Sad Lisa - Cat Steven's cover

[rayc]

I'm no fan of the man then or now but he did sort out some nice chords and picking.
You've done a nice job & V2 is bettererererer.
Nice guitars by the way!

 

[Steenamaroo]

Way nicer man. I really enjoyed that.

Are you hitting it with a de-esser, or is your MB just bringing down those higher frequencies?
The messes sound a bit unnaturally squashed to me. Other than that, very nice!

The harmonies are particularly nice. Those aren't in the original, right?
I've a great ear for harmony but would never have come up with those particular lines.

 

[StuGort]

I'm no fan of the man then or now but he did sort out some nice chords and picking.
You've done a nice job & V2 is bettererererer.
Nice guitars by the way!

Thanks ray....my sister had the album and the songs on it just became part of life. I bought a few other albums of his but Tea for the Tillerman was his best imo.

 

[StuGort]

Way nicer man. I really enjoyed that.

Are you hitting it with a de-esser, or is your MB just bringing down those higher frequencies?
The messes sound a bit unnaturally squashed to me. Other than that, very nice!

Thank you. No...no de-esser...and the multi-band is only on the lead guitar.

In fact...I added about 5 db of 4500hz shelving on the lead vocal to add air to it. Could be the pre-amp...but this is basically the first thing I've done in years after rebuilding my studio. I still have to stuff dial in... I'm sure.

The harmonies are particularly nice. Those aren't in the original, right?
I've a great ear for harmony but would never have come up with those particular lines.

Thanks. No...there are no vocal harmonies in the original of any kind. I like to compose...so this a perfect song to sing vocal harmonies to which is what I always do when listening to the album. On that front there are a few things I could have worked out better but on the whole I was pretty satisfied with it.

 

[TripleM]

I thought the playing and singing were really good. Pretty harmonies.

The guitars are just sooooo clean. To me, they need just a little more gain dialed in. They also bite a bit in the high midrange - like 2500hz.

I'd like it a bit dryer.

 

[Bubba po]

Hi, Stu. If this is Cat Steven's cover, where's yours? (Captain Pedant strikes again!!)

Just kidding - how did you record this? Are the vocals and guitars on separate tracks? The vocal sound (not the singing) lets this down a bit. It almost sounds like you've had a high-pass filter at about 400Hz and a low pass one at about 4k. There's no warmth low down and no "air" up top. The playing and singing is lovely.

 

[StuGort]

I thought the playing and singing were really good. Pretty harmonies.

Thanks Trip...I had it in my head to do a vocal harmony cover of this one for years...finally got to it.

The guitars are just sooooo clean. To me, they need just a little more gain dialed in. They also bite a bit in the high midrange - like 2500hz.

I don't disagree. It's just that I'm trying to produce a few tracks that I can point to that highlight the basic tone of each kind of guitar I make. Adding distortion wrecks that plan on this tune. I'll be moving away from that tone on subsequent songs.

 

[StuGort]

Just kidding - how did you record this? Are the vocals and guitars on separate tracks?

Yes...these are all isolated tracks.

The vocal sound (not the singing) lets this down a bit. It almost sounds like you've had a high-pass filter at about 400Hz and a low pass one at about 4k. There's no warmth low down and no "air" up top. The playing and singing is lovely.

I suppose it could be the mic pre-amp. It's been quite a while since I've dialed this stuff in. I'll mess with it some more and bump more the lo-mids and 4500 shelving. Maybe I should hit it much harder there than I already did....but if I can't fix this with EQ it's over....I'm probably not going to retrack the vocals on this.

 

[StuGort]

For this mix I seriously bumped the lo-mids and the highs to try to attack the boxiness that people mentioned. I hope I didn't go too far. I hit it pretty hard. The bg vocs came down a little and I tried to warm up the main guitar track.

 

[mjbphotos]

You didn't leave the original up, so I couldn't' compare. The lead vocal still has what I would describe as semi-boxy-semi-muffled sound. Could be the overall EQ on the vocal - like you scooped the good stuff and left the boxy frequencies. Or it could be compression doing it, I suppose.