Advice on How My Recordings Sound

lga5824

lga5824

It's Just My Opinion
Hi All - I'm new at recording and have completed some songs on my new home studio. I'm using a mac notebook with garagaband. I recorded through my EV757 mic and Alesis QS7 keyboard into a presonus firebox. If anyone is interested in critiquing my recordings, I'd surely appreciate it. There seems to be a slight buzz on a couple of the recordings, and I'm not sure what I did differently on those.

Anyway, if you're interested, I put the songs up on my new myspace profile:

www.myspace.com/jenniferbarre

Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks!
 
Nice covers. You have a beautiful voice, and the recordings sound very good. Considering MySpace usually masacres the sound, I can only imagine how much better they really sound, but they still sounded good to me.
 
Thank you very much, Rami, for taking the time to listen to the songs (and for your comments). Very much appreciated!

:)
 
I'd say your "stab at home recording" as you put it was coming along very nicely. I enjoyed your renditions and was entrigued by your voice to keep me listening to all of your songs.
As Rami mentioned about myspace file compression I was plesantly surprised with the quality you're getting from garageband. I've added you as a friend and hope to hear some of your own material when I check back in future.

Lemon
 
I'm not sure who I am addressing here about the recording: Jennifer the singer, or her hubby, or someone else. What I mean is, I don't know who was doing the engineering.

Here are some quick points:

1 Jennifer the singer has an awesome voice. It is strong, controlled, rich in character and a great asset. I would love to hear Jennifer tackling some more adventurous material. Though I love Jennifer's voice, there is no shortage of great female singers, and so for her to stand out amongst those there needs to be something that makes a real difference. Lemontree mentioned "your own material". If you write, or can find a collaborator who can, this could give you the edge that marks you as being something special.

2 The recordings were okay, but not great. The quality of Jennifer's voice came through well . . . but you have to watch the popping 'p's and 'b's.

3 In the first track, when the full instrumentation came in, I sensed some timing tension with the percussion . . . perhaps more familiarity with working to a click track is in order.

4 The tracks didn't have a lot of a 'sparkle' for me. Partly this is a legacy of Myspace encoding, but it could also be an artefect of the recording itself. My impression was of two dimensions, rather than a deep performing stage.
 
Jennifer or whomsoever recorded the pieces:
I listened to track one. It was pleasant - and there in lies the prob. A very nice voice rides over a polite backing both of which are compromised by the over familiarity of the song and the compression/mangling that myspace offers.
*Get a soundclick or similar account started & post your MP3s there (I mean Mp3s are already compromised so we need to take care from the beginning) or use lightningmp3 to host files for download.
* Post a link to ONE song at a time - so you can garner a reasonable amount of response, criticism, suggestions for a single work.
* Start looking for original material - write if you can or talk to songwriters if you can't.
* Get known of the bbs by reading, listening & offering comments - the more known you are the more liekly you'll get a broader response.
* RESPOND to suggestions and comments - we like to engage in a dialogue with people.
* Attempt some of the suggestions made - I usually try most ideas offered - many, many work wonders.
* Neither a borrower nor a lender be.Oh, hang on that's someone else's line. I mean, be yourself and make music.
 
Thank you Gekko zzed and racyc for your comments. I greatly appreciate the feedback.

To respond to some questions/comments:

I did the recordings myself (i.e., the "engineering" side of it) as well as the singing. On "Aint No Sunshine", I'm a little embarrassed to write, that the background music was prerecorded and I just laid down vocals to that song as my first attempt to do a recording. I had a hard time gauging when to start the vocals after the music was recorded. On the other songs, I played the keys for them, and I certainly do not consider myself a proficient keyboardist. I'm a vocalist first, who learned enough keys to teach lessons, compose and comp chords. For me, these weren't as much about the musicality and timing, but how to record and what the final mix would sound like.

Thanks for the feedback on the popping sounds from the mic. I'll definitely work on that!

I'm in absolute agreement with everyone's comments on doing some originals. Those are in the queue for my next project. I've started working with accompanyists to help with them because as I stated, I only play a little keys and need someone better to execute the songs properly.

Gekko zzed, on the lack of "sparkle" - do you think this is something I should do when playing the actual keyboard (sound going in) or during the mixing and try to brighten it up?

Thanks again to all who commented! Your comments are important for my growth. I take what I do seriously and really do want to improve on recording.

Thanks!

Jen
 
p.s.

Rayc (or anyone), how do I post just one song at a time? I went to www.soundclick.com and it appears that you have to do a whole profile and such. Is there another way I can attach a song to a posting? Bare in mind I'm new at this so you'll have to dummy down your answer for me!

Thanks!
 
lga5824 said:
Rayc (or anyone), how do I post just one song at a time? I went to www.soundclick.com and it appears that you have to do a whole profile and such. Is there another way I can attach a song to a posting? Bare in mind I'm new at this so you'll have to dummy down your answer for me!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Your talent shines through on your tunes Jennifer, I am very impressed. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your rendition of a few songs. I listened to Ode to Billy Joe - the background music sounded low in my opinion. But you say it was a prerecord so I'll overlook that and say the vocals were well done, clear and with nice reverb. The other song I listened to is Foolish games. This was better mix-wise with a much stronger musical background that complimented your vocals. I think you've got the main recording process down okay.

I hope you will write some orignals and post them here when you get the chance. Covers are equally welcome, although sometimes people will razz you for an original (but that's another thread). ;)

Posting on MySpace is okay but the compression is a little hard on the fidelity.
Soundclick does make you build a profile but like MySpace it provides some statistics.
Lightningmp3.com allows you to upload up to (I believe) 10 MB so you could do a 320 KPS type higher fidelity version.
 
lga5824 said:
What is 320 KPS?
Click to expand...

This refers to a bitrate or "quality" for MP3 files. The higher the bitrate the higher the quality and better the sound.
I think MySpace is a low bitrate like 64 or 128 which can adversely affect your sound quality compared to the original song file which is usually a .wav file.


When I record a song onto my computer it is a .wav type file. Then I convert it to .mp3 type file using Sound Forge. The mp3 is the only format that Soundclick (and a lot of other online sites) will accept.

Soundclick accepts 128KPS mp3 bitrate for the free account. Lightningmp3.com accepts any mp3 bitrate so if you can create a 320KPS file that is within the site's limit of 10 MB you geta better sounding file for people to enjoy.

I'm not sure what bitrate garageband creates by default or, if you can change it to higher or lower bitrates.

Hope that explanation helps! :D
 
lga5824
After logging in go to band adminsitration
Select/click the band
select linking/embedding tool
select link song & hit submit
find the track in your song list & copy the script from http through to hi INCLUSIVE.
Paste that script in your HR thread & it'll call up the hi(gher) quality streamer for the lsitener.
ALWAYS check that the link works though.
Cheers
ray
 
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