Thought I would give it a try 
, live recording
( has some pitchy parts… what I get for singing while sick cold lol…)
Final Version: ( de-essed, saturated, mastered )
Thank you everyone for your input and helpful feedback!
2 Likes
Oh my goodness. This is beautiful, Michelle. How many ways can you say, “I love you!” This is so fresh and special. Wow! I love this. Is this an original.
So tender, so thoughtful. Tender.
Seriously, I love this. I feel like you’re singing to me! Very moving.
Thanks for sharing this!
1 Like
Thank you 
, no it isnt an original. This is a song by Calum Scott.
Hi Michelle, nice work! You voice has a really nice breathy tone to it. Quite a challenging song to sing - some tricky little intervals in the melody. As you said, a few uncertain spots, but for the most part it sounds great.
One thing I’m getting on the recording is some pretty major sibilance - it could use some de-essing.
Nice work!
1 Like
Yet another talent, very impressive! I think your vocal style fits the material very well, a power house vocal wouldn’t work as well. Could use some strings too?
1 Like
I like it. Very nice!
Like Andrew said, there’s s bit of sizzling sibilance on the vocals. Could use some de-essing. Your vocals sound really nice though. Maybe try some pitch correction on those couple of slightly pitchy notes…or maybe not. Not sure if the few times that you strayed a little off the notes really bothered me all that much. The feel is what matters, and you captured a nice feeling here.
1 Like
always room for strings!! 
Thanks for the feedback guys.
Yep, got some major groundwork to do with this track to get it going. Not sure if I will track the same song again, I give myself stage fright even when there is no there lol. I got lucky with this take, was just feeling it for the moment while testing one of my new vocal mics and just sang right into the mic, no pop shield or acoustic shield.
Might just tighten it up in certain parts, and call it a day!
1 Like
Good effort Michelle, shows a lot of promise. The processing sounds like there’s already a fair bit of pitch correction - although that could be my dodgy laptop speakers. As an alternative to a de-esser you could try backing off the compressor/limiter and automating manually. It sounds pretty smashed - no bad thing normally but when there’s such sparse instrumentation it’s not needed so much.
1 Like
Ok, so what else aren’t you telling us about your talents? Big congrats to you.
1 Like
No pitch tweaking yet but there is a limiter and EQ that is boosting highs indeed… and a reverb. Just presets across the board tbh, just wanted to get a rough draft and get some opinions. Then scale back and tweak .
I can do kite battles
2 Likes
revision :
I slightly de-essed and removed some eq that was unnaturally boosting the highs, subtle changes without trying to alter my tone. I don’t have the best pronunciation of things so things are still a bit “essy” but its a bit better. I am indeed told that I am breathy but I tend to leave it be as it reflects some passion.
The voice sounds great. A couple spots where some pitchiness comes through, but easily something that could be fixed with pitch correction or multiple takes.
The processing on the vocals sounds too extreme for the song. It sounds like the microphone is right up inside your mouth, to the point where I can hear the clacking and shlacking. I think you can back off quite a bit on the compressor and/or the microphone and it will sound much more natural.
1 Like
you are absolutely correct, I practically ate the mic on this lol, I wanted the voice really upclose and considering my horrible mic technique and experience I butchered it. I will see what I can do to tweak the compressor. I have a sore throat so a retake is out of the question at this time.
1 Like
I agree with what a few others have said about reducing the amount of compression to reduce the sibilance. Like AJ said, you can always automate the vocal if the volume varies too much.
1 Like
revised. Link in original post
I hate to be a “Goldilocks” critic, but the de-essing is a little too much now - some “s” sounds are actually lisping (not all, though). De-essing is a little bit like low end - it’s tricky to get it to translate “just right”. It’s probably the main thing that I hear pros get wrong in “big boy” productions from time to time.
1 Like
Yes I was afraid of that. I ended up asking my mastering engineer who suggested to scale back the de-essing and adding some saturation to make the sound back to its former richness (which he liked) but without the harshness. I ended up scaling back a bit and added the saturation and liked the results. Thought not ideal just yet but I do like the closeness of the voice with the saturation.
Yeah, that’s better… but if I’m really picky, some “s” sounds are still slightly lispy.
At times when sibilants have proved to be particularly irksome, I’ve had to create a separate uncompressed track solely for the sibilant sounds and mult it with the rest of the vocal track… & in that case, it is sometimes necessary to automate or clip gain the sibilants to get some consistency…
…but (I would imagine) that’s probably a bridge to far your purposes here.
1 Like
Purpose is to learn. I am trying to learn to work with Vocals more, best way for me was to dive in and sing my own and learn the common pitfalls. (Like most people I am not a big fan of my own voice) If I can get it to a point where its pleasant enough for me, I will be happy lol.