New Original Tune (by my 15yo daughter): Masquerade

[Flyguitarfish]

Here’s a cool one by my 15 year old daughter. She wrote the whole thing, sang, and recorded all the parts, except for the drums which I recorded. Here’s the first mix and I’d love to get your thoughts. We’ll probably add backup vocals. And she wants to add real cello…even though neither of us play! She’s pretty ambitious!

So here’s Masquerade…

 

[dobro]

Vocal low notes are getting lost and hard to hear. So... more automation and parallel compression?

Cool song and delivery.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

She's good - interesting.
Sparse orchestration. Maybe that's a good thing, so you hear the voice.
Wonder if a bit of pitch correction experimenting would do anything.
That's a cello in my hand there, but I'm not remotely competent at it.
You can get great cello sounds by playing on a keyboard with the right sampled cello voice.

 

[mark skinner]

Very Cool ! For a first mix this sounds very nice to me. I'm hearing passages in her vocals that tell me she is a Fantastic natural singer and she will only get better. (not to mention her writing skills). I can hear after a few listens what a cello would add to this. For now though , I think bringing the bass guitar up a little would help it some.
When the song progresses and you still feel it is lacking something .. hit me up and I'll do some cello for you. I've got quite a few songs on SoundCloud and SoundClick with cello backing you can check out. Enjoyed it .. mark (mark alan skinner)

 

[Flyguitarfish]

Vocal low notes are getting lost and hard to hear. So... more automation and parallel compression?

Cool song and delivery.

Agree. I’ll see what I can do to get those quieter notes heard. Thank you!

 

[Flyguitarfish]

She's good - interesting.
Sparse orchestration. Maybe that's a good thing, so you hear the voice.
Wonder if a bit of pitch correction experimenting would do anything.
That's a cello in my hand there, but I'm not remotely competent at it.
You can get great cello sounds by playing on a keyboard with the right sampled cello voice.

Thank you for the input. I can put some subtle pitch correction on a few notes to keep it natural.

We have a 1/2 size cello…I think she’s wants to figure out how to play a simple part for a few sections. Why not?! She already plays piano, bass, guitar, oboe, and some drums!

 

[Flyguitarfish]

Very Cool ! For a first mix this sounds very nice to me. I'm hearing passages in her vocals that tell me she is a Fantastic natural singer and she will only get better. (not to mention her writing skills). I can hear after a few listens what a cello would add to this. For now though , I think bringing the bass guitar up a little would help it some.
When the song progresses and you still feel it is lacking something .. hit me up and I'll do some cello for you. I've got quite a few songs on SoundCloud and SoundClick with cello backing you can check out. Enjoyed it .. mark (mark alan skinner)

Thank you for the input. Maybe I could bring up the bass and scoop the upper mids just a bit to leave room for the vocals while filling in the low end a bit.

I’ll let you know about the cello!

 

[famous beagle]

This is so very good for a 15-year old - how great to be able to share this with her! Mix sounds pretty good to me so far - nothing really sticks out that hasn't already been pointed out. The only constructive criticism I can offer is in the writing - or the performance of the writing I suppose: it tends to sound a bit on the square side, IMO. I think it's the tendency to really pound on all the downbeats with the vocal melody instead of adding some syncopation a bit here and there. It sounds a bit lumbering because of that. Not there's not a bit of syncopation at times - there is - but I think it's just with the instruments playing that straight quarter-note rhythm a lot and the vocal really landing on that beat 1 a lot, it gets a little square to me. Like I said, it's really good (especially for someone her age), but that struck me a bit.