Like Spinning Plates

paulman77

paulman77

Member
Ok, so I didn't really set out to do another Radiohead cover. It just kind of happened. I was sitting at my keyboard on a rainy Sunday afternoon with bourbon in hand when I decided to play something for a Facebook video, with the audio recorded on my DAW. I don't really have a repertoire of songs to sing with piano like I do with guitar. I just figure out something that sounds good for a song I'm recording, and play that. But one song I've always loved on piano is Radiohead's Like Spinning Plates, the way Thom played it on their live album. I hadn't listened to the song in possibly ten years, but I refreshed myself on the chords and went at it, live piano and vocal. I made a nice little quick mix of the two, synced it with the video, and posted it. A couple of months later I decided to flesh it out, make a full production of it. This is the same bourbon-fueled live piano and vocal performance, with some strings, Mellotron, and Moog added. And I still haven't listened to the original. I think I've finally got this where I want it. But as usual, I've been through so many iterations of this mix that I could be off. Any thoughts would be appreciated.


UPDATED MIX: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1q3bgtkYyakTFNkSzU2Q01EX1E
 
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there's a hiss every time the vocal comes in. like a noisy room or something. it's quite distracting, to me. keys sound great. vocal sounds good otherwise. big and atmospheric, the whole thing. very cool. vocal could be slightly more clear, as well. what do you have going on the vocal?
 
There's a strange droning noise in or under the EP that is unpleasant during the early part of the song. It might be that string pad, the one that gets louder as the song goes on--just a guess. Oddly, it's not bothersome later in the song. I'm not talking about that buzzy synth on the left. Vocals and piano are both very wet, too much so for my taste. Performances are good.
 
I never heard the piano version of Spinning Plates until a few days ago. You have the piano part really nailed, but the recording of it is a bit naff, to be honest. :D There's a lot of crackly HF distortion most of the way through. The arrangement and performance is good, but damn! Sort the recording of it out. :D
 
The piano sounds a little boxy. Some excess stuff at 1Khz or so. It could use maybe a little more low end too.

The vocal gets slightly abrasive on some of the longer/louder notes. It was a pretty nice vocal performance however.

Little pop at 1:30.

The vocal and piano sound like they're in different spaces.
 
I was drawn into this one by your mention of bourbon.

Yeah, I'm hearing what some of the others are. The performances are excellent! I think your vocal on this was really nice, but the processing has made it somewhat grating in certain registers. The hiss is pretty overpowering just before the vocals kick in. I would've preferred the vocal more centered vs. off to the right as it sounded to me listening on phones. The piano doesn't sound right to me either...really boxy and noisy. The additions you added are cool, but I'm tempted to suggest you re-track the piano and vocals with this full arrangement in mind to get everything up to the same level of clarity.
 
My nasty speakers are a lot lower quality than I thought because I don't notice the issues mentioned by others. In their defence I have had 4 beers. Having said that, 4 beers is usually not enough to impact my aural abilities. I don't know the original, but I really like your version. I'm not a fan of piano as an instrument but this sounded very pleasant to me. Great vocal performance - I liked all of it. The strings rounded it off nicely. On 2nd listen it does sound like a Radiohead song, I'll have to check out the original. Songs with piano and without drums generally don't do it for me but this is a big exception. Well done
 
heatmiser said:
I was drawn into this one by your mention of bourbon.

Yeah, I'm hearing what some of the others are. The performances are excellent! I think your vocal on this was really nice, but the processing has made it somewhat grating in certain registers. The hiss is pretty overpowering just before the vocals kick in. I would've preferred the vocal more centered vs. off to the right as it sounded to me listening on phones. The piano doesn't sound right to me either...really boxy and noisy. The additions you added are cool, but I'm tempted to suggest you re-track the piano and vocals with this full arrangement in mind to get everything up to the same level of clarity.
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What Heatmiser said. I want to hear this polished up. :D
 
Pop at 1:30.

I'm catching the hiss on the vocal too.
To what Andrush said, the original is a lot less clear vocally! You've got better vocal support than Yorke certainly. The enunciation is kind of in a weird place. I don't know the best way to do it. Mumbling as much as Yorke will likely sound affected and weird, but pronouncing it clearly is also likely to sound weird.

