Criticism required...

[Mountaineer]

unreal,
Nothing to laugh about here . . . Nice work. What software did you record in ?
I listened to this song paying more attention to the vocals than the MIDI Steinway. I think you have a very good voice, although, in this recording it was rather dry, meaning only that some nice reverb would have really brought it out . . . would have helped the Steinway too. The tune is a good one for just voice and piano. I'd like to hear it again with two changes. 1 ) To the vocals, add some small plate reverb set at about 0.6 decay and, perhaps, double track the vocal with the second track set at about 30ms of delay. 2 ) Dupe the Steinway track, add a small amount of reverb to each but alter the decay time. Then pan one track hard right the other hard left. Don't know if you can do this with your set up or not . . . but it would be interesting.

Regards,
PAPicker

 

[unreal]

A few months ago, I came accross an amazing Steinway piano SoundFont (size for one instrument:30MB!) on the Net, and decided I needed to use it in a song. Then I remembered that I had the MIDI file for a Queen song: "Too much love will kill you", which I had also downloaded from the Net.
So I used just the piano part and put the singing on top.

If you don't wish to download the whole song, only to find you don't like
it, I've made a cut-down version which you can get at this address: http://perso.libertysurf.fr/letting/testsong.zip

For those who have massive Internet access, you can download the full song here (3.8MB): http://perso.libertysurf.fr/letting/fullsong.zip

The singing was recorded using a SM58 mic and a SoundBlaster Live! soundcard (I can't afford anything better, yet).

It would be very useful if you could make comments on the singing, recording, or anything else for that matter, as I've still got a lot to learn: I'm only 20, after all.

Last thing: please don't laugh too much!

unreal

 

[unreal]

Hi PAPicker,

Just to say, I use Cubase 3.7 and WaveLab 3, so I think that should be possible. I will be sure to try it out and tell you if the results are good.

Cheers for taking the time to download and listen to the song.

unreal

 

[drstawl]

Not a chuckle in the house. Well done.
Not to disregard what PAPicker has said about the vocal- but I think it was too "echoey" and diffuse, as opposed to too dry. It seemed to get lost behind that piano like someone singing in a room with overly reflective acoustics. Maybe it's the terminology getting in the way, but you both can sing alot better than me, so what do I know?
That's one really nice piano Soundfont.
The only thing it lacks is a little bit of sustain.

 

[pglewis]

A 58 and a soundblaster... you hear that everyone? The vocs were a little flat in a couple of spots, but a lot more ooommmmph than I can ever get on my vocs. I agree with Doc about the sustain on the piano but I don't think it's the sample, though. The end sustains pretty good. I think it's just the MIDI not sustaining the notes.

Damn good job with what you've got, I want to hear more.

 

[gibs]

wow nice piano sound....you seemed to be straining on the vocal, probably a key thing...but you had a lot of feeling in it...gibs

 

[unreal]

OK, I wasn't using just a SM58 and a Live: in fact I own a small homemade mixer, which was connected to a (homemade clone) Altec 436C tube compressor, which seems to do miracles on voaals, add all the warmth and "ooommmmph", as you like to call it.
Then the output of the mixer goes into my Sony JE500 MiniDisc, which I use as a analog to digital convertor, and the whole lot goes into to Live.

As far as the piano goes, I agree that it sounds a bit mechanical, because I suppose the guy who programmed it just copied the music book note for note. In any case, the piano sound is about the finest I've ever heard for a soundcard at that price. All the notes on the Steinway piano were sampled at 48kHz using a super mic and preamp, for those who are interested, this freeware SoundFont can be found here: http://www.musik.auc.dk/~bovbjerg/piano.html#

Oh yeah, I use loads of plugin effects (to replace the hardware ones I don't own, ha ha ha!).

I would like to thank you guys again for taking the time to listen to yet another cover!

unreal

 

[pglewis]

Still, a great job with a budget set-up. With the piano and your vocal expression, it reminds me a bit of Ben Folds... and that's a very good thing, in my book.