I’m digging the progress so far.
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Decided enough time had passed and went and pulled the synth pop track off the shelf for another go.
Turns out there were some severe noise issues due to a faulty mic on the original vocal takes so decided if we were redoing vocals from scratch, why not give the track a much needed overall, most notably the tempo.
Wow just listening back to the first version in the OP, holy shit i can’t believe how unbelievably slow it was.
Have done some fairly drastic work to the instrumentation as well, and while there’s still plenty of room for more work I’m finally feeling like it’s slowly coming together…I think.
‘This Love’ Oct 2024 Rewrite - 157 bpm - No Vocal
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Hey @terryhesticles great to see you back at it here. I’m not sure how to approach this; you have a lot of previous work on this which I don’t remember too well but I didn’t go back to all of that yet just to try and be objective about what you’re doing now.
This track now is a well done but fairly generic synth-pop piece with good sounds, nice layering with some counterpoint. I think you have the chops to develop this into a more art music extended work but that’s not the goal here right? Anyway mix-wise all is well to my ear.
Some snatches of vocal here, and some BGV at 2:20? So I guess the main vocal is forthcoming, I’m looking forward to that.
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Hey thanks @ingolee I understand it’s kinda tricky commenting when such a large amount of time has passed in between versions, but unfortunately my day job supersedes my music creation process which means I have to put everything on hold for months at a time.
It’s great to get a little feedback and hear things are sounding okay, albeit a little ‘generic’ haha.
Hopefully once these new vocal takes come in (yep she’s re-recording this week) I can look at maybe getting a bit more creative with the vocals, and in turn might give some added inspiration to further add to the overall production itself.
Cheers mate.
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