+1 on the piano being mid-rangey.
 
Thanks all! The piano patch is a Bill Evans-style sound, old and dark and vintage jazz. However, after mixing and mastering I don't even remember what it actually sounded like. I've bounced around through so many different mastering setups on this, and settled on a darker, more vintage kind of flavor, though it took a little away from the clarity, I think. This is why I need other ears, because I've listened to this so many different ways I don't know which way is up anymore.

Hiss and breath were things that plagued me with the vocal. It's heavily gated because of the hiss, and I have a de-breath plugin on it. I don't remember what other plugins I used. I'm just hoping I still have the original unprocessed, unbounced vocal, so I can start from scratch and probably lose the hiss. It's probably a compressor bringing it out. It's something I keep having to fix on my earliest recordings, now that I'm a little less dumb than I was when I started doing this. I'll probably work on this tonight.
 
Bulls Hit said:
On 2nd listen it does sound like a Radiohead song, I'll have to check out the original.
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The original is on Amnesiac, but the one you want is on a live album called I Might Be Wrong. They are COMPLETELY different. I play the piano basically like Thom does live, but other than that I did my own thing. Mine is also much shorter.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
The enunciation is kind of in a weird place. I don't know the best way to do it. Mumbling as much as Yorke will likely sound affected and weird, but pronouncing it clearly is also likely to sound weird.
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I enunciate. It's kinda my thing. I've always loved that about Paul Simon, and also the guy from Cake. I like for people to know exactly what words I'm singing.
 
paulman77 said:
Hiss and breath were things that plagued me with the vocal. It's heavily gated because of the hiss, and I have a de-breath plugin on it.
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But why is there hiss on the vocal? There shouldn't be hardly any hiss at all with modern tracking. Are you recording via analogue compressors, or something?
 
Bubba po said:
But why is there hiss on the vocal? There shouldn't be hardly any hiss at all with modern tracking. Are you recording via analogue compressors, or something?
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I'll let you know when I figure it out. No analog, but I do have plugins that bring out noise. Now I have other ones that don't.
 
The performance is good, very good, in fact. The recording is, well, bad. :(

The keys sounds like some programming engineer's idea of what a piano should sound like. The vocals are lost in the mix, and overprocessed. Can't even make them out.

No idea of how this was recorded or processed, but it has potential. Could be very nice. Needs to be rerecorded.
 
Thanks. Nothing needs to be rerecorded, as all but the vocals are MIDI instruments. Just needs to be remixed. The piano is a very realistic-sounding vintage jazz piano, with a synth-ish sound underneath it, designed to sound as if it were vibrating off the strings of the piano. It's supposed to sound surreal, not just a normal piano. That is intentional. I did mix it to where it is too fuzzy and crackly, and too dark (though it is supposed to be somewhat dark, as a vintage jazz piano sound) so that will be fixed. The patch itself is perfect, I just have to not ruin it through mixing. I'm not sure how you can't make out the vocals. They're loud as hell. They also are supposed to sound processed, not clean and sterile. Soulful, but slightly inhuman. Not something I usually do, but it's what I'm feeling for this. That being said, I did start over on the processing of the vocal, and it has much less now (I'm a little more efficient than I used to be with plugins). Most importantly, I got rid of the hiss (I used Audacity to do that, in case that might help anyone else). This is a dark, dreamy, synth-based recording. There are definitely big flaws in how I've approached it, which are being worked on, but I feel like the intention is not being understood by most. But of course, if the message isn't being received, then maybe I should rethink the message. We'll see what the remix sounds like. I should have it done soon.
 
I get what you're doing here, and it sounds really good, except. I think. for that buzzing in the right channel from the vocal, the delay tail of the processing, it sounds like. That sounds very un-vintage. Also, the string/synth gets a little buzzy too, at the end. It's a different kind of "buzz," but it seems to be things getting too "mid/high." I had a whale of a time with a Mellotron emulation on a tune I did, which I'll post sooner or later, in which the "strings" buzzed or seemed to crackle; a very mid-rangy kind of thing that I had to really hammer with EQ. In short, I EQ'd the mids and highs right out, and that helped whip the thing into place. I think you're right: It just needs to be re-mixed. What did you put on the vocal? Real nice vocal work, too.
 
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