First Original Posted (Ballad)

lga5824

lga5824

It's Just My Opinion
Hi - I would appreciate some feedback on this original ballad. Before everyone tears into me about the terrible keyboarding, weird sound and bad musicality, please take note that I am not an instrumentalist and am brand new at the engineering side of recording.

I wrote this song a long time ago and after prompting from people on this site, I just decided to record it today as a draft and post it for some feedback. Bare in mind it will be completely redone with proper accompanyists and other instruments as well.

But please do let me know what you think!

Thanks!

Jen

 
I keep getting "file not found". Can you upload somewhere else like Supload? Lightning mp3 has been playing up lately, I tried to upload there lately, but it didn't work for me.
 
Damn, my media player won't play it...telling me it's a codec or something it doesn't recognise.
 
joeym said:
Damn, my media player won't play it...telling me it's a codec or something it doesn't recognise.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm. It's a 128 kbps MP3. Should play on just about anything.........try right clicking on the link and "save as".
 
I went to NL5's post and did a right click/save as.....clicking on the link didn't work.

Beautiful piece Jen, very well done. The keyboard works and gets you by just fine. You play about 1 million times better than I do haha.... At 3:20 you could use a bridge vocal part...or maybe it's just waiting for those friends to collab an instrumental part to really lift that section. It's probably one of few 4:50 long songs that I didn't get tired of after 3:40.... that's an indication of the enjoyable quality of the song and the performance. It's a great tune; it stands up well as a simple arrangement for now. It has lots of potential for additions later on.

:cool::D:cool::D
 
Thank you very much, Sir! Greatly appreciated! You're dead on with the bridge section you mentioned. I have an idea in my head for a guitar thing there, but of course am unable to play it myself. I'll also be adding bass and drums, and of course harmonies. But I appreciate that it didn't bore you to tears with just the keys.

Thanks again for the feedback!
 
Beautiful voice you've got there , Jen!
Song is very nice and I'm sure you can make a great production out of it. It's already a good blueprint though.
Song has hit quality, it's really catchy. God knows, there are worse songs in the charts. Keep working at it, this could be a great song! :)

Cheers
Joe :):)
 
Thank you Joe for the comments and feedback. Jag Tiquer Om De! That means you're very sweet!

I just e-mailed my guitarist the song and hopefully he's on board with playing it so I can get some great accompaniment in there!
 
As a draft it works well.
The patch or sound of the keyboard doesn't seem to match your voice - the former is too honky tonk and the latter smokey/torch song.
When you get a chance throw a little de esser on your vox and experiment with more sustained chords as the rhythm your pumping out is Honky Tonk as I mentioned.
Nice song - get back to work.
 
lga5824 said:
Thank you Joe for the comments and feedback. Jag Tiquer Om De! That means you're very sweet!

I just e-mailed my guitarist the song and hopefully he's on board with playing it so I can get some great accompaniment in there!
Click to expand...

Thanx, that's nice of you :)
What language is that? It doesn't belong to the 4 I speak.....
 
As you begin your engineering education, Jen ... it helps to understand that tracking IS mixing ... for what you put to tape has immediate limitations on what can be "fixed" later ... and everything has to play nice together as you put it together.

Bear this in mind as I critique what you've done here.

The keys are tracked fine, but the sound presented is cheap midi keyboard, which actually can be fun to play around with to get something interesting.

Try taking all sort of effects, delays/flangers/doublers/choruses etc ... and twist the heck out of the sound so that what you wind up with is something very interesting and different ... a unique sonic signature, if you will. While doing so, on a simple arrangement such as this ... make the keyboard sound as big, wide and full as you can.

This technique is done all the time by top engineers in order to take something that sounds amateurish or mundane and morph it into something that has a professional sound to it ... when it's nothing more than playing with layered effects. I've done it many times myself w/ my Casio CZ101 ... a cheap midi mini keyboard.

This song is an illustration of the technique I just outlined. The keyboard is a cheap sounding Roland ... doctored accordingly to what I said above.

That said; you tracked the vocal marvelously clean ... but ... (there's always a but, isn't there?) I think you may have whacked the mic or mic stand a few times as there's an occasional low end "BUMP" and/or rumble that occurs throughout the track.

That is the type of thing that cannot be removed from the mix later, so pay close attention to such details while tracking ... for there is no way to eliminate that type of noise from a track w/o killing the track itself.

A good way to hear that sort of thing is to solo the track itself w/o the music and just listen to it on it's own. You'll clearly hear all the other things that got recorded while you tracked w/o the distraction of the music.

It can be a bit frustrating and disconcerting to listen that way at first, but you'll improve your tracking chops if you do so ... for you learn first hand what it is you need to pay more attention to.

Now THAT said:

Great performance, good tune.

Good start!

You're light years ahead of where I started from.

Best,

Kev-
 
Thanks Kev - I agree with everything you said. Good advice! As an FYI, this is nowhere near final stages. I recorded it yesterday whilst sitting in my jammies drinking hot chocolate! Just one take on everything, to get it down and get some opinions on the song itself. The entire thing will be re-recorded with a much better accompanyist (not sure whether it will be guitar or piano) and a brand new vocal track (I was actually embarassed to post it with my "who cares" style vocals). We may end up putting other instruments in there, or maybe leaving as acoustic. That's going to be the fun part - seeing what we can do with it.

Thanks very much for your comments and for taking the time to listen to it!

Jen :p

p.s. - my keyboard is actually a really nice Alesis QS7 - I have no idea what I did to get that bright, icky punchy sound (I think someone called it "honky tonk" which was a perfect reference)!
 
Very nice indeed. You've got a great a voice and sing with feeling.

One thought on the piano--sometimes a nice piano patch ends up sounding like a honky tonk piano when it's accidentally recorded mono when the patch was meant to be stereo. (Similarly, if you do record the left and right outputs onto separate tracks, but then leave them both centered--instead of panning them far left and right--you can end up with the thin/chorus-y sound of a honky-tonk piano). Just something to look into...
 
Thanks to both of you for responding. I definitely recorded the keys on mono. I'm going to look into it right now!

Thanks,

Jen
 
Great song and performance, it works well with the piano and vocal and will surely be even better with added instrumentation. You have a fabulous voice!
 
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