fidel

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
  • Start date Start date
Nothing immediately sprung to my ear as needing to be changed.

Do you plan on just leaving this as is or adding instrumental tracks?
 
It's the whole banana. Nothing gets added. Eat your heart out, Cordelia's Dad.
 
Hey Dobro,
...cool. I used to hang out at some spoken word joints a million yrs ago. This would have fit right in. Is this yours or are you reciting? ....cool:cool:
 
I like your voice inflections on this and other work. I also like your stories. What was fun for me, was on the second listen I picked up the acoustic having been aquainted with the rhythm, and was playing counterpoint harmonies. Which led me to some other instrumentation possibilities. Simple. Intermittent. Polyphonic.

But I like it as is too.


Tom
 
hmm.. interesting. first i've heard of something like this on the board. I always have trouble with lyrics do you have them somewhere?

the last thing i heard like this on a disc where it was just an unaccompanied voice was alanis's last track on jagged
 
Oh, I know another one... Tori Amos "Me and a gun" from Little Earthquakes... Solo vocal, and dry like Dobro's tune too.
 
Hmm.. i really like that disc too and i don't remember that. I'll have to go back and check.
 
Man, you've got balls to attempt this.
And you pulled it off!

Your lyrics are great, as usual - timeless :)

I thought the EQ was fine, perfect for a capella. Sounds like you cut most of the mids.
I like the touch of boominess in the bass
 
Maybe it's me, but I'm *really* hearing the pumping of the compressor on this one. Being as there's only voice here, I'd think you might want to really go gentle on audible compression. Is it just me? Anyone else hear it?

Chris
 
SLuiCe said:
Oh, I know another one... Tori Amos "Me and a gun" from Little Earthquakes... Solo vocal, and dry like Dobro's tune too.
Click to expand...

.....Jello Biafra put out a spoken word album (late 80's, i think) that was a really cool step in that genre, and really revealed in him the intellect that nobody thought he was. Henry Rollins tried it too at around the same time, but his poorly re-hashed Bukowski wasnt quite as cool.


......heeeyyyyyyy........ challenge idea? spoken word.......with or without musical accomp. ........?? ......too bad theron isnt around anymore, he would have liked that.
 
hey g. clear out your mailbox! i responded to your pm ealier but it didn't go through.........plus i need some bass!


dobro, i like this one a lot songwise. actually i think it's outstanding songwriting. it does seem to move around though sonically. there's like a heavy proximity effect going on or a compressor kicking in really hard in some parts.

stick with this though. this is definitely one of my favorites from you so far.

ok, i'll admit the line 'diving into wells, tickle turtles on their shells' is still with me and mineral is still one of my all time favorite songs. i'm not kidding about that either.

eh w/5, even though stars don't mean anything.....
 
Interesting responses. First, the EQ. I added some air up around 8K, and I cut absolutely everything under 90 Hz. That's it, nothing else. Just a touch of reverb too - I don't think it affected the EQ too much.

I didn't compress it at all. When I tracked it, I set the levels about right, and put a hard limiter on it to take care of stray transients. So, the comments about pumping have me confused - there shouldn't be any, but I don't know how to recognize pumping anyway, so maybe it's the limiter. Do limiters pump? I know I didn't find the mic's sweet spot on this one, so maybe that's it, or maybe it's me moving around in front of the mic a bit?

With a 'standing naked' unadorned tune like this, the sound has got to be RIGHT. I'll track it again and see.

Oh, and this isn't spoken word. I'm singing on this one. Singing! LOL

Thanks, all. It's always surprises and fun getting feedback here. :)
 
limiting is a form of compression i think. and it's definitely audible on this.

i also can hear you moving around quite a bit while your singing.

so try again, but get rid of the limiter and stay in one place. LOL :)
 
:D
......spoken word isnt exclusively speech man..... Ive seen alot of acapella pieces done in a spoken word context....... ...and they were very cool. Check out the Jello I mentioned.... A few "songs" on that record are acapella songs......
....although... feel good knowing you sing alot better than he does:D
 
Hey dobro: did you have the limiter engaged while tracking or did you add it afterwards? The sound I'm hearing could easily be a limiter - you can hear the flattening of sound here and there as the "limit" is exceeded. If you added this afterwards it should be fairly easy to fix I would think. Be a shame to have to re-track - especially when the vibe is in place on this take.

If the limiter was a part of tracking, that's an easy one... don't!

Chris
 
Chris - I was limiting while I was tracking. I'll have to redo it. It's okay - I like singing. :)

I learned that I should track as hot as possible, so I've used either compression or limiting when tracking to prevent clipping. But recently Lt Bob talked about how he doesn't compress his stuff at all, and Sluice talked about how he recorded at much lower levels than a lot of people here and yet when he brought the gain up later on, it wasn't too noisy. So I'm thinking of lowering the gain when I record and turning the compressor and limiter off. Dunno.

I was in a pro studio last week watching some voiceovers, and the engineer decided to track it at 16-bit and the meters were hitting about -12 dB. I asked him why so low, and he said it wasn't low, because he wasn't going to have to boost the level much. But he highlighted a quiet section of the track and then *did* boost it 10 dB to show me the sound, and there was loads of hiss. Ouch. Now, was that cuz he was tracking at 16-bit? Does tracking at 24-bit allow you to record at lower levels?

I want the answer to be yes. :D
 
Maybe it's me, but I'm *really* hearing the pumping of the compressor on this one. Being as there's only voice here, I'd think you might want to really go gentle on audible compression. Is it just me? Anyone else hear it?
Click to expand...

Nope, that's the first thing that struck me as well. I think the vocals are hitting the limiter a little hard in spots. Since the vocals don't have to compete with anything else, I don't think you really have to compress/limit as much as you might when there is accompaniment. Working the mic and letting the natural dynamics loose a little might be better in this application, IMO. EQ seems okay to me. Maybe roll off the lows just a little.

Tracking fairly hot is a good general idea, especially when there are going to be a lot of tracks in the mix. The accumulated noise from multiple tracks can add up. But this is a guideline, and here... there is only the noisefloor of one track to contend with. You should have plenty of wiggle-room. There's a lot of dynamic space available with your recording setup before you hit the noise floor. Use it.
 
Ahhh, *that* answers my question. Good.

Wiggle room, indeed.
 
